‘A barbaric federal program’: US killed 1.75m animals last year – or 200 per hour

Activists condemn Wildlife Services, a division of the USDA, which says deaths necessary to protect farmers and public health

An obscure division of the US government had a busy - and ruthless - year in 2021, killing more than 1.75 million animals across the country, at a rate of about 200 creatures every hour.

The latest annual toll of Wildlife Services, a department within the US Department of Agriculture, has further stoked the fury of conservation groups that have decried the killings as cruel and pointless. Wildlife Services maintains the slaughter is necessary to protect agricultural output, threatened species and human health.