Last minute taxpayers rushing to get their taxes in the mail may run into representatives of Friends of Animals in California (FAC). FAC members will be at local post offices on April 15, distributing leaflets with information about a $37 million tax dollar government program which could potentially kill thousands of animals and pollute streams all over California.
The program in question is the use of animal collars laced with Compound 1080, an extremely toxic, slow-acting poison that causes prolonged and painful death to its victims. The program distributes the collars for use on livestock as a means of controlling coyotes. Banned in 1972 by the Environmental Protection Agency because of its threat to non-target species and its history of abuse and misuse, Compound 1080 received a green light in 1985 as a result of intense lobbying by livestock interests.
Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties will be the first counties in California to use this highly toxic poison. FAC is asking folks to lobby their county supervisors for a moratorium on issuing permits for use of the livestock collars. They cite the following problems:
Compound 1080 presents a threat to non-target species, including endangered and threatened species; it has a high degree of secondary hazard - each collar has enough of the poison to kill six 150 pound people; there is insufficient monitoring and record-keeping of livestock protection collars (LPCs); recovery of the collars is rare - most of them remain in the environment or are punctured some way, leaching the poison out into the food chain and water sources; adequate lethal alternatives for predator control already exist; use of the collars is ineffective in the long run as are other lethal methods of predator control as the disturbance they represent leads to larger litters and smaller territories, hence greater predator problems in a given area.
For more information on the tax action, call the Animal Protection Institute at 1-800-348-7387.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
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