On April 4, 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) wildlife damage management program, Wildlife Services (WS), posted its annual Program Data Reports (PDR) for fiscal year (FY) 2023. The reports are available on the APHIS webpage, representing the 28th year WS has shared this information about its wildlife damage management activities.
In the United States, wildlife is a public resource held in trust and managed by government agencies for present and future generations. Wildlife has great social and cultural value to people and is a natural resource that plays an important role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. Wildlife also provides food and clothing and supports recreational activities that generate billions of dollars of economic activity annually. While wildlife contributes positive value to the human environment, they also can have negative impacts on agriculture, human health and safety, property, and natural resources. Predators cause an estimated $232 million in losses to livestock producers annually and bird damage to crops exceeds $150 million each year. Bird and other wildlife strikes with aircraft cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, delay flights, and threaten human health and safety. Abundant predators can have dramatic impacts on threatened and endangered species as in the case of nesting piping plovers and sea turtles which are vulnerable to raccoons, foxes, and invasive feral swine. APHIS WS responds to requests for assistance from individuals, companies, and other government agencies when wildlife causes or threatens damage to human health/safety, agriculture, natural resources, and property.
In FY 2023, WS encountered about 28.3 million animals causing damage, or threatening to cause damage, while responding to calls for assistance and dispersed nearly 27 million of these animals unharmed from urban, rural, and other settings. WS dispersed 94.6% of the animals encountered and used a variety of methods to do so.
WS’ nonlethal wildlife damage management activities include: fladry (flags hung along the perimeter of a pasture), electric fencing, livestock protection dogs, and range riding to reduce livestock-predator conflicts; harassment, exclusion, and modifying habitats to reduce wildlife attractants on airfields and other areas of concern; installing flow devices in areas with beaver activity to control water levels and reduce impacts from flooding; trapping species of concern like grizzly bears and raptors and relocating them to areas where they won’t increase conflict; and others. WS’ National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) collaborates with WS’ Operations and others to create and/or evaluate new methods for nonlethally resolving conflicts with wildlife like developing new scare devices, innovating new repellents and testing existing compounds for repelling properties, and using drones to move predators away from livestock or birds out of the flight path of planes near airports.
However, nonlethal methods cannot resolve all wildlife related conflicts. Of all wildlife encountered in FY 2023, WS lethally removed 5.14%, or approximately 1.45 million, from areas where damage was occurring. Invasive species accounted for 74.2% (1,079,279) of the wildlife lethally removed. Invasive species frequently disrupt normal ecosystem function by competing with native wildlife for resources, altering habitat, predating native plant and/or animal communities, transmitting novel foreign diseases, and causing other economic and ecological impacts to a local environment. Removing invasive species can help restore function and balance to ecosystems and protect biodiversity.
When lethal control was necessary, WS donated as much animal meat as possible. In FY 2023, WS donated nearly 163 tons of deer, goose, and other meat—more than 1 million servings of protein for people in need—and over 18 tons of meat for animal consumption to animal rehab centers, zoos, and other facilities, making full use of this resource from wildlife damage management work.