Aerial gunning of feral cattle is met with backlash

By Zara Roy @zarazzledazzle

The National Forest Service began an aerial gunning operation in the Gila National Forest to kill the population of feral cattle in the area which descend from cattle that were abandoned on a grazing allotment within the Wilderness area in 1976. The operation, which started on Thursday, Feb. 23, in response to the damaging effects the cattle have on the habitat and water quality of the Park, though the operation has been met with contention due to claims of animal cruelty.

This project is part of ongoing efforts since the ‘90s — both lethal and nonlethal — to remove the feral cattle population from the land. The first aerial gunning on the population was done in February 2022 in which 65 cattle were killed, according to Maribeth Pecotte, public affairs officer for the Gila National Forest.

“This has been a difficult decision, but the lethal removal of feral cattle from the Gila Wilderness is necessary to protect public safety, threatened and endangered species habitats, water quality and the natural character of the Gila Wilderness,” Pecotte wrote to the Daily Lobo.

The cattle are a detriment to the local environment’s health: they pollute the water sources directly through defecation and urination, cause erosion through trampling at the waterbanks and overgraze, which could over time prevent further growth of the forest, according to Todd Schulke, a co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Schulke, who lives in the Gila region, has seen the detrimental effects the overgrazing has had on flora as well as the polluting effects the cattle have had on the water; he said that the habitat regrowth in the area has been almost immediate each time a large-scale removal has been conducted.

“It’ll respond very quickly. The grasses and small trees will prop up immediately; the water will be clean immediately, the habitat for other wildlife species will come back very quickly. That’s one thing — a lot of these cattle are along the Gila River, and riverside forests and grasslands come back extremely quickly after disturbance … We’ve seen this over and over: when cattle are removed, the area will just respond immediately,” Schulke said.

Prior to this, around 211 cattle from this population were removed through gather-and-removal con-

This process is limited both due to the high cost of round-up, potential danger toward the contractors and the difficult terrain of the Gila which leads 50% of gathered cattle to have to be euthanized before removal due to exertion and injuries, according to Schulke.

“I think the bottom line is that, they’ve tried other methods and see Cattle page 2