Big Ag is killing more than just farmed animals. Sadly, they contract out a government agency, called Wildlife Services, to kill wild animals too.
Every year, millions of wild animals—wolves, coyotes, bears, mountain lions, foxes—are shot, trapped, and poisoned across the United States. Not by rogue hunters. Not by corporate ranchers, but by our own government.
Through a little-known program called Wildlife Services, the federal government spends taxpayer dollars to kill wildlife, often to protect one of the most destructive industries on the planet: factory farming.
Let’s break down how your tax dollars are used to fuel cruelty—and how reducing or eliminating animal products in your lifestyle helps not only farmed animals, but their wild neighbors, too.
What Is Wildlife Services?
Wildlife Services is a program under the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that manages “wildlife conflicts.” Translation? They kill wild animals that interfere with agriculture—particularly the industrial meat and dairy industries and the feed crop plantations they rely on.
With an approximately $149 million budget in 2024, the agency operates with little public oversight and almost no accountability. While they claim to prevent wildlife damage, Wildlife Services is essentially a taxpayer-funded arm of factory farming, eliminating predators and “nuisance” animals to protect profits—not ecosystems.
Wildlife Services vs. US Fish and Wildlife Service: What’s the Difference?
Though their names sound similar, these two agencies serve very different purposes:
- US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is primarily tasked with protecting endangered species and managing national wildlife refuges.
- Wildlife Services, on the other hand, is focused on removing or killing animals deemed inconvenient, often at the behest of ranchers and agribusiness.
But here’s the twist: they do sometimes overlap. When Wildlife Services kills an endangered species, it’s FWS that has to investigate. But the accountability? Rarely exists.
It’s a broken system where one agency quietly undoes the work of the other—and animals pay the price.
What Are Wildlife Removal Services?
Wildlife Services markets its work as “wildlife removal”—a sterilized phrase that masks the violence of its operations. These “removals” aren’t gentle relocations. They’re exterminations.
Through aerial gunning, neck snares, steel-jaw traps, and poison bombs, Wildlife Services kills more than a million animals each year—totaling more than 58 million animals killed since 2004. Its goal is simple: remove any wild animal who threatens ranching interests.
But when your job is to serve Big Ag, the definition of “nuisance” gets disturbingly broad.
How Many Animals Did Wildlife Services Kill in 2024?
Horrifically, Wildlife Services killed 1,928,932 animals in 2024. This is an increase of more than 474,000 animals from 2023.
While many of these animals killed were wild, some domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, cows (yes, the ones they are killing to protect), and pigeons were killed by the agency. Other animals killed by Wildlife Services in 2024 include wolves, grizzly bears, Virginia opossums, red-tailed hawks, raccoons, beavers, coyotes, black bears, armadillos, wolverines, mountain lions, red-winged blackbirds, gray foxes, and even a critically endangered golden eagle.
According to Carter Neimeyer, a former Wildlife Services employee from 1975-2006, the grim reality is that “[Wildlife Services] were the hired gun of the livestock industry.”
Are Endangered Animals Killed to Protect Factory Farms?
Yes. Wildlife Services has a long and horrifying history of killing endangered and protected species—often by “accident.”
Victims of this carelessness include:
- Mexican gray wolves, one of the most endangered canids on Earth
- Grizzly bears and California condors, icons of the American West
- Bald eagles, the national bird
- Black-footed ferrets, considered extinct in the wild until recent recovery efforts
These animals die when traps or poison bombs are set indiscriminately across vast landscapes, often on public land. Their deaths are shrugged off as “collateral damage”—to the benefit of the meat industry.
How Does Wildlife Services Kill Animals?
The methods Wildlife Services uses are as cruel as they are outdated:
- Cyanide Bombs (M-44s): These spring-loaded traps release lethal poison into an animal’s mouth. They’re indiscriminate, brutal, and have even killed family companion animals.
- Aerial Gunning: Wildlife agents fly over landscapes in helicopters, shooting wolves, coyotes, and bears from the air. Many are only wounded and die slowly.
- Snares and Steel Traps: These devices clamp onto limbs or necks, causing excruciating pain. Animals often suffer for hours—or chew off their own limbs to escape.
- Deadly Poisons: Wildlife Services still uses Compound 1080 and strychnine—chemicals banned in many countries for their gruesome effects.
There’s nothing humane or scientific about these killings. It’s simply state-sanctioned violence for profit.
How Much Land in the Continental US Is Used for the Meat Industry?
Here’s the truth few politicians will say out loud: more than half of the United States is used for agriculture—nearly 1.2 billion acres. While over 100 million acres are dedicated to growing feed crops for cows, pigs, and chickens, beef ranching takes up more than one-third of the continental United States.
And as factory farms and feedlots expand, wild animals are pushed out—or killed to make space.
Bureau of Land Management and Wildlife Services: Who Really Owns Public Land?
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) controls nearly 250 million acres of public land—most of it in the West. In theory, this land belongs to all of us. In practice, it’s leased at a discount to ranchers who graze cattle and sheep.
Here’s the pipeline:
- Rancher grazes animals on BLM land
- Predators (like wolves or mountain lions) show up
- Rancher complains to Wildlife Services
- Wildlife Services kills the predators
All of this happens on land we, as taxpayers, technically own, but wild animals—who evolved there long before cows arrived—are treated like invaders. This is public land, weaponized for private industry.
This Isn’t a Unique Problem to the US
While the US has one of the most aggressive wildlife-killing programs in the world, this isn’t a uniquely American tragedy.
In Brazil, jaguars are being killed by ranchers expanding into the Amazon and Cerrado for cattle grazing. As forests are cleared for pasture, jaguar habitats shrink—and conflicts rise. Much like wolves and coyotes in the US, jaguars are now seen as threats to profit margins.
Governments look the other way. Meat exports rise. Biodiversity disappears.
Whether it’s the wolf in Wyoming or the jaguar in Brazil, the message is the same: if you’re an animal who threatens Big Ag, you die.
Why Ditching Meat Helps More Than Just Farmed Animals
When you reduce or eliminate meat, dairy, and eggs from your lifestyle, you're helping:
- Farmed animals: No more cages, mutilations, or slaughter
- Wild animals: No more poisoned traps, aerial hunts, or habitat destruction
- The planet: Less land used, less water wasted, and more room for nature
A plant-based food system means coexistence, not conflict. It means our forests, plains, and deserts can be full of life, not traps.
Want to help protect wildlife? Start with your plate.
Wildlife Services shouldn’t exist in a compassionate, science-driven world, but as long as we fund and support factory farming, it will.
By eating more plant-based foods and reducing or eliminating animal products from your diet, you’re not just saving farmed animals. You’re fighting for the wolves, coyotes, and jaguars, too.
Ready to get started? Join World Animal Protection’s FREE online community–Plant-Powered Changemakers—for tips, tricks, recipes, and support on your journey!
