Tell USDA: Landfills Shouldn't Be Wildlife Killing Grounds

We create places that attract wildlife by the millions. Then some of those animals are killed for showing up.

At a landfill outside Cincinnati, Ohio, federal wildlife-control operations have killed nearly 170,000 animals since 2008.

That number is shocking. But this is bigger than one landfill.

Across the country, landfills concentrate mountains of human waste — including food — into enormous artificial feeding grounds. Wildlife does what wildlife has always done: searches for food and takes advantage of opportunities to survive.

The difference is that we created this opportunity.

When animals gather around landfills, there can be legitimate concerns about disease, contamination and human safety. Those problems have to be managed. But if our waste draws wildlife into conflict, we also have a responsibility to prevent that conflict from ending in death whenever we reasonably can.

In addition to showing how our waste can put wildlife in harm’s way, this Ohio landfill also shows just how much can already be accomplished without killing animals.

While nearly 170,000 animals have been killed there since 2008, the landfill operator says approximately 29 million have been driven away instead. More than 99% of the animals encountered were dispersed using nonlethal methods.

That should be the model to build upon.

USDA Wildlife Services operates nationwide and already uses tools including habitat modification, barriers, repellents and scare devices. Its own current policy states that nonlethal methods are preferred when practical and effective.

USDA should go further and turn that principle into stronger national standards for landfills and similar waste facilities.

That means working with operators to reduce wildlife access to food and other attractants, using exclusion and deterrence wherever effective, and requiring reasonable nonlethal measures to be exhausted and documented before animals are killed — except when necessary to address an immediate human-safety threat.

It also means greater transparency about when and why lethal control is used.

We cannot eliminate every wildlife conflict. But animals should not routinely pay with their lives for problems created by the way we handle our own waste.

Please sign the petition urging USDA Wildlife Services to strengthen national standards for wildlife management at landfills, prioritize prevention and effective nonlethal methods, and make killing animals a true last resort.

The petition to USDA Wildlife Services reads: Strengthen national standards for wildlife management at landfills and similar waste facilities. Require reasonable prevention, exclusion and effective nonlethal deterrence measures to be exhausted and documented before lethal control is used, except when necessary to address an immediate human-safety threat. Increase transparency around lethal wildlife control and work with waste facilities to prevent the human-created conditions that draw wildlife into deadly conflicts.
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Source:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2026/09/28/rumpke-killed-170000-animals-heres-the-other-number/91897368007/