Best practices for nuisance wildlife control operators in New York State

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Ch 3: Federal laws related to wildlife control

Endangered Species Act

Regulatory agencies: US FWS, and each state's lead wildlife agency (in NY, that's the DEC)

Applicable to: All plants and animals on the federal endangered or threatened species lists

Read the law:
online—http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/esact.html 
print—16 U.S.C. 1531–1544, 87 Stat. 884

This law protects endangered or threatened plant and animal species. What does it mean for you It's simple: it means an endangered or threatened species should not be injured or harassed by your nuisance wildlife control activities. These species cannot be killed, harmed, or collected except under some carefully described circumstances, and then, only with permits.

If there are endangered or threatened species living in the areas where you work, you must take special precautions. This might affect how you set traps or apply pesticides, for example. One measure of a pest manager's professionalism is how diligently you try to protect other species from control activities, whether or not those "non-targeted species" are endangered.

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