‘Outdated’ Wildlife Killing Program in New Mexico Draws Lawsuit

The Department of Agriculture is violating federal law by relying on decades-old data to support killing of thousands of animals under its New Mexico “predator damage management” program, a conservation group says in a lawsuit filed in a federal court in the state.

USDA’s Wildlife Services has never studied the environmental impact of its killing of animals as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, WildEarth Guardians says.

The program instead operates under environmental assessments that rely on studies from the 1970s and 1980s, according to the group’s lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of ...