As the United States continues to expand existing urban areas and establish new towns and cities on the western side of the Mississippi River, more and more wild animals will be booted from their natural habitats, while a few, such as raccoons and opossums, will do their best to survive in the big city. Unfortunately, mass extermination programs are sometimes initiated to control wildlife populations once they become a threat to the safety of human inhabitants. Although such programs seem inhumane, there is typically little else that can be done to decrease the rate of dangerous encounters between animals and humans within urban and suburban areas. However, local government officials take great care to adopt extermination methods that do not entail suffering of any kind. Despite this unfortunate, but necessary, wildlife control method, officials with PETA, as you could guess, do not approve of any wildlife extermination programs at all, no matter how humane the methods.

Some wildlife extermination methods that are condemned by PETA are actually illegal in most localities anyway. For example, it is illegal to drown wild animals in nearly all fifty US states. However, the use of traps and painful poisons is legally permitted in many states, but such practices are highly regulated in order to minimize the suffering that such methods can inflict on animals. For example, in California, only property owners can legally consent to the use of snap-traps on their property and such traps must be placed within 150 feet of the physical home located on properties. In some cases, local and state councils and even the federal government will approve of the installation of numerous traps to cut down on wildlife. This occured last year when the US Department of Agriculture installed snap traps in eastern Ohio in an effort to halt the spread of rabies-infected raccoons into the western part of the state. Surprisingly, according to the US Humane Society, the use of glue traps, which are considered to be the most inhumane wildlife traps that exist, have not yet been legally regulated in the United States.

Do you believe that mass extermination programs are necessary to control abundant wildlife populations once they become hazardous to the safety of the public?