What would you expect to be told if you were the Parent of this Young Boy that could have life-long lasting effects?
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M-44 kills pet, exposes teenager to cyanide poisoning
Mansfield, a 14-year-old high-schooler from Pocatello, Idaho, had been hiking up the hill behind his house for as long as he can remember.
Canyon Mansfield and his 3-year-old Labrador Casey.
Along a ridge at the top, within eyesight of the family residence several hundred yards away, sat a lush, gently sloping field of grass.
The peaceful area had always been his sanctuary; he said his prayers there, did homework and played ball with his best pal, 3-year-old Casey.
In March, Canyon stumbled upon what he described as a “sprinkler” tucked between a small rock pile.
Canyon said he knew that land like the back of his hand; the piece of metal didn’t belong.
Canyon Mansfield and his 3-year-old Labrador Casey.
“At first, I thought it was a piece of garbage,” Canyon said. “I reached down and touched it because you don’t know it’s something dangerous.
“I mean, it’s on, right by our house? So I reach down and touch it and it expels gas over my face and it goes in my left eye.”
Canyon ran to a snowbank and started wiping his face, hoping to stop the incredible burning sensation.
Canyon Mansfield and his 3-year-old Labrador Casey.
It was then that he looked over to see his dog writhing in agony on the ground having what looked like seizure.
“Instantly my stomach clenched. I knew something was wrong,” Canyon said.
Within a few minutes, Casey was dead from the discharge of an M-44.
Canyon ran to get him mom, Theresa, who called his father, Mark Mansfield. He rushed home from his medical center, utterly confused.
Labrador Casey.
“I went straight to the dog. He was in the sagebrush,” Mark Mansfield said. “I’m doing chest compressions. I thought, OK, maybe I should breathe for him a little bit.
“So I laid him back and went to breathe for him and that’s when Canyon saved my life. That’s when Canyon said, ‘Don’t dad. Don’t. Don’t put your mouth on his mouth. I think it was a poison. Don’t do it. You’ll die.’ So, I stopped.”
When the sheriff’s office arrived, they searched the field and found a second, still-set device nearby.
It took nearly an hour for deputies to determine what the “sprinkler” really was: An M-44 placed in the field by Wildlife Services — Idaho.
Canyon was taken to a hospital and treated for sodium cyanide poisoning.
He had serious side effects for more than a month, but he survived.
Mark Mansfield remains furious.
Canyon Mansfield
“Any logical human being would get rid of those things,” he said. “Because the risks do not outweigh the benefits. It’s way too risky.
Canyon Mansfield
“The liability is my son. They hurt him. They hurt him badly. He hurt so bad. He had headaches every night for a month. His hands went numb. He didn’t sleep for a month. Try not sleeping for a month.”
A federal records request for the USDA-created Mansfield incident report reveals virtually nothing.
Details of what happened were redacted before it was released.
DENVER — Critics call them cyanide bombs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calls them M-44s.No matter the name, they are controversial, indiscriminate killing-devices, aimed at wiping out predator coyotes.The M-44 is a spring-loaded mechanism that, once set vertically into the ground, looks like a thumb-sized, metal sprinkler head.
Federally authorized agents bait the devices with rotten meat or other canine attractants.
When any animal nudges it, sodium cyanide powder is shot up to 5 feet into the air.
The poison kills virtually anything in its proximity: coyotes, foxes, pet dogs, feral dogs, bears, and wolves to list a few.
Unlike scenarios where wildlife agents visually spot, then shoot, identifiable predators with firearms, the M-44 works independently without human oversight.
They are placed on open ground and left unmonitored for days, weeks or months at a time, according to documents.
When planted in hiking areas or within walking distances of residential homes, the cyanide-ejecting traps have proven deadly for domestic pets and injurious to humans.
The USDA has told congressional investigators that such accidents are rare and the agency promised to study potential, new safety improvements.
A sweeping FOX31 Problem Solvers investigation into the use of M-44’s steel leg holds and strangling neck snares by federal wildlife employees found various traps are maiming and killing tens of thousands of targets every year.
At times, the targets were not intentional.
USDA Wildlife Division agents set 16,414 M-44s last year in 14 states, the majority in the Rocky Mountain region.
In 2016, Colorado Wildlife Services reported killing 60 coyotes (up from 23 in 2015 and nine in 2014) with M-44s.
In addition, CWS accidentally killed a red fox and a swift fox with M-44s. The swift fox is listed by the USDA as a protected threatened species.
Wyoming reported killing 236 coyotes and 65 red foxes with M-44s in 2016.
New Mexico has been the most prolific user of M44s, according to federal records.
In the past two years, New Mexico Wildlife Services killed 1,720 coyotes with poison traps, along with nine dogs, 34 gray foxes, 16 swift foxes and four kit foxes.
While the livestock industry and the USDA continue to support and even ask for growth of the M-44 program, public pressure to eliminate their use is mounting.
The following investigation delves into why.
Predators targeted; collateral damage impossible to avoid
The use of M-44s, covertly set by agents at Colorado Wildlife Services in Lakewood (a division of the USDA) to kill coyotes might poison people and pets instead.
Because the devices lay loaded with poison capsules, peeking out of the ground without any person watching over them, they kill whatever curious creature that wanders by.
M-44s are planted all over Colorado as well as Arizona, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, on tribal lands in California and until recently Idaho.
Hidden in fields, pastures, grazing areas and on federal land, the primary purpose is to poison “canine predators” and protect private ranchers’ livestock.
Source: Federal agents set cyanide-ejecting traps despite accidents | FOX31 Denver
Comments
I have heard about Idaho and their disregard for wildlife, but I kept hoping the Governor would come to his senses and stand up to those who insist on the continuing use of these deadly cyanide bombs, used to kill wildlife and anything or anyone else that tampers with it..
How terribly sad that the morals of these people have completely gone. Now they should be held responsible for injury or deaths of a child or someone’s pet because of these damn bombs.
DAMN YOU BUREAUCRATIC PIECES-OF-SHIT!!!!!
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF A ROGUE GOVERNMENT AGENT
SET A CYANIDE TRAP IN YOUR YARD AND MADE YOUR KID SICK OR BLEW YOUR BRAINS OUT???
WELL, THAT’S WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T CHANGE YOUR WAYS
AND GET RID OF THOSE BARBARIC MONSTROSITIES!!
THERE’S AN OLD SAYING:
AN EYE FOR A EYE…..A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH!!!
AND KARMA’S A BITCH!!!
Now, some California counties have banned any contracrting with USDA APHIS Wildlife Services (APHIS means Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and of course you know that USDA is dept of Agriculture – Not Interior, the Dept in charge of public lands andFIsh & WIldlife Services, who rule ov er the animal populations)
WS is, then, sometimes contracted by land management agencies, and private citizens. All of WS’s actions must be contracted & paid for by them.
Here is their June iteration of M-44 use.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf
Within it, you will find some interesting information, and some deceptive language.
It starts our by calling it “efficient.” In this case it means also cheaper than targeted methods.
It claims targets to use
” M-44 cyanide capsules under two EPA-approved pesticide registrations to control coyotes, feral (wild) dogs, and red, gray, and arctic foxes which are suspected of preying upon livestock, poultry, or federally designated threatened and endangered species; or are vectors of communicable disease.
“Our use of M-44 devices strictly follows EPA label instructions, directions, and use-restrictions; applicable Federal, State, and local laws and regulations; and agency and program directives and policies.
“Our personnel do not use M-44s on any property unless assistance is requested and agreed to by the land’s owner or manager.”
So, we have fed, state, city, county, and private persons who choose to use.
While it’s canid-specific, it does not distinguish.
I’d been thinking of the ecological place of wolves and coyotes just last night before sleep, because the unthinking people who kill them refuse to even listen to te beauty and validity of each wild being, or consider their ecological services”, stupidly believinng that humans can or should be boss and manager of the Earth.
M-44s aren’t legal to use wherever the wolf is still listed by a state or the US as Endangered. I’m not sure of the rules on “Vulnerable”. WS should be directly asked on this.
Back to disingenouous language in WS disclosure:
If it is aimed at coyotes, it will STILL KILL foxes. Foxes are vital to prevent overcoming of the land by certain rodents. A few of you may know that rodent-flea virus connections have brought deadly disease . Hantavirus, or Sin Nombre Virus is endemic in the Americas. Wild mice carry it usually without harm or symptoms to them. THere often appear variant viruses, and they are contracted through merely breathing in the virus from urine or droppings.
I remember when good friends became terrified over it, and later, when it hit cabins in Yosemite, and the US pubic really went berserk.
The Dine’ Navajo had rituals that actually prevented spreading of the death this created in the Southwest, but the acceptance of permanent Euro-style dwellings and abandonment of traditional knowledge caused it to reoccur about 25 years back, when friends were panicked. Traditions of Puebloan peoples also avoided wild rodent presence. But I want to deal with the nonspecific nature of M-44. In xeric, desert lands, the coyote is an important omnivorous predator of rodents, as are the smaller kinds of fox that live there. THe highly persecuted rattlesnake and the big Buteo hawk family are also EXTREMELY important Protectors, as are the Golden Eagle and smaller Bald. Turkey Vultures (they are TOUGH! I personally love them for their true transfer of life to life, as did many native societies) eat up the remains.
Turkey Vultures have one of the most powerful smelling capacity on Earth. They also were watched by the Condor, who has no smell. So, the Condor, who used to live from BC into Mexico,before being gunned down (they will just swallow lead ammunition embedded in dead animals, as will the Eagle and hawks.
So, you see, human active interference destroys the great circles of life in many ways.
THe Puebloan peoples were the ones who domesticated Turkeys, who swallow the droppings and so long as their intestines are not taken in, neutralize the problem.
USDA NASS (National Agricultural Statistical Service, shows that dogs are a huge numeric predator on Domestics. Back East, there are cities (most cities have dead hearts as original industries, business, and houses are easier abandoned to focus on new building and those large Walmarts etc that I hope none of you shop at) with massive abandoned and feral (feral means offspring bred wildly) dogs.
I never believed that humans abandoned pets, but it is COMMON.
I know I just loaded you all up withh information, but it is important that you trace the blame, as well as see the REAL answers that the animals of Earth have already created. It is the human culture that is our of balance, and none else.
One more thing.
The M-44 style of device has been expanded with LEGAL private traps made from the exploding cartridge. Instead of cyanide, it uses a snare, which is designed not to just tighten to choke point, but to cease and just hold the coyote, wolf, fox, or other curious animal. If you know the killing pleasure of the farmer, rancher, and typical property owner as well as I do, you will understand that mostly they will just kill the trapped animal, and bury it.
“Collarum” is a trappers’ Supply that will sell snares for bears, beaver, otter, all the canids listed here, bobcats, lynx, even moles, who are beautiful tiny creatures. So many more animals that I can’t mention them are killed through trapping and poisoning. I can only tell you that EVERY animal serves a purpose important to all, and that if you learn these purposes, you will value each and every one.
Sorry that my posts are so long,, but the twitter-length comments and the hate for one or another that we see everywhere in discussion, WILL NOT SUFFICE, EVER, to change anything at all.
I will tell you about the change in attitudes in Idaho someday, in a comment I hope will be relevant to one of Twowolve’s postings. (the story’s not good so far, but we have to find a way.to heal it . . .)
Now, some California counties have banned any contracting with USDA APHIS Wildlife Services (APHIS means Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and of course you know that USDA is dept of Agriculture – Not Interior, the Dept in charge of public lands and FIsh & WIldlife Services, who rule over the animal populations)
WS is, then, sometimes contracted by land management agencies, and private citizens. All of WS’s actions must be contracted & paid for by them.
Here is their June iteration of M-44 use.
aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf
Within it, you will find some interesting information, and some deceptive language.
It starts our by calling it “efficient.” In this case it means also cheaper than targeted methods.
It claims targets to use
” M-44 cyanide capsules under two EPA-approved pesticide registrations to control coyotes, feral (wild) dogs, and red, gray, and arctic foxes which are suspected of preying upon livestock, poultry, or federally designated threatened and endangered species; or are vectors of communicable disease.
“Our use of M-44 devices strictly follows EPA label instructions, directions, and use-restrictions; applicable Federal, State, and local laws and regulations; and agency and program directives and policies.
“Our personnel do not use M-44s on any property unless assistance is requested and agreed to by the land’s owner or manager.”
So, we have fed, state, city, county, and private persons who choose to use.
While it’s canid-specific, it does not distinguish.
I’d been thinking of the ecological place of wolves and coyotes just last night before sleep, because the unthinking people who kill them refuse to even listen to the beauty and validity of each wild being, or consider their ecological services”, stupidly believing that humans can or should be boss and manager of the Earth.
M-44s aren’t legal to use wherever the wolf is still listed by a state or the US as Endangered. I’m not sure of the rules on “Vulnerable”. WS should be directly asked on this.
Back to disingenouous language in WS disclosure:
If it is aimed at coyotes, it will STILL KILL foxes. Foxes are vital to prevent overcoming of the land by certain rodents. A few of you may know that rodent-flea virus connections have brought deadly disease . Hantavirus, or Sin Nombre Virus is endemic in the Americas. Wild mice carry it usually without harm or symptoms to them. There often appear variant viruses, and they are contracted through merely breathing in the virus from urine or droppings.
I remember when good friends became terrified over it, and later, when it hit cabins in Yosemite, and the US pubic really went berserk.
The Dine’ Navajo had rituals that actually prevented spreading of the death this created in the Southwest, but the acceptance of permanent Euro-style dwellings and abandonment of traditional knowledge caused it to reoccur about 25 years back, when friends were panicked.
Traditions of Puebloan peoples also avoided wild rodent presence.
But I want to deal with the nonspecific nature of M-44. In xeric, desert lands, the coyote is an important omnivorous predator of rodents, as are the smaller kinds of fox that live there. THe highly persecuted rattlesnake and the big Buteo hawk family are also EXTREMELY important Protectors, as are the Golden Eagle and smaller Bald. Turkey Vultures (they are TOUGH! I personally love them for their true transfer of life to life, as did many native societies) eat up the remains.
Turkey Vultures have one of the most powerful smelling capacity on Earth. They also were watched by the Condor, who has no smell. So, the Condor, who used to live from BC into Mexico,before being gunned down (they will just swallow lead ammunition embedded in dead animals, as will the Eagle and hawks) often follow the Turkey Vulture.
So, you see, human active interference destroys the great circles of life in many ways.
THe Puebloan peoples were the ones who domesticated Turkeys, who swallow the droppings and so long as their intestines are not taken in, neutralize the problem.
USDA NASS (National Agricultural Statistical Service, shows that dogs are a huge numeric predator on Domestics. Back East, there are cities (most cities have dead hearts as original industries, business, and houses are easier abandoned to focus on new building and those large Walmarts etc that I hope none of you shop at) with massive abandoned and feral (feral means offspring bred wildly) dogs.
I never believed that humans abandoned pets, but it is COMMON.
I know I just loaded you all up with information, but it is important that you trace the blame, as well as see the REAL answers that the animals of Earth have already created. It is the human culture that is our of balance, and none else.
One more thing.
The M-44 style of device has been expanded with LEGAL private traps made from the exploding cartridge. Instead of cyanide, it uses a snare, which is designed not to just tighten to choke point, but to cease and just hold the coyote, wolf, fox, or other curious animal. If you know the killing pleasure of the farmer, rancher, and typical property owner as well as I do, you will understand that mostly they will just kill the trapped animal, and bury it.
“Collarum” is a trappers’ Supply that will sell snares for bears, beaver, otter, all the canids listed here, bobcats, lynx, even moles, who are beautiful tiny creatures. So many more animals that I can’t mention them are killed through trapping and poisoning. I can only tell you that EVERY animal serves a purpose important to all, and that if you learn these purposes, you will value each and every one.
Sorry that my posts are so long,, but the twitter-length comments and the hate for one or another that we see everywhere in discussion, WILL NOT SUFFICE, EVER, to change anything at all.
I will tell you about the change in attitudes in Idaho someday, in a comment I hope will be relevant to one of Twowolve’s postings. (the story’s not good so far, but we have to find a way.to heal it . . .)
Just rereading my comment – I am a partisan also of coyote, having known them well for many decades, in all weathers and from mountain to desert to shore, and even visiting cities where they still try to live and do their work. I do never mean to slight the little one.