Wildlife Officials Agree To Stop Using Cyanide Traps On Wyoming Public Land

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — U.S. wildlife officials have agreed to stop using a certain cyanide trap to help control predators on 10 million acres of public lands in Wyoming. In a court-approved agreement resulting from a lawsuit brought by wildlife advocacy groups, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services agreed to stop using M-44 devices in the state. M-44s are embedded in the ground and look like lawn sprinklers but spray cyanide when triggered by animals attracted by bait.

File photo of Wyoming (credit: MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)

The Wyoming agreement also requires the federal agency to analyze the environmental impacts of killing coyotes, bobcats and other predators in the state and impose new trapping restrictions. Also it’ll adopt additional trapping protections to prevent inadvertent grizzly bear deaths.

The federal agency had previously stopped using the devices in other western states. Officials stopped using cyanide traps on Colorado public lands in 2017 after one injured an Idaho teenager and killed his dog.

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