Today, Earthjustice representing Yellowstone Valley Audubon Society sued the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) for allowing the state of Montana to shoot and kill migratory birds at the Miles City Fish Hatchery along the Yellowstone River. The federal lawsuit, filed in the Montana District Court, charges FWS with unlawfully allowing Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (MFWP), which runs the hatchery, to kill birds in order to limit their consumption of non-native bass. The group contends that the practice of shooting birds has eliminated the local breeding population of ospreys and significantly harmed other migratory birds that migrate and live along the river.

For the past 10 years, FWS has granted to MFWP permits to kill migratory birds in order to limit their consumption of the hatchery’s non-native largemouth bass, bluegill and trout. As a result, the hatchery has shot and killed hundreds of migratory birds, including ospreys, Canada geese, great blue herons, and double-crested cormorants. A scientific paper published last year details the impacts to ospreys along the Yellowstone River, noting that no fledglings have been spotted in the area by nest monitors or utility companies in several years, and concluding that the breeding population within 20 miles of the fish hatchery has been all but exterminated.

The group charges that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement to examine environmental impacts when it issued the permits.

“FWS has mishandled the management of depredation permits for native migratory birds by relinquishing the request to kill problematic birds at fish hatcheries to Wildlife Services for approval,” said Deb Regele, Board Member of the Yellowstone Valley Audubon Society. “Wildlife Services is a department within the Department of Agriculture, the same one that issues the depredation permits to kill problematic grizzly bears, wolves and coyotes to ranchers and farmers.”

“The Northern Rockies is meant to be a refuge for migratory birds, not a killing field,” said Emily Qiu, Earthjustice attorney representing the Yellowstone Valley Audubon Society. “The Fish & Wildlife Service’s long-term reliance on lethal actions has devastated migratory birds, including ospreys, runs counter to the Service’s mission, and exacerbates the biodiversity crisis. The policy needs a complete overhaul.”

North American birds have seen a devastating 29% decline in recent decades, with birds in arid and grassland ecosystems facing the steepest declines. These population declines are themselves an indictment of FWS’s archaic approach of relying on bird-killing rather than non-lethal approaches as a solution to bird depredation.