Thread by @MesMitch

““The United States government put a cyanide bomb 350ft from my house, and killed my dog and poisoned my child,” said Theresa Mansfield, Canyon’s mother.” gu.com/p/e6z8x/stw
@SpeakerPelosi

If you haven’t heard of the US agency that placed the bomb, you’re not alone.

Its name is Wildlife Services, and for years it has operated in relative obscurity, with limited oversight from Congress or the American public.
@SpeakerPelosi

In 2018, it exterminated nearly 1.5 million native animals, and a huge number of invasive animals as well.Sometimes its agents shoot wolves or coyotes from helicopters. Sometimes they employ leg traps and snares.

And sometimes they place poison devices on public and private land. M-44s, also known as “cyanide bombs”, are baited and spring-loaded tubes that spray an orange plume of cyanide powder when triggered.😡nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/1…

The Rogue Agency
A USDA program that tortures dogs and kills endangered species😫harpers.org/archive/2016/0…

Aimed at coyotes and other canids that predate livestock, they killed 6,500 animals in 2018 alone. #boycottbeef #COVID19

Congressman
@RepPeterDeFazio
, a long-time critic of Wildlife Services, has described the agency as more secretive than the Department of Homeland Security.

“I served on the homeland security committee for a decade, and Wildlife Services, so called, is more opaque than some of our intelligence agencies,” said
@RepPeterDeFazio
“Basically, in some cases, it is rogue.”

He said that the agency, which has a century-long history and roughly 2,000 employees, is highly decentralized. State offices like the one in Idaho basically “run themselves”, with little transparency or accountability to elected officials in Washington.
@RepPeterDeFazio

Even local law enforcement agencies are sometimes unaware of the extent of the agency’s activities in their jurisdictions.
@RepPeterDeFazio

“I am telling you, I was in the total dark,” said Lorin Nielsen, the longtime sheriff of Bannock county, whose team of detectives responded to the Mansfield poisoning. “I had no idea [Wildlife Services] existed and why they existed and it still boggles me.”
@brigitte_bardot

He said he was never notified that the agency was placing cyanide bombs in his community, or that such a thing even existed.