Court halts coyote killings on some of Nevada's public lands

Alan Halaly, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Apr 23, 2025

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LAS VEGAS — A federal appeals court ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to partially halt its statewide program that kills off coyotes, mountain lions and other livestock predators until a more thorough environmental review is completed.

Since the 1880s, some version of the USDA’s Wildlife Services program has worked to protect livestock from predators through population control methods such as shooting them from a helicopter or body-gripping traps.

In a Monday decision, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the environmental review allowing the program to operate on Nevada’s federally protected wilderness areas was “deficient in several ways.” As required by the National Environmental Policy Act, any action on federal land must go through an official review of its impacts, with multiple chances for the public to comment.

Judge Morgan Christen authored the opinion.

None of the defendants named in the underlying lawsuit — the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service — responded to multiple requests for comment.

Jennifer Schwartz, an attorney with the nonprofit WildEarth Guardians who brought the lawsuit, called the decision a win for her clients. Until a new review process is completed, the USDA cannot operate its program in Nevada’s 65 wilderness areas and 62 wilderness study areas.

Those areas, including ones in Southern Nevada like Mount Charleston, amount to 6.2 million acres, or about 9% of the state’s landmass.

“We are very happy this takes lethal control out of areas that were specifically set aside and protected for the very purpose of ensuring nature can be free to run its course,” Schwartz said in an interview Tuesday.

Some regions more prone to killings

The USDA conducted its own analysis of where it hoped to control populations the most over the next 10 years in the previous environmental assessment.

In the Silver State, predator killings are mostly limited to coyotes. Between 2015 and 2020, the program eliminated more than 15,500 of them from federal land in the name of keeping livestock alive, according to the lawsuit.

None of the wilderness areas marked as those that most needed population control were in Southern Nevada, though the agency said there was at least some need in the Meadow Valley Range and the Mormon Mountains.

The most coyote killings take place in White Pine, Eureka, Elko and Humboldt counties, according to the lawsuit.

Schwartz believes the decision is validating of what she calls a growing body of peer-reviewed science that shows using methods other than killing, such as habitat modification or fencing, would be less disruptive to local ecosystems. A 2012 Sacramento Bee investigation, referenced in the lawsuit, found that current methods lead to thousands of wild animals and even dogs being killed by mistake.

“We’ve been putting them to task because the current science is showing that it’s just not effective in terms of protecting livestock long term,” she said. “There have to be better ways to address the problem.”

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