Activists File Suit
Seeking ADC Records

SANTA FE — A New Mexico environmental activist group has filed suit to force USDA's Animal Damage Control program to release all information about the killing of coyotes, mountain lions, black bears and other wildlife in federally designated wilderness areas in numerous western states.

The Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians objects to ADC's mission of controlling depredating animals for the benefit of other wildlife and the western livestock industry.

The group cites the 1964 Wilderness Act, which says in part that "a wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

The group claims the information sought in its suit, only the latest in many designed to drive livestock off public and private land, will enable it to obtain a "clearer picture" of all ADC activities in wilderness areas, according to John Horning, a spokesman for the Forest Guardians.