This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

The USDA's wild animal killing branch, Wildlife Services, is making yet another plan to kill tens of thousands of birds in Tennessee including red-tailed hawks, wild turkeys, and backyard songbirds like mourning doves, house finches, and American robins. Ask it instead to prioritize non-lethal strategies that promote coexistence and do not bring harm to the feathered animals who we share this planet with.

Over 30 species of birds are on Wildlife Services' hit list in Tennessee. These birds are seen as nuisances for merely performing normal everyday functions that they need to survive like pooping, eating, singing, and raising their young. Birds like cormorants will be killed to prevent them from eating fish who humans will kill instead for sport. Some birds are also cited as posing a threat to the goldfish “pet” supply, an industry fraught with suffering. Thus, Wildlife Services will kill these “pet industry threatening” birds for their natural behaviors so that they do not interfere with human harm toward other species.

Apparently, Wildlife Services missed the memo that everybody poops, as bird fecal matter is a driving “reason” behind killing birds. Geese especially get a bad rap for this, but other waterfowl and roosting birds are targeted for this as well.

These birds are killed through cruel and violent methods such as neck-breaking, gassing, or being gunned down. If not brought to a painful and untimely demise through those methods, they can instead suffer in agony for hours from ingesting poisons. These poisons affect not only the targeted bird species, but other wild animals, animal companions, and sometimes humans as well.

Wildlife Services has never given thorough consideration to exhausting all non-lethal alternatives before resorting to killing birds. It also did not consider in detail alternatives such as requiring businesses to pay should they insist upon lethal methods, using reproductive inhibitors, or other approaches that would greatly reduce the number of birds who are killed. Ask Wildlife Services to incorporate humane methods that give these birds a chance to continue living!

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.