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Ten Fast Facts about Wildlife Protection

1. Countless wild animals are displaced by urban sprawl and habitat fragmentation, which sometimes lead to conflicts between people and wildlife.

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2. Real or perceived conflicts between people and wildlife, coupled with human fear, biases, or a lack of knowledge about humane approaches to solving such conflicts, results in millions of animals being needlessly killed each year.
3. Some of the ways in which wild animals are abused or exploited by humans include sport and trophy hunting, commercial and recreational fur trapping, “nuisance” wildlife control, and lethal predator control.
4. Wild animals are also exploited in the exotic “pet” trade, the fur trade, and the entertainment industry.
5. Most Americans are opposed to the killing of wildlife in sport and trophy hunting, trapping, and the fur industry.
6. Using taxpayer money, the United States government subsidizes the egregious abuse of wildlife to benefit private or corporate interests, including commercial and recreational trapping on the National Wildlife Refuge System and the killing of native carnivores.
7. Each year, more than 2.5 million animals are killed by the federal government on public and private lands across the United States. Close to 100,000 of these animals are native carnivores, including wolves, coyotes, bears, foxes, and bobcats.
8. Methods that the U.S. government uses to kill wildlife include trapping, poisoning, aerial gunning, denning (killing coyote or fox pups in their dens), hounding, and shooting.
9. The “nuisance” wildlife control industry is lucrative, growing, and largely unregulated with little accountability or even basic humane animal care and treatment standards.
10. Most conflicts between humans and wild animals are actually “people problems” that can be resolved or prevented, often in a permanent, cost-efficient manner, by changing human behavior (such as prohibiting the intentional feeding of wildlife).