An investigation by The Sacramento Bee has discovered that the Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services program has killed 50,000 harmless animals from more than 150 species, some endangered, since the year 2000. Meant to protect livestock from predators, the program seems to be using methods that are not especially well targeted.

Protected golden and bald eagles, kit foxes, river otters, wolverines, and pet dogs are among the creatures that have fallen foul of the animal traps, snares, and poisons used by the service. Over the same period, 10 people have been killed in crashes during aerial gunning runs—the practice of shooting predator species from aircraft. At least another 18 employees, not to mention "several" members of the public, have suffered exposure to cyanide, The Bee reports, having accidentally sprung traps meant for coyotes (of which the service has managed to kill a million in that time).

The Bee asserts that the Wildlife Services' methods are "at odds with science, inhumane, and sometimes illegal," asserting that they degrade natural habitats, reduce biodiversity, and encourage disease. The report claims that the service fails to report the accidental killing of endangered species when it is required by law to do so, quoting a trapper who claims he was told to literally bury golden eagles trapped in snares.

Former employees and activists paint a picture of an unaccountable organization with a public visage that masks the reality. "If you read the brochures, go on their website, they play down the lethal control," ex-employee Carter Niemeyer told The Bee. "It's smoke and mirrors. It's a killing business. And it ain't pretty."

Wildlife Services Deputy Administrator William Clay claims that its trapping methods are at least 95 percent effective, and biologist Elizabeth Copper, who has worked with the service, defended the program's efforts to protect the endangered California Least Tern.

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At last month's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of science, there was an inspiring talk about how the open sharing of scientific data could provide new avenues for research. But the same session also provided a cautionary tale of all the factors that can get in the way of effective sharing of data. That talk came courtesy of Vernon Asper, a researcher at the University of Southern Mississippi. Asper normally studies natural hydrocarbon seeps on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, and found himself dragged into the media spotlight amidst a swirl of competing interests as he tried to study the oil spill.

Asper said that there was a clear "truth" about the spill that everybody was interested in: how much oil was spilling into the Gulf, and at what rate. But, in the absence of any way of directly measuring it, everybody was forced into relying on indirect ways of estimating the flow. If the gulf oil spill were a situation where nobody had money riding on the final outcome, these estimates might be combined to provide a rough final number along with a sense of the uncertainty associated with that number. Unfortunately, this wasn't a case where nobody cared.

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