by Mike Adams, Editor of Natural News
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is engaged in what can only be called an avian holocaust through its Bye Bye Blackbird program that has poisoned tens of millions of birds over the last decade. The USDA even reports the number of birds it has poisoned to death in a PDF document posted on the USDA website.
This document shows that, just in 2009, the following bird populations were poisoned and killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, using taxpayer dollars:
(Listed as “Intentional” and “Killed / Euthanized”)
Brown-headed cowbirds: 1,046,109
European Starlings: 1,259,714
Red-winged blackbirds: 965,889
Canadian geese: 24,519
Grackles: 93,210
Pigeons: 96,297
…plus tens of thousands of crows, doves, ducks, falcons, finches, gulls, hawks, herons, owls, ravens, sparrows, swallows, swans, turkeys, vultures and woodpeckers, among other animals.
The chart even shows that the USDA “unintentionally” euthanized one Bald Eagle.
Also murdered in 2009 by the USDA are victims of other species:
27,000 beavers, 1700 bobcats, 81,000 coyotes, 2,000 gray foxes, 336 mountain lions, 1900 woodchucks, 130 porcupines, 12,000 raccoons, 20,000 squirrels, 30,000 wild pigs, 478 wolves.
See the list yourself at: http://www.naturalnews.com/files/USDA-Bye-Bye-Blackbird.pdf
Keep in mind that murdering animals is an act of violence. Yet in the wake of the recent Giffords shooting, we have U.S. government officials running around screaming about how much they disavow violence, saying things like “violence should never be used to resolve problems.”
But their actions say something different: Violence against non-human life forms is not only tolerated and approved by the federal government, but even encouraged. Through these mass killings of birds, cougars, ducks and other animals, the United States federal government is actively engaged in widespread acts of violence against nature, murdering literally millions of animals on an annual basis.
Keep in mind that the numbers shown above are only for 2009. A similar number of animals were killed by the USDA all the other years, too, going all the way back to the 1960’s when the “Bye Bye Blackbird” program was first initiated.
By my estimates, the USDA has actively murdered at least 100 million animals in America over the last four decades, putting this on the scale of an animal holocaust and a crime against nature.
In the politically correct language-muzzled aftermath of the Giffords shooting, the mere mention of the term “crosshairs” is enough to evoke an on-air apology on network news programs. Now you can’t say someone is a “straight shooter,” either.
But if you work for the USDA, you can murder animals by the tens of millions and virtually no network news outlet even covers the story. It’s not enough, apparently, that humans have already caused widespread destruction of animal habitat across North America; now our own government is actively murdering literally millions of animals every year.
And for what? What is the justification for these actions? According to the USA, these animals are a “nuisance” to farmers.
I have great admiration for farmers, and I understand that there are times when predators can get out of control and cause a lot of damage. Coyotes can get into the chicken coop and kill your chickens, so on most farms and ranches, coyotes are considered live target practice at every opportunity. That’s why nearly all U.S. ranchers own rifles as tools which are used for sniping at groundhogs and moles which tend to take more than their fair share of garden vegetables.
I know one rancher who was trying to plant an orchard and woke up one morning to find his newly planted trees had all been destroyed by a small band of hyperactive beavers. Needless to say, those beavers ended up right in the crosshairs of a utility 22 rifle.
I also understand that wild pigs (feral swine) can root up valuable crops in their search for food. There are times when certain types of animals can become very difficult for ranchers and farmers to deal with. Although I personally don’t enjoy the thought of it, I can at least understand that there might be an economic justification in the minds of farmers and ranchers to kill certain animals which are destroying their crops (or chickens, or orchards). I’ve never met a farmer or rancher who simply killed animals for the fun of it. The ammo is too expensive, and farmers don’t have that kind of time to waste in the first place. Most farmers, by the way, have a very high respect for life and only kill when they feel they have no available alternative.
But since when did sparrows, starlings and blackbirds ever pose a real threat to anyone? They’re not going to fly off with your cow, and to blame these birds for eating the grain being fed to the cows is ridiculous in the first place because cows aren’t supposed to eat grain.
Cows are supposed to eat grass. If you are running a cow operation where the birds are eating your grain and you think the birds are the problem, the real problem is that you’re feeding cows the wrong food! If you raise your cows on grass, the birds don’t get into the grain and you don’t have to poison the birds.
You see, when one ecological element gets out of balance (feeding grain to cows, for example), it then causes another problem that must be dealt with in some other destructive way (such as poisoning the birds). This cycle of disharmony continues and escalates until entire ecosystems are out of whack. Then the USDA shows up with a pickup truck full of poison bait and goes to work poisoning animals.
The solution isn’t to keep poisoning animals and trying to control populations through toxic chemicals but rather to return to holistic web-of-life farming methods that work in harmony with nature rather than treating nature as the enemy.
Then again, we are talking about the U.S. Department of Agriculture here. And while the USDA has a great number of truly useful programs (such as their USDA organic label, which is a high-integrity program), the agency as a whole remains steeped in the conventional agricultural mythology of pesticides, GMOs and “poisoning varmints.”
All of this really makes me wonder about the whole argument of Big Government versus small government. The argument of those who say we should all pay our taxes is that the government needs your money to “build roads and schools.”
What they don’t bother to mention is that the government is also using your money in very destructive ways, too, such as poisoning animals and pushing GMOs into European nations (http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_GMOs_Wikileaks.html).
Personally, I am ethically and morally opposed to my money being used for such destructive purposes. And even though I continue to pay my taxes, I do so under strong protest to the reality that my own government is committing an avian holocaust — a crime against nature — with the help of the dollars I reluctantly send to Washington.
The very thought of it makes me sick. I would be more than happy to contribute money to actually building schools and roads. But to see my hard-earned dollars used by the USDA to murder innocent animals is extremely offensive, and it is a violation of my own ethics and principles. My main purpose in serving as the editor of NaturalNews.com has been to protect life. And in my mind, that protection extends beyond human life. I believe we also have a reasonable obligation to protect the life of the animals around us — and the very ecosystems upon which we ultimately depend.
Although I can understand certain rare cases in which eliminating an animal may be the only logical choice for a farmer who is losing his crops and whose livelihood is at stake, it seems that the current killing of animals by the USDA is wildly indiscriminate and lacks proper moral or even economic justification.
It also brings up the bigger question that I posed in a previous article on this topic: If the U.S. government thinks nothing of murdering tens of millions of birds and mammals who have become a “nuisance,” then what happens when the human population becomes “too large” and needs to be controlled, too?
Will they simply feed us poison and hope we die off like the birds?
I might suggest that program is already under way. It’s called water fluoridation. Food additives. Vaccines. Pharmaceuticals.
And the government doesn’t call it murder, by the way. They refer to it as “euthanasia.”
The only difference is they’re killing the humans more slowly.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031084_bird_deaths_holocaust.html#ixzz1BnN9DYi0