Sunday, June 14, 2009
(photo: Bureau of Reclamation)
An employee of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has been fired for telling his supervisors about the illegal hunting of mountain lions in Nevada by coworkers. Gary Strader worked for APHIS, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), as a professional hunter who mostly killed coyotes until he blew the whistle on colleagues who used government airplanes to shoot five mountain lions, a violation of state and federal laws. It is legal to kill coyotes from an airplane, but illegal to aerially kill game animals such as mountain lions and deer.
According to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Strader filed a complaint with USDA Wildlife Services. When his allegations were rejected, Strader filed a complaint with the FBI in February 2009. The following month, Strader’s supervisor, Mark Jensen, informed him that he was being terminated. According to Strader, when he asked Jensen if he was being fired because of his complaint to the FBI, Jensen nodded in the affirmative.
Strader has filed a whistleblower complaint regarding his termination with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which will hear his case this summer.
-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff
Federal Agent Sacked For Reporting Illegal Cougar Kills (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility)
Narrative Gary Strader Case (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) (PDF)
Wildlife “Services” Spent $100 Million Killing Animals (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
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