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Show WASHINGTON FROM OUR CONGRESSMAN W. IC GRANGER Utah Predatory Animal Control For some years past the federal government has cooperated with the eleven western, states in the control of predatory animals. The work was first done by the Geological Survey and has recently re-cently been carried on through the Fish and Wildlife Service (F & W). The federal government has cooperated with the states on the theory that it has a responsibility responsibili-ty because so much land in these states is known as "public lands." The government rents these lands to livestock growers and others, and therefore, I think has a definite responsibility in the control of predatory animals. After having complied with their agreements with the states, on July 31 of this year the F & W Service withdrew its cooperation program with the State of Utah, South Dakota, and two or three counties in Wyoming, chiefly for the reason- that three states and counties have enacted laws and set up a bounty system. The F & W Service claims that the county program makes it impossible impos-sible to continue joint federal and state cooperation. As a result re-sult of the action of the F & W Serivce, naturally the livestock men are very much concerned because of the loss of sheep and lambs from the coyotes, for that loss has been tremendous, in fact, over the past 2 or 3 years there has been a large increase in the number o" coyotes. I have made an investigation of the whole matter from the standpoint of the livestock interests, in-terests, as wel! as the F & W Service. The facts seem to be these: The destruction of livestock live-stock became so acute, especially from the ravages of coyotes, the livestock men decided that in adition to cooperating with the federal government in its program pro-gram of prdatory animal control they would have legislation passed assessing themselves an amount of money that yould permit per-mit the state to pay a bounty on coyotes of $6.00 per head. The enactment of the bounty law seemed to be attractive enough to increase the activities of trappers trap-pers and hunters so that they brought about the destruction Oi. about four times as many coyotes as were destroyed under the cooperative co-operative system. Of course this is what the livestock men wanted want-ed the destruction of predatory animals. The F & W Servce claims that because of the bounty program it was impossible for them to secure and keep competent trappers trap-pers at the meager salaries allowed al-lowed under the federal law. They further claim that the bounty system did not only disrupt dis-rupt their organization but there was also widespread pilfering ot traps, as well as coyotes, which so far as the records of the F & W Service were concerned, indicated in-dicated the number of predatory animals destroyed could not be justified when the payment of trappers and office over-head were taken into consideration. . Congress, when it enacted the original federal law, provided that money should be promulgated promul-gated under the Department of interior for such federal coopera-toin. coopera-toin. Now the F & W Service has determined that under the present conditions they cannot longer cooperate with the State of Utah under present conditions, although I am sure ti is their desire ,to do so. It seems to me that the destruction de-struction of property by predatory animals has reached such a point that if the federal government is to be interested in their control, (and I think they should be), then it should carry on a program pro-gram of control in cooperation with the State sufficient to bring about effective control, or else withdraw from the field entirely. In my opinion, the office overhead over-head is too great for the number of trappers employed and the number of predatory animals destroyed. It may even be worth considering an over-all federal bounty on predatory animals. |