Newsletter / Blog
2012-01-06 “Mysterious mass killings of Starlings in South Dakota.”
The Agriculture
Department [USDA] admitted on Thursday that it did have a hand in the recent mass
killing of starlings. The birds were poisoned in Nebraska to help farmers who had complained
about starling flocks defecating into livestock feed troughs. The birds dropped
dead en masse after migrating north.
The USDA's
Wildlife Services Program, which contracts with farmers for bird control, said
it used an avicide poison called DRC-1339 to cull a roost of 5,000 birds that
were defecating on a farmer's cattle feed across the state line in Nebraska.
But officials said the agency had nothing to do with large and dense recent
bird kills in Arkansas and Louisiana. |