Local wildlife officials report that "Between November 22 and November 23, four bald eagles were found poisoned near Marsh Creek and Poplar Neck in Preston, MD. It is believed that they were injured as a result of secondary poisoning after feeding on a fox carcass."
One of the eagles has now died.
Please, if you have a fox problem call a professional wildlife person to deal with it rather than bungle it up with poorly placed poison or an illegal trap. And if you know a terrierman call him!
As I have noted in the past:
As a type of hunting, terrier work is inefficient, very selective, and almost never results in an animal being left to die wounded and unfound. In addition, terrier work generally allows an animal to be moved off a farm if that is required or prefered, and all of the animals hunted with terriers in American are at historically high population densities. In this sense, terrier work is an ideal form of nuisance animal control, and one of the very best forms of hunting.
Inefficiency means that terrier work cannot have a major impact on animal populations over a wide area, but can knock down a selected type of nuisance wildlife on a farm.
Selectivity means that, unlike trapping, there is little or no bycatch, and animals can easily be allowed to bolt off unharmed if that is desired.
Humaness and safety are raised to an art because if animals are terminated (and they are often let go) it is done swiftly with the efficiency of a direct bolt to the braincase -- there is very little chance that a young animal will be left orphaned, that a shot will not be terminal, or that a bullet will whiz to places unintended.
Since American terrier work is focused solely on animals at a historically high population abundance (groundhog, raccoon, possum, and red fox), thinning out these populations is more likely to be helping a farm environment return to balance, rather than move it out of balance.
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