Last year, the National Park Service predator management team removed a total of 594 animals.
They were ?targeted? species and were removed to protect threatened or endangered shorebirds and sea turtles.
The numbers are detailed in the seashore?s Predator Management Annual Report for 2010.
The list of ?removed? predators includes:
- 130 raccoons
- 111 opossums and 220 opossum kits
- 8 minks
- 47 nutrias
- 5 gray foxes
- 2 coyotes
- 9 red foxes
- 61 feral cats
The feral cats, captured in live cages, were taken to the Dare County SPCA.
The rest of the animals died in traps or were euthanized.
The killing of animals to protect other animals is one part of the park?s resource management that most people have difficulty accepting.
The park is required to do it to protect piping plovers and oystercatchers and some other birds. And, apparently, the environmental groups that sued the Park Service over its lack of an off-road vehicle plan on the seashore have no problem with the killing of animals to save the birds.
I once asked a Defenders of Wildlife staff member about the killing of predators, and his answer was more or less that sacrifices must be made to save threatened species.
Perhaps killing these animals led to the above average nesting season for piping plovers and oystercatchers last year ? or maybe not.
In 2010, 15 piping plover chicks and 30 oystercatcher chicks successfully fledged.
The National Park Service has been developing a predator control management plan for several years now.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Mike Murray says the plan is still a ?priority? for the park staff, but has taken a back seat to the ORV management plan. The ORV special regulation, the next step in that plan, is already running months behind the originally announced schedule.
?Once we have a final ORV rule,? Murray said, ?then staff will complete the predator control plan for protected species management and environmental assessment, which will likely take approximately 4-6 months to finalize. In the meantime, staff continue to follow existing guidance.?
One assumes that the killing of predators will continue under any plan that is developed.
According to the annual report, ?internal guidance? restricts trapping and animal control activities to within one mile of where protected bird species were located during the last three years. And that would include most of the beaches, since piping plovers, oystercatchers, and colonial waterbirds nest all along the seashore.
Also, the report details ?incidental captures? ? the capture of species not targeted.
Last year?s incidental captures included 12 diamondback terrapin, three mud/musk turtles, two yellowbelly sliders, 13 American crow, three clapper rail, seven brown-headed cowbirds, 13 European starlings, 21 grackle, 23 Eastern cottontail rabbits, and one muskrat.
Most of the birds and rabbits were caught in live cages and released unharmed, the report says.
Some of the turtles weren?t so lucky.
Diamondback terrapins are listed as a species of concern in North Carolina. Twelve were caught in traps on Ocracoke intended for minks. Eight of them died in the body-gripping traps, and four were released unharmed.
The Park Service says in the annual report that it will institute ?mitigation? measures to reduce the incidental take of the diamondback terrapins.
It?s also worth noting that the Park Service added a full-time trapper to the seashore staff last year.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE 2010 PREDATOR MANAGEMENT ANNUAL REPORT.
