By Gabriella Sotelo for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Farms across the U.S. are still struggling to contain the spread of avian flu. The virus has infected farms in all 50 states since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the CDC. Two states - Pennsylvania and Georgia - have recently declared themselves bird-flu free, after stepping up testing efforts and biosecurity protocols. Yet the ongoing spread nationwide - both on factory farms and from infectious migratory birds - raises questions about what a "bird-flu free" announcement really means for the U.S. food system.

Large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can house over 125,000 broiler chickens or 82,000 laying hens at a time, creating a perfect environment for diseases like bird flu to spread. Similarly, large cattle farms may house over 1,000 cattle while dairy CAFOs can house 700 or more dairy cattle.

Pennsylvania state officials announced that they reached "HPAI-Free," or bird-flu free status in their dairy industry in February. By March, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner had also announced poultry operations in the state were "HPAI-Free."

Achieving "free from bird flu" status requires strict biosecurity protocols and significant collaboration between local, state and federal authorities, according to industry researchers. The USDA sets national guidelines for monitoring and testing, which each state adapts to its specific needs. In other words, states can implement their own testing strategies, but these are based on USDA guidelines, and it's the USDA that confirms the findings.

No matter how thorough the protocol, Corinne Bromfield, a University of Missouri extension swine veterinarian with a background in biosecurity, says even the best biosecurity plan on paper is still very difficult to enact on an actual farm. "For something that is transmitted by wild birds, we can only take the steps that we can control," Bromfield tells Sentient.

State Bird Flu Containment Strategies, Explained

In January 2025, Georgia confirmed its first bird flu case in a commercial poultry flock. Georgia raises around 1.4 billion broiler chickens and 18 million layer hens at any given time, making it one of the nation's leading chicken producers. The state responded quickly to the outbreak, containing the virus within 48 hours (according to a press release from state officials) and suspending all in-state poultry activities, including exhibitions and sales.

Tom Tabler, extension poultry specialist at the University of Tennessee Extension Service, told Sentient by email that the steps for containment include "quarantine, depopulation, disposal, cleaning, disinfecting, testing and time," including both state and federal guidelines.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania, ranked 8th in total dairy production in the U.S, took a proactive testing approach to prevent the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. Since late November 2024, the state's Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System has tested over 22,000 bulk milk samples from nearly all of its dairy farms, according to the state's official press release. Pennsylvania has remained one of 33 states with no confirmed cases of bird flu in cattle, at least as of this publication date, according to USDA data.

When avian influenza is first detected in a flock, producers are supposed to report sick or dead birds to their state veterinarian or a state animal health official, according to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) guidelines. If the virus is confirmed, the USDA steps in to assist with the inventory for indemnity, investigation and depopulation.

Here, the term depopulation means wiping out an entire flock at once, as quickly and cheaply as possible. Producers often rely on an inexpensive slaughter strategy called "ventilation shut down plus." Most birds die of heat stroke or suffocation during the process, with any surviving birds typically killed by hand. Producers also must create a flock plan, which should include steps for getting rid of the virus and getting the farm back into production.

To eliminate bird flu in U.S. dairy herds, the USDA has developed a National Milk Testing Strategy (NMTS) that includes a combination of silo monitoring at dairy processing plants and mandatory testing for interstate movement of lactating dairy cattle.

A state must complete at least four rounds of monthly testing with negative results in order to achieve official "unaffected" status. Pennsylvania is one of nine states that, as of this publication date, has been listed as "unaffected" on the NMTS page. If a state's dairy herd tests positive, the producer is supposed to quickly detect and respond to affected herds, including increasing biosecurity protocols and using contact tracing to pinpoint the spread.

These strategies help to mitigate the spread of bird flu, but maintaining bird-flu free status is an ongoing challenge that can be undone at any time.

Biosecurity Protocols Can Be Quickly Undone

Much like any other virus, bird flu won't be deterred by a border on a map. The virus is unpredictable, threatening to resurface at any time. Containing bird flu spread then requires constant vigilance, as experts tell Sentient that any lapse in biosecurity can undo years of efforts.

Even the best on-farm protocols can't control for wild birds entirely. "We're doing everything that we can to minimize the risk to the animals that are under our control," Bromfield says, "but we also have this added layer of animals that are not under our control."

Pennsylvania state officials are aware of the challenge, it seems. "We are not out of the woods yet, and the threat demands that we keep our guard up," Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said in the February 12 press release.

States must remain prepared to implement emergency control measures at a moment's notice - ready to establish control zones around affected farms and halt the movement of chickens and cows.

"We're always going to have migrating animals that happen to come through areas that we live in or our animals live in," Bromfield says.

Tabler, a poultry scientist, had a similar warning. "Migratory birds or a lapse in biosecurity could easily start the whole process over again," he wrote in an email to Sentient.

Factory Farms and Wild Birds Keep Threat Levels High

Biosecurity protocols do not address a persistent factor for disease spread - the conditions in which factory-farmed poultry are raised. With tens of thousands of birds confined in cramped, unsanitary spaces, factory farms are the ideal breeding grounds for diseases like bird flu.

Overcrowding combined with massive amounts of waste can make it nearly impossible to contain the spread of pathogens. On top of this, wild birds help to spread the disease, making confinement to any one farm exceptionally difficult.

Currently, the standard approach to outbreaks is depopulating - killing infected flocks en masse, often with methods that are cheaper and less humane than standard slaughter methods - and large-scale operations have received indemnity payments for their losses. A December 2024 report from the USDA found that the indemnity program was failing to incentivize producers to take increased biosecurity precautions. Changes to the program were subsequently instituted, though the payout scheme has already resulted in record profits for leading egg producer Cal-Maine.

For smaller farms or backyard poultry owners, maintaining biosecurity measures is also an ongoing challenge, thanks to increased exposure to wild birds and their droppings. Without the infrastructure or resources available to large-scale commercial operations, these smaller operations can be quickly wiped out.

The Bottom Line

While states like Georgia and Pennsylvania have declared themselves bird-flu free, the threat from avian flu is far from over in any part of the country. The virus continues to threaten the food system and public health, as risk of a larger pandemic - currently low - looms overhead. The process to contain the virus is ongoing, as any new outbreak can quickly undo progress, demonstrating the fragile nature of any bird-flu free announcement.


Gabriella Sotelo wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for California News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In 2023, UC Berkeley student and activist Zoe Rosenberg removed four severely ill chickens from a slaughterhouse truck in Petaluma, California, and brought them to an animal sanctuary. Now, she's facing over five years in prison. Rosenberg's trial is scheduled for later this year, and her allegations tell a story of horrific conditions at ostensibly "free-range" chicken farms, as well as the steep uphill battle activists face in convincing law enforcement to even investigate allegations of animal cruelty on factory farms.

Rosenberg is an activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), a Bay Area-based animal rights organization. In addition to supporting ballot propositions and hosting conferences, DxE carries out undercover investigations of slaughterhouses and factory farms. In some cases, its activists rescue ill and imperiled animals from such facilities; this is what's known as "open rescue," a popular tactic among some animal rights activists.

The prospect of risking prison time for saving a few chickens, who are routinely sold for less than $20 apiece, may seem outlandish. But DxE activists like Rosenberg see it as a necessary risk to accomplish their ultimate goal: the complete abolition of slaughterhouses and factory farms.

"I think that if people don't take action and don't risk their freedom to create change, nothing will ever change," Rosenberg, who's currently wearing an ankle monitor while out on bail, tells Sentient. "We've seen time and time throughout history that it has been the sacrifices of the very few that have changed the world."

Petaluma Poultry did not respond to Sentient's request for comment on this story, but a company spokesperson denied DxE's claims to the San Francisco Chronicle, characterizing the group as "extremist" and its efforts as "theft."

What Is Open Rescue?

In essence, open rescue is the act of removing animals from dangerous or harmful environments without permission from the person, company or facility that oversees said animals. Those who carry out open rescues don't hide what they are doing, and often publicize their actions. Animals that are removed via open rescue are typically provided with medical care and/or taken to animal sanctuaries.

The goal of open rescues, which date back to at least the early 1980s, is not only to provide relief for the animals in question, but also to highlight the conditions in which farm animals are held, and to normalize the act of rescuing them. But it's a controversial practice, even among activists, and law enforcement officials generally treat open rescues as acts of theft, trespassing or other crimes.

This often leads to prosecution, but in the eyes of open rescue advocates, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Prosecutions often bring media attention and publicity to both the topic in question and the relevant laws surrounding that topic. Rosenberg's case, for instance, draws attention not only to the conditions of factory farms, but also to the fact that removing a few sick animals from a slaughterhouse can get you a half a decade in prison.

Do People Usually Go to Prison for Open Rescue?

Although charges are often brought in open rescue cases, they're frequently reduced or, in some cases, dropped entirely before trial. It's not uncommon for open rescuers to be acquitted, either; in a verdict that drew international headlines, DxE founder Wayne Hsiung and another defendant were facing 60 years in prison for rescuing two sick piglets from a Smithfield Farms facility in Utah, only to be acquitted of all charges.

That said, Hsiung did recently spend 38 days in Sonoma County jail for an open rescue in which he participated, so it's not unheard of for activists like Rosenberg to serve time for carrying out open rescues.

The Incident in Question

On June 13, 2023, Rosenberg entered a Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse partially disguised as an employee. A truck delivering chickens to the facility was parked outside, and Rosenberg spotted four chickens in the back of the truck who she says were "covered in scratches and bruises." She took them from the truck, left the slaughterhouse and both she and DxE publicized her actions on social media.

Rosenberg says that she intentionally took the chickens that "seemed like they most needed medical attention." Subsequent examinations found that all four birds were infected with Coccidia parasites; one of them also had a respiratory infection and an injured toe, while a third had a foot infection.

Five months later, Rosenberg was arrested and charged with five felonies relating to the June 13 rescue. These charges were later reduced, and as of this writing, she faces one felony conspiracy charge, two forms of misdemeanor trespassing charges, one misdemeanor theft charge and one misdemeanor charge of tampering with a vehicle. Her trial is scheduled for September 15, 2025.

The chickens she rescued were all treated for their illnesses, and are now living at an animal sanctuary.

A History of Animal Neglect At Petaluma Poultry

Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of the chicken giant Perdue, presents itself as a humane operation where, in the words of its website, "chickens are free to be chickens."

"Our houses are spacious, with room for birds to move about and exhibit normal behaviors in a low-stress environment open to fresh air," the company's website says. "Our outdoor spaces are at least half the size of the poultry house, and typically as big as the barn itself."

But Petaluma Poultry's advertising is a classic example of humane-washing, when companies try to appeal to animal welfare-minded consumers by depicting their products as more humanely produced than they actually are.

Petaluma Poultry and its contractors have been accused of criminal animal cruelty on a number of occasions, and footage filmed by undercover investigators in the company's farms and slaughterhouse paints a much different picture than the company's marketing.

In 2018, a whistleblower provided DxE with footage from McCoy's Poultry, a factory farm contracted by Petaluma Poultry, that showed chickens collapsed on the ground, unable to stand or walk and surrounded by the corpses of other chickens. Shortly thereafter, Sonoma County Animal Services seized 15 chickens from McCoy's Poultry; six were already dead, while the other nine were injured, malnourished, unable to stand and exhibited signs of distress, according to a subsequent medical report. The facility was later shut down.

In 2023, another activist who infiltrated Petaluma Poultry's slaughterhouse said that she saw workers cutting into chickens while they were still alive, as well as evidence that chickens had been abused, tortured and boiled alive during the slaughter process. They also obtained documents showing that, on a single day in April, over 1,000 chickens were deemed unfit for human consumption after they were slaughtered due to suspicion that they had blood poisoning.

Prior to her arrest for the June incident, Rosenberg herself was involved in a separate DxE investigation of a Petaluma Poultry facility in 2023, where she recorded footage of more chickens suffering in the facility.

"I documented chickens who were collapsed on the floor of their factory farms, too weak to stand, unable to get to food and water, and slowly dying of starvation and dehydration," Rosenberg says. She ended up rescuing two of those chickens as well, both of whom required extensive medical care.

It remains unclear whether authorities prosecuting or investigating these allegations of criminal animal cruelty? And if not, how come?

Rosenberg Raised Allegations of Animal Welfare Abuses

Poultry is the most widely consumed meat in the U.S. and the world, yet there are no federal laws that protect livestock chickens from mistreatment on the farm. The Humane Slaughter Act establishes some baseline requirements for the treatment of livestock, but it specifically exempts chickens from these protections.

In California, however, livestock chickens are protected under a number of different laws. In addition to Proposition 12, which requires poultry producers to give egg-laying hens a specific amount of living space, Section 597(b) of California's penal code makes it a felony to subject an animal to "needless suffering" or deprive them of access to sufficient food or water, among other things.

This law would appear to be relevant in the context of Petaluma Poultry. If a chicken at a factory farm is physically unable to stand (let alone walk), they will be unable to reach the feeding trays and water, and will eventually die of thirst or starvation. If a chicken is boiled alive because they were improperly stunned beforehand, it has suffered needlessly.

The aforementioned investigations uncovered evidence of both of these things happening at Petaluma Poultry and its contracted facilities. Both DxE and Rosenberg claim they've presented multiple law enforcement agencies with this evidence, only to be rebuffed or ignored.

"The most common thing we've had is agencies directing us to another agency, directing us to another agency, directing us back to the place where we started, and just kind of sending us around in circles," Rosenberg says. "We didn't get any helpful response. No one took action."

It was this inaction that led Rosenberg to take the four chickens from the back of the truck in June, she says. After doing so, she again presented her findings to law enforcement, specifically the Petaluma Police Department. This time, she got a response.

"They said they had a detective who wanted to have a call with me, and so I had like a 15-minute call with a detective from the Petaluma Police Department," Rosenberg says. "She very much approached the call from an angle of, you know, 'I'm concerned about the reports you are making.' And so I told her about the animal cruelty that has been documented there."

But Officer Corie Joerger, the detective in question, didn't follow up with her after their call, Rosenberg claims, and ignored her subsequent attempts at communication. A couple of weeks later, Joerger handed Rosenberg a warrant for her arrest regarding the June rescue.

In the preliminary hearing for Rosenberg's case, Joerger acknowledged that Rosenberg had made allegations of animal cruelty, but stated that she did not investigate the matter.

This inaction by law enforcement wasn't an isolated incident. When the investigation at McCoy's Poultry facility uncovered dead birds on the farm floor and others that were unable to move, Sonoma County Animal Services referred the matter to the county sheriff's office for potential prosecution. But no prosecution followed then, either.

Sentient has reached out to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, the Petaluma Police Department and Joerger for clarification on these reports, but as of this writing, none have offered any comments.

Petaluma Poultry Is More the Rule Than the Exception

The allegations against Petaluma Poultry might sound extreme. But in fact, many are par for the course on factory farms, and chicken farms in particular.

For instance, the USDA estimates that every year, around 825,000 chickens are boiled alive at slaughterhouses. This is not standard protocol, but rather, the result of standard protocol gone wrong.

At poultry slaughterhouses, chickens are typically hung upside down by their feet and pulled through an electrified pool of water, which is meant to stun them. After that, workers slit the chickens' throats, and after they've bled out, they're placed into boiling water. This is to soften the skin and make it easier to defeather them.

That's how it's supposed to work, at least. In actuality, though, one or both of those first two steps often fail; chickens are either inadequately stunned before their throats are cut, or their throats aren't fully slit, or both. When both of these processes fail, the chicken is inadvertently boiled alive, and feels every bit of pain associated with this.

Similarly, the fact that those chickens at Petaluma Poultry couldn't stand up or walk isn't an accident. Over the decades, farmers have selectively bred chickens to be as fat as possible, as this maximizes the amount of meat they can sell. According to the National Chicken Council, farmed chickens now grow to be over twice as large as they were 100 years ago in less than half the time.

This unnatural rate of growth has wrought havoc on their internal biology, however, and farm chickens now routinely suffer from a number of illnesses and adverse health conditions as a result, including bone deformities, heart attacks, chronic hunger, ruptured tendons and, most relevantly to Petaluma Poultry, difficulty standing up or walking.

Finally, Petaluma Poultry is far from the only chicken producer to make questionable use of the "free-range" label, which is ostensibly regulated by the USDA. In 2023, undercover footage taken from a Tyson Foods-contracted chicken farm in Virginia depicted employees of both the factory and Tyson freely acknowledging that the "free range" label doesn't actually mean anything, and that "free range" birds often "don't go outside."

Why Wasn't Petaluma Poultry Investigated by Law Enforcement?

Though it's unclear why local law enforcement hasn't pursued any investigations into the allegations against Petaluma Poultry, DxE's director of communications has some ideas.

"It would be a massive undertaking for any government agency, no matter how well-staffed they actually might be, to suddenly address the systemic animal cruelty that we know is happening in factory farms," Cassie King, director of communications at DxE tells Sentient. "If they put their foot in the door and acknowledge that it's their responsibility to address these crimes, then there's a landslide of new cases they need to take on, and it's just a huge amount of work."

It also bears mentioning that chicken farms are an enormous part of Petaluma's local economy, and have been for quite some time. Once referred to as "the egg basket of the world," Petaluma was the birthplace of several egg-related technologies at the turn of the century, and pumped out over a half a billion eggs every year at its peak in 1945.

Although the city isn't quite the egg powerhouse it once was, chickens are still big business in Petaluma. Though official estimates are difficult to come by, the city is home to at least seven chicken farms large enough to qualify as factory farms, and those facilities collectively house around 1.8 million chickens at any given time, according to a 2024 analysis by an activist group that opposes factory farms.

To be clear, there's no evidence that the poultry industry's strong presence in Petaluma has played any role in law enforcement's response to allegations of cruelty at the city's chicken farms. But the fact that the Petaluma Police Department publicly celebrates the city's poultry industry, and participates in the annual Butter and Eggs Day festival in a non-law enforcement capacity, is not lost on DxE activists.

Rosenberg Awaiting Trial

For her part, Rosenberg maintains that her actions were legal. She cites the doctrine of necessity, a legal theory holding that it's sometimes permissible to break a law if doing so prevents even greater harm from occurring.

"For example, if a kid is drowning in your neighbor's pool and no one is helping that kid, you have the right to trespass into your neighbor's yard to rescue the kid," Rosenberg says.

How this defense plays out in court remains to be seen, but it's essentially the same argument Hsiung's attorneys successfully used in the Utah case. In the meantime, Rosenberg says she's been encouraged by the public reaction to her case (Paris Hilton is a prominent supporter), and doesn't regret her actions even if they do land her in prison.

"A few years of my freedom is worth significantly less than even one animal's entire life, and certainly less than four animals' entire lives," Rosenberg says. "And so it's absolutely worth it to me on that level."


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Amy McDermott for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Pulitzer Center-Public News Service Collaboration.

Wildlife biologist David Wiens was extremely nervous the first time he shot an owl. He steadied himself in the evening darkness of an Oregon fire road, pointed his shotgun at a big barred owl perched on a stump, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; the gun's safety was still on. "I had to completely recollect myself," he recalls. "The bird just stayed there." Wiens thought back to the months of firearm training preparing him for this moment, resettled the gun's viewfinder on the owl, then pulled the trigger.

Wiens, who works for the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Corvallis, is head biologist of a six-year experiment culling barred owls from areas of Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. Researchers wanted to know if removing barred owls would help another species, the threatened spotted owl, survive.

Management methods that involve killing animals are called lethal control. It's often assumed that reducing the population of one species will help another survive-for instance, killing invasives to protect natives, or culling predators to benefit livestock. Millions of animals are destroyed by lethal control every year in the United States, including coyotes, raccoons, feral cats, prairie dogs, bears, and mountain lions.

Deciding which animals should live or die is not so clear-cut, and context matters. For example, the barred owl is native to North America but expanded beyond its historical range alongside human development. Are they invasive? It depends on whom you ask. Search the literature, and you'll see trade-offs and ethical distinctions between killing invasive species to protect natives and killing native predators, such as wolves and mountain lions, to benefit ranchers.

In general, the public is more comfortable killing exotic, invasive species (think: pythons in the Everglades) than with killing native predators, such as wolves or coyotes, explains wildlife biologist Rachael Urbanek at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Still, the core question is the same: Is there evidence that killing effectively manages populations? The answers differ case to case, she says.

And then there's the core ethical quandary: Even if lethal control can work, is it the right thing to do? What if you can only guarantee it will work for a few years? How do you value one animal over another? Those questions fuel a heated debate, which simmers ever hotter as public attitudes about animal welfare evolve. Values, as much as data, are likely to determine whether governments and communities abide lethal control as a policy.

Frontier Origins

Wiens had never fired a gun before training for this experiment. Killing any bird of prey ran counter to his ecology education before the study. "Every time I went out there to do it, it was extremely difficult," he says. But Wiens believes that to maintain biodiversity, lethal control has become "more and more necessary," particularly in the case of invasive species.

Others disagree. "I don't think you can find any research that does adequately demonstrate that lethal control works," says William Lynn, an ethicist in the Marsh Institute at Clark University in Massachusetts and the founder of PAN Works, an animal ethics think tank. The US Fish and Wildlife Service hired Lynn 15 years ago to lead a stakeholder group (which included conservation organizations and timber industry representatives) to discuss ethical concerns about the planned barred owl removal experiment in the Pacific Northwest (1, 2). Many participants said they valued the owls' lives and recoiled at the thought of routine killing.

The owl case is one of the most meticulously studied. Barred owls, native to eastern North America, have spread west over the last century (an expansion unintentionally facilitated by humans) and are now encroaching on the last western old-growth forests where threatened spotted owls roost. The hope is that by killing thousands of the encroachers, wildlife biologists can stabilize spotted owl populations.

The results of Wiens' experiment are promising. After removing about 3,000 barred owls over a six-year period, the USGS team found that spotted owl populations stabilized (3). The US Fish and Wildlife Service now plans to conduct a scaled-up 30-year cull of barred owls, starting this year, based largely on the results of the experiment. As of early March, a number of lawmakers from multiple states encouraged the Trump administration to scrap the plan, citing high costs and dubious success.

It's the latest salvo in a long history of efforts to kill in order to manage populations. The story of lethal control in the United States began on the Great Plains in the early 1800s, when European settlers decimated bison, elk, deer, and pronghorn populations, explains Brad Bergstrom, professor emeritus of vertebrate ecology at Valdosta State University in Georgia. Bergstrom chaired the Conservation Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists for nearly a decade. He authored a widely cited 2014 review on the history of lethal control in the United States, among other topical articles (4, 5).

What happened, Bergstrom says, is that starving wolves, bears, pumas, and other predators turned to cattle as prey. The US government responded with a program of shooting and trapping predators to protect livestock. Its modern incarnation is Wildlife Services, an agency within the US Department of Agriculture. "That's how it started, and we're still doing that," Bergstrom says.

Perception vs Reality

The Department of Wildlife Services is still the federal agency largely tasked with lethal control. In 2023, the agency killed 1,454,324 animals, according to their annual report (6), including 24,603 beavers, whose dams are blamed for flooding (7); 18,916 double-crested cormorant birds, whose eating habits are ostensibly pressuring fisheries (8); and 68,562 coyotes, which raise concerns about killing farm animals and pets, though there's little evidence that killing carnivores protects livestock (9).

"I think Wildlife Services has gotten a lot of negative media attention over many decades," Urbanek says. Much of it is undeserved, in her opinion. The agency's attitude certainly isn't "have at it-let's kill them all!" Wildlife Services studies nonlethal methods as well, she notes, whether directed at deer-car collisions or bird-airplane collisions.

Often, a government agency engages in lethal control-for instance, with coyotes-because of a public outcry, Urbanek says. "It's a social carrying capacity," she says. People start noticing more coyotes, eventually feel there are too many, and then complain to their local government, which can go to state agencies or Wildlife Services to intervene and neutralize the perceived threat. In Wilmington, where Urbanek lives, and where both human and coyote populations have grown in recent decades, "we don't want to get to that point," she says.

So, in 2023, she published survey results that gauged public attitudes toward the growing coyote population (10). The survey quizzed residents on their knowledge of normal coyote behavior and asked how the county should spend tax money-whether on coyote lethal control, public education about coyotes, or other measures. Only 11% of respondents said they'd had aggressive encounters with coyotes. Many of those stories came from wary people who saw a coyote nearby and felt threatened, Urbanek says. Most respondents supported spending tax dollars on public education over culling, except in cases of coyote attacks. Urbanek says the survey, by highlighting the role of education, is helping Wilmington get ahead of a widespread fearful response that might lead to lethal control.

Wilmington's parks and gardens have since begun a series of coyote education events. To keep humans and pets safe, Urbanek says she teaches hazing: "Getting an empty soda can, putting coins or rocks in it, taping it shut, and shaking it." Coyotes run off at the noise.

Silver Bullets

What does the science say? The answers and the caveats vary, case by case.

Consider the Blanding's turtle, a northeastern species that's endangered in some states due to habitat loss and the pet trade. "These guys are adorable and a really friendly turtle," Urbanek says. People tend to poach them as pets. In 2013, the Lake County Forest Preserve District was monitoring the turtles at two nature preserves on the Illinois-Wisconsin border and had two healthy populations left. The district was actively taking eggs from nests and hand-raising them, then releasing the young turtles back into the wild to give them a head start. But raccoons and other predators often discovered the nests and dug them up.

The district asked Urbanek's lab to see if culling raccoons before nesting season would help, by creating a window of time when the nests went undisturbed before the predators moved back in (11).

Her team trapped and killed 45 raccoons from the 2-square-kilometer study area in spring 2013, reducing raccoon population density by about 90%. Because raccoons can carry rabies, they couldn't legally be relocated. In the nesting season that followed, only one of seven, or 14%, of monitored Blanding's turtle nests was attacked and partially eaten.

The next year, though, the researchers repeated the experiment by culling 33 raccoons. This time, 9 of 15 turtle nests, or 60%, were attacked. Foxes, opossums, and skunks had likely moved in on the food source with the raccoons gone.

Urbanek's conclusion: Predator management, especially for threatened species, "can help to some degree"-after all, there was a boost for the Blanding's turtle nests in 2013. But in general, the two-year study showed that "predator management is not the panacea," she says. Killing the raccoons didn't save the turtles long-term.

Maybe if the team had killed foxes, skunks, opossums, and raccoons every year, they'd have seen a lasting impact. Then again, maybe not. There are communities on North Carolina's barrier islands that hire trappers to take foxes, raccoons, and coyotes, in hopes of helping endangered sea turtle nests. In those cases, Urbanek says, predators "move back quickly, even across the water."

Borne on Brown Wings

But it's the case of the barred and spotted owls that's received the most public attention of late-and spurred the most vocal controversy.

In this tale of two owls, the barred is larger, territorially competitive, and better at living alongside people. The northern spotted owl, by contrast, only lives in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern California, roosting in the cracked trunks of old conifers. The northern spotted owl has been a fiercely beloved mascot of the Northwest since 1990, when its listing as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act gave teeth to forest protection efforts. These two owls have been on a collision course since around 1900, Wiens says, when European settlers planted trees on the Great Plains. Barred owls probably used those trees to hopscotch their way west from their native eastern forests. Since the 1960s, they've arrived in the Northwest, where they're outcompeting the spotted owls for nesting hollows and food.

In response, the US Fish and Wildlife Service developed the removal experiment, killing some 3,100 barred owls over six years in areas of Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, to test if their removal would slow, stop, or reverse spotted owl declines. It did seem to help. Spotted owl numbers stopped crashing at the treatment sites-though, notably, their populations didn't grow either. Populations leveled out at a 0% rate of change. In control areas, spotted owls declined by an average of 12% per year. At one control site, there was a single owl left by the end of the study (3). Since those results were published in 2021, Fish and Wildlife has unveiled a strategy of more widespread barred owl killing to be deployed, up to the next 30 years, across Oregon, Washington, and California.

Although Wiens thinks the plan is necessary to save the spotted owl, he also sees potential issues. It's been five years since his experiment, and at a decline rate of 12% annually, that leaves few spotted owls to save in places that already had small populations, such as Washington and northern Oregon. The larger spotted owl populations in Northern California and southern Oregon have been impacted heavily by barred owls recently, in the last 5-10 years, and culls should be effective there, he says.

Without implementing the strategy, and conserving old growth forest, Wiens says we'll eventually see extinction of the northern spotted owl. But barred owls have wider impacts on other species as well. He found the bones of smaller pygmy and screech owls in the stomachs of barred owls during the experiment. And many of these smaller native owls are also competing with barred owls for the same small mammal prey. It's never been just about northern spotted owls, he says; it requires "a more holistic view."

Bergstrom calls the owl research "intricate" and "well-designed" and says those attributes make it "the exception, not the rule" for cases of predator lethal control. But he would argue that a scaled-up cull of barred owls only treats a symptom of habitat loss, not the habitat loss itself. "Extreme habitat specialists are in trouble everywhere," he says, "and the only long-term solution is to restore their habitat."

Even if thousands of barred owls are shot, that won't suddenly free spotted owls to expand beyond the tiny islands of habitat left to them. "I hate to say it, but I think the spotted owl is doomed," Bergstrom says. "Because even if barred owl removal works, is it really going to be funded forever? Or for as long as it takes for the old-growth forests to grow back?"

Toward Value and Virtue

Some argue that lethal control has become so polarizing because it's really more of a values debate than a scientific one. When is it OK to take the life of an animal, especially an intelligent one? "While there are scientific questions in play...there is a more deep-seated controversy that stems from value differences," which often go unacknowledged or underacknowledged, says interdisciplinary scientist Jeremy Bruskotter at The Ohio State University in Columbus. Questions about lethal control's effectiveness are rarely separate from the more emotional quandary: Even if it works, "should we do it?" he says.

Bruskotter coauthored several recent studies suggesting that opinions on lethal control-and how we value wildlife in general-are changing. In a survey of 43,949 people across all 50 states, published in a series of papers (12-14), Bruskotter posed 19 questions about ideal relationships with wildlife and dozens of other questions to gauge public perceptions of wildlife-related issues.

For each question, participants read a statement, such as "the needs of humans should take priority over fish and wildlife protection," and then indicated their alignment on a scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

Comparing those results to similar questions from earlier studies, as far back as 2004 and in 19 western states, attitudes had significantly shifted toward viewing animals as "morally relevant," Bruskotter says, meaning deserving of care and compassion, as opposed to just a means to human ends. "People are demanding good answers for why animals should be killed," he says. However, the results were not uniform across the West. The values shift was most pronounced in Utah, Nevada, and California, where more sympathetic views of animals had spread since 2004. But in the same analysis, more traditional views of animals as resources had expanded in 2 of the 19 states, Wyoming and North Dakota. Increasing disparities in public values state to state suggest one reason why disagreements over lethal control are getting more polarizing.

"Science is the surrogate for what is actually a values debate," Bruskotter says. The relationships people wanted with wildlife even 10 years ago aren't the relationships they say they want today.

"In the majority of cases, lethal control doesn't do what people expect and want," says ecologist Adrian Treves at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The field has become so polarized that researchers are entrenched in camps, he adds. "People have forgotten the lesson that when those scientific debates get so hot, that's when we need more and better data," Treves says.

There are at least ways to make killing more humane. In the case of the owls, Wiens' study included protocols to take only clear shots at close range, using a special type of quiet gun barrel. "Usually, it was one shot, and that's it, so it was very quick," he says. The culled owls were physically intact and became museum specimens for future studies.

Ultimately, lethal control is a response to dilemmas humans have created-poaching, habitat destruction, the spread of invasive species. "In our history as humans, we've moved animals and plants around to hunt them and eat them, or because they look pretty," Urbanek says. "We are still playing that role and trying to fix that."


Amy McDermott wrote this article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


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By Grey Moran for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Indiana News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit, the primary federal lab dedicated to farm animal welfare research, has been decimated — with now just one scientist remaining on staff — by the Trump Administration’s mass firings of federal employees, Sentient confirmed with two former laboratory staff members. The unit’s research — over the course of three decades — helped develop the scientific measures for animal welfare on farms and informed some regulatory standards, such as Proposition 12.

“Without the scientists, the unit will be earmarked for closure, I’m sure,” Jeremy Marchant, who worked as an animal research scientist at the lab between 2001 and 2023 and maintains communication with the team, wrote in an e-mail to Sentient. “To see it be dismantled like this is heart-breaking and bad for U.S. farm animal welfare.”

The world-class research institution’s animal scientists — Jessica Pempek and Kaitlin Wurtz, who were both probationary employees — were both fired on February 13, leaving just Heng-wei Cheng as the sole scientist remaining. These terminations came at the directive of the Trump Administration’s Office of Personnel Management, which ordered federal agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees — a sweeping, abrupt overhaul affecting hundreds of thousands of staff in the first few years on the job.

The loss of the probationary scientists gutted an already short-staffed laboratory, yet to hire replacements for Marchant and another scientist who left in 2024.

“The unit was already down from five scientists to three scientists,” Marchant tells Sentient, in an interview. “And then with the hiring freeze coming in straight away, it meant that we could no longer be replaced, and then two of the three [scientists] were still in their probationary period. So, now it’s down to one scientist who is due for retirement anytime soon.”

Sentient called Pempek on February 14, as she was packing her office to confirm her termination. She described the firings as “catastrophic” for farm animal welfare research.

Sentient could not get ahold of Wurtz by phone or e-mail. The auto-response to her U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) e-mail states, “I am no longer with the USDA-ARS Livestock Behavior Research Unit, and this email is no longer being monitored.” Following a brief phone call, Pempek did not respond to further interview requests.

What the Dismantling Means for Farm Animal Welfare

The Livestock Behavior Research Unit, embedded in Purdue University in Indiana, is part of the in-house research branch of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which is carried out through a network of nationwide research stations. Established in 1992, the unit has led federal research into the study of animal pain, nutrition, cognition and stress in response to the conditions on farms, helping develop this scientific field, and in some cases contributing to the establishment of better on-farm animal welfare standards.

“We did a whole range of quite applied studies to more fundamental studies. We’ve worked quite a lot on pain. We’ve looked at painful procedures. That’s a really important area, trying to demonstrate that certain things that get carried out on farms are painful and really need to be ameliorated with pain relief,” Marchant says.

This has included research into the gruesome mutilations and injuries routinely suffered by farm animals, including the pain experienced by livestock during and after castration (the removal of the testicles to prevent further breeding); the far-ranging psychological and physiological impacts of heat stress on farm animals and methods to increase cooling, and ways that farm animal stress is passed down to their offspring. The unit’s position within a land-grant university allowed the USDA to extend the reach of this work, collaborating with university professors and graduate students in the agricultural sciences. The researchers also developed presentations and other materials for livestock producers to help inform animal welfare protocols.

Notably, the laboratory’s research informed the legal justification for Proposition 12, California’s 2018 ban on extreme animal confinement, which was pushed for by animal rights and public health advocacy groups. This includes Marchant’s research documenting how gestational crates, metal enclosures to confine pregnant sows, affect the animal’s health and well-being; it was cited in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the law, which outlawed the sale of pork from pigs housed in gestation crates.

Even Elon Musk benefited from the laboratory’s collaborative research model that helped launch the careers of a wide-range of animal behavior scientists. This included Autumn Sorrells, who worked at the laboratory as a graduate student at Purdue University, which she attended between 2000 and 2003, according to her LinkedIn. She later became the head of animal care at Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink, which was investigated by the USDA for animal cruelty and deaths while under her oversight in 2022. 

Like Marchant, Sorrells’s research as a student focused on animal welfare for pigs and gestational crates under the supervision of the unit’s USDA scientists.

In general, progress on improving farm animal welfare standards has been an uphill battle, marked by slow, incremental changes. “So the pig industry has not been particularly proactive in dealing with pain management,” says Marchant, which was his primary research focus. “The cattle industry was beginning to be a bit more so. The poultry industry, I think, was probably the area where most inroads were made.”

For instance, the remaining scientist Heng-wei Cheng’s research helped show that trimming the beaks of birds to reduce feather pecking (pulling the features and skin out of another bird) was also painful, which helped inform alternative methods.

However, it is unclear how much longer Cheng will be able to carry out this research for the USDA-ARS now that he is the unit’s only scientist. “Usually ARS has a policy of, you know, if it gets down to a kind of certain size it becomes non-viable,” says Marchant. He notes that it might be possible for his unit to merge with the laboratory’s sister unit in Texas, the only other USDA-ARS laboratory that has some farm animal welfare research in its remit.

The USDA didn’t respond to questions about the financial and staffing status regarding both the USDA-ARS laboratories in Indiana and Texas. Cheng and the two scientists at the Texas unit also didn’t respond to requests to confirm details, or interview.

Scientists Mourning Multiple Losses

The news of the firings of probationary staff came during a particularly challenging time for the USDA’s small, close-knit farm animal behavioral research community. The Livestock Behavior Research Unit’s former research leader Don Lay Jr., passed away earlier this month, before he could learn of the dismantling of the research laboratory he helped build over 22 years. Marchant was helping plan a USDA announcement about Lay Jr.’s passing when he received a text from Pempek about how she and Wurtz were just terminated, he says.

As this research community grieves, Marchant anticipates that the broader world will soon feel the loss of the unit’s contributions to animal welfare knowledge.

“The industry will definitely feel its loss. Advocacy groups will feel its loss,” says Marchant, noting that while there is still privately funded research, USDA research into farm animal welfare was critical because it tended to be trusted by a wide range of stakeholders. “It’s going to be broad-reaching across anybody who’s involved in farm animals and the welfare of farm animals — it’s going to be felt by them, for sure.”


Grey Moran wrote this article for Sentient.