“Archaic.”
“Barbaric.”
“Indiscriminate killers.”
“Potential terrorist weapons.”
That’s what protestors called M-44 devices, also known as “cyanide bombs,” at an informational session hosted on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency at Idaho State University’s Bengal Theater in the Pond Student Union in Pocatello.
More than 100 local citizens, conservation activists and local community officials joined together holding signs and chanting on the street an hour before the meeting began to protest the use of M-44s with the Mansfield family.
The family’s dog was killed, and their 14-year-old son Canyon was exposed to deadly sodium cyanide after triggering an M-44 device that was placed fewer than 300 yards away from their home on West Buckskin Road in March.
Not one elected state or federal official representing Idaho attended the protest or the meeting. But had they, Canyon, who watched his best friend suffocate in front of him and experienced cyanide poisoning symptoms for weeks after the incident, would have had some choice words to share.
“Don’t be afraid to lose a few votes just to do what’s right,” Canyon said. “Just think about the costs that could happen if you don’t support legislation permanently banning M-44s in Idaho.”
Wildlife Services issued a temporary moratorium on the use of M-44 devices in Idaho after the incident. However, Jason Suckow, the Fort Collins, Colorado-based western regional director for Wildlife Services, said on Thursday the agency will not decide to lift the ban in Idaho until an investigation into the incident involving Canyon Mansfield is complete.
Idaho Republican U.S. Congressman Mike Simpson openly supported Mark Mansfield, Canyon’s father, when he brought Canyon’s Law, which calls for federal law to prohibit M-44’s and Compound 1080 nationwide, to legislators in Washington, D.C. But nothing has yet changed how Wildlife Services plans to control predators and protect livestock from animals like coyotes or other varmints.
“I first became aware of this issue when I lived in Colorado in 1971,” said Bill Peterson, a protestor and Pocatello resident. “Wildlife Services was throwing Compound 1080 all over the range down there, killing eagles and causing all sorts of collateral damage.”
During the presentation, Suckow said Wildlife Services reissued its use restrictions and guidelines to all employees in June, adding that the agency employs over 1,000 people.
Suckow then informed the audience that M-44 devices only recently received the definition of “cyanide bombs,” something he said was an inaccurate description. He even brought a few M-44s loaded with cornmeal instead of sodium cyanide to display how the device works.
“I don’t have to see how you killed my dog,” Theresa Mansfield, Canyon’s mother, told Suckow as she removed herself from the auditorium.
A Wildlife Services employee triggered the device, which sent cornmeal shooting about 20 feet into the air.
The audience gasped in disbelief.
Suckow then passed the microphone to Mark Mansfield, who from his phone, read the definition of bomb from Webster’s Merriam Dictionary.
“‘A container filled with explosive, incendiary material, smoke, gas or other destructive substance, designed to explode on impact or when detonated by a time mechanism, remote-control device or lit fuse,’” Mark Mansfield said. “I don’t care how small the pop was, (M-44s) are by definition a bomb.”
According to Wildlife Services’ M-44 factsheet re-released in June 2017, “The M-44 ejector device consists of four parts: a capsule holder wrapped with cloth, wool, or other soft material; a cyanide capsule (small plastic container holding less than 1 gram of sodium cyanide); a spring-activated ejector; and a 5- to 7-inch tubular stake.”
Suckow said M-44s are pesticides that have to be registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to the EPA, an average of 30,000 M-44s, deployed by the federal government in concert with Western states and counties, are triggered each year.
In its press release announcing the informational sessions, Wildlife Services said, “In a 2015 survey of producers, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) found that coyotes nationwide killed an estimated 118,032 sheep and lambs, including almost 3,700 head in Idaho.”
Melissa Cain of the Western Watersheds Project, a wildlife advocacy group based in Hailey, said she thinks those numbers are wholly inaccurate. She added that oftentimes, if Wildlife Services finds a domestic dog or an animal killed by an M-44 device, they bury it without documenting the death.
“Fifty-three of the more than 3,700 coyotes killed in Idaho last year were from these bombs,” Cain said. “M-44s aren’t even a significant portion of the efforts they are making to kill coyotes.”
So far, no humans have been killed by M-44s. But according to an investigation by the Sacramento Bee, 18 Wildlife Services employees and several other people were exposed to cyanide by M-44s between 1987 and 2012. Between 2000 and 2012, the devices killed more than 1,100 dogs.
Established 120 years ago under a different name, Wildlife Services exists primarily for the benefit of the livestock industry. The agency spends more than $120 million a year killing animals deemed “nuisances” to humans. These include coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, bears, foxes, bobcats, prairie dogs and birds, the National Geographic reported in April.
During the past decade, the agency has killed some 35 million animals. It killed 2.7 million in 2016 alone.
Idaho Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-Inkom, who is also a member of the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, said during a Thursday phone interview that his father purchased land intended for ranching when Guthrie was 6 years old.
Now, 55 years later, he said he had just recently heard of M-44 devices.
“The first I ever heard of these was when this story broke,” Guthrie said. “That’s how unaware I was that they are even employing these devices. I haven’t heard of anybody, at least in my circle, to ever use them.”
U.S. Congressman from Florida Matt Gatez has reached across the aisle and co-sponsored Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio’s legislation to permanently ban the use sodium cyanide and Compound 1080 in predator control devices nationwide. However, Carson Barylak, a campaigns officer with the Washington, D.C.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, said much, much more work remains ahead.
“Now there is a bi-partisan push in the U.S. House of Representatives to enact H.R. 1817, now known as Canyon’s Law,” she said. “The Mansfield family met with both Idaho senators as well as their representative, Mike Simpson, when they traveled to Washington to advocate for the legislation.”
She continued, “Various commitments were made during those discussions and I know the family looks forward to seeing action from those offices sooner rather than later.”
