- United States
- Ohio
- Letter
The Trump administration's April 2026 MOU between BLM and USDA is bringing M-44 cyanide bombs back to public lands, and I want you to oppose it — in appropriations, in oversight, and on the record. These spring-loaded traps shoot sodium cyanide into an animal's mouth on contact. They kill indiscriminately, and they have no place on the 245 million acres of public land that belong to all of us.
The Biden administration banned M-44s on BLM land in 2023 for good reason. They have killed endangered wolves, grizzly bears, and California condors. They have killed family pets. In 2017, a child in Idaho was injured and his dog killed by one triggered accidentally on public land. California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington have all moved to restrict or ban them at the state level. The science and the public are aligned here.
Nonlethal wildlife conflict management works. Ranchers and farmers can be supported with tools that don't poison the landscape or endanger anyone who walks on it. Reversing nearly a decade of progress to bring back one of the cruelest predator control methods in existence is not wildlife management — it's a step backward that the FY2027 appropriations process should not fund or enable.