The Animal Damage Control Act of March 2, 1931 was enacted to provide broad authority for investigation, demonstrations, and control of mammalian predators, rodents, and birds.
The Act gives the Secretary of Agriculture authority to conduct investigations, experiments, and tests to determine the best methods of eradication, suppression, or bringing under control mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, prairie dogs, gophers, ground squirrels, jack rabbits, brown tree snakes, and other animals injurious to agriculture, horticulture, forestry, animal husbandry, wild game animals, fur-bearing animals, and birds.
Another purpose of such investigations is to protect stock and other domestic animals through the suppression of rabies and tularemia in predatory or other wild animals. Further, the Act directs the Secretary to conduct campaigns for the destruction or control of these animals.
In carrying out the Act, the Secretary shall cooperate with states, individuals, agencies, and organizations[i]. The Secretary shall administer the program in a manner consistent with all of the wildlife services authorities.
The Secretary is empowered, except for urban rodent control, to control nuisance mammals and birds and those mammal and bird species that are reservoirs for zoonotic diseases. The Secretary shall enter into agreements with states, local jurisdictions, individuals, and organizations for this purpose.
A later amendment of the Act in 1991 required the Secretary to initiate a program to prevent the purposeful introduction of the brown tree snake into Hawaii from Guam. In this regard, the Secretary shall take action to prevent the inadvertent introduction of the brown tree snake into other areas of the U.S. from Guam.
The Secretary of Agriculture is also authorized to make such expenditures for equipment, supplies, and materials, including the employment of persons and means in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, and to employ such means as may be necessary to execute the functions imposed upon him/her by the statute[ii].
An amendment to the Act on October 28, 2000 gave broad authority to the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out a wildlife services program with respect to injurious species. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, formerly known as Animal Damage Control, kills thousands of predators and other animals each year.
Wildlife Services provides federal leadership in managing problems caused by wildlife. Wildlife Services manage wildlife for reducing damage to agriculture and natural resources, to minimize potential threats to humans, and to help in protecting threatened and endangered species.
On and after November 10, 2005 the Secretary of Agriculture shall use appropriations available to him/her for activities authorized under this or any other act, to enter into cooperative agreements with a State, political subdivision, or agency thereof, a public or private agency, organization, or any other person, to lease aircraft, provided the Secretary determines that the objectives of the agreement shall serve a mutual interest of the parties to the agreement in conducting the programs administered by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, and that all the parties shall contribute resources to the accomplishment of such objectives. An award of a cooperative agreement authorized by the Secretary shall be made for an initial term not to exceed five years.
[i] 7 USCS § 426.
[ii] Id.
