USDA APHIS Wildlife Services Posts Fiscal Year 2025 Data on Management Actions and Funding Sources

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Contact: aphispress@usda.gov

On September 30, 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS), Wildlife Services (WS), posted its annual Program Data Reports (PDRs) for fiscal year (FY) 2025. The reports are available on the APHIS website, representing the 30th year WS has shared this information about its wildlife damage management activities.

Wildlife are one of America’s most valued public resources. Yet wildlife also can have negative impacts on agriculture, human health and safety, property, and natural resources. For example, birds can cause extensive damage to food crops, such as rice and other grains, and predators can cause significant losses to sheep, lambs, and other livestock. Bird and other wildlife strikes with aircraft cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, delay flights, and threaten human health and safety. APHIS WS responds to requests for assistance from farmers and ranchers, individuals, businesses, and other government agencies to protect agriculture, human health and safety, natural resources, and property from wildlife damage.

In FY 2025, WS encountered about 28.1 million animals causing damage or threatening to cause damage. While responding to calls for assistance, WS dispersed 25.2 million of these animals unharmed from urban, rural, and other settings. WS dispersed 89.7% of the animals encountered, using a variety of methods.

WS’ nonlethal wildlife damage management activities include, but are not limited to: fladry (flags hung along the perimeter of a pasture), electric fencing, livestock protection dogs, and range riding to reduce livestock-predator conflicts; harassment, exclusion, and modifying habitats to reduce wildlife attractants on airfields and other areas of concern; installing flow devices in areas with beaver activity to control water levels and reduce impacts from flooding; and trapping species of concern like grizzly bears and raptors and relocating them to areas where they won’t increase conflict. WS’ National Wildlife Research Center collaborates with WS’ Operations and others to create and/or evaluate new methods for nonlethally resolving conflicts with wildlife. These methods include developing new scare devices, innovating new repellents and testing existing compounds for repelling properties, and using drones to move predators away from livestock or birds out of the flight path of planes near airports, to name a few.

However, nonlethal methods cannot resolve all wildlife-related conflicts. Of all wildlife encountered in FY 2025, WS lethally removed 10.1%, or approximately 2.83 million, from areas where damage was occurring. Invasive species accounted for 86.7% (2,457,669) of the wildlife lethally removed. Invasive species frequently disrupt normal ecosystem function by competing with native wildlife for resources, altering habitat, preying upon native plant and/or animal communities, transmitting novel foreign diseases, and causing other economic and ecological impacts to a local environment. Removing invasive species can help restore function and balance to ecosystems.

When lethal control is necessary, WS donates as much animal meat as possible. In FY 2025, WS donated more than 175 tons of deer, goose, and other meat—more than 1 million servings of protein for people in need—and over 21 tons of meat for animal consumption to animal rehab centers, zoos, and other facilities, making full use of this resource from wildlife damage management work.

Program Data Reports

WS carries out its activities with a combination of congressionally appropriated and cooperator-provided funding. In FY 2025, WS received about $138.3 million in appropriated funds (52.6% of its total budget) to manage wildlife damage operations in every State and Territory, conduct research, and support special programs, such as managing feral swine damage and rabies in raccoons and other wildlife. Funding from program cooperators—including Federal and State agencies, counties, livestock producers and other agricultural producer groups, other organizations, businesses, and individuals—allowed WS to maximize its scope and effectiveness. During FY 2025, WS received $124,489,934 in cooperator-provided funding (47.4% of its total budget) for operational wildlife damage management (see PDR A for funding sources and expenditures nationally and by State). In FY 2025, WS spent its budget as follows:

  • 32.99% to protect agriculture, including livestock, row crops, aquaculture, and timber
  • 36.94% to reduce or prevent wildlife hazards to human health and safety, such as wildlife collisions with aircraft and disease transmission
  • 15.34% to protect property
  • 14.73% to protect natural resources, including threatened and endangered species

View Program Data Reports

Data Highlights

The PDRs list the work carried out by WS wildlife biologists and field specialists, with information by State, species, and other details. Some key FY 2025 highlights include the following:

  • PDR B. WS and its cooperators protected more than 253 threatened or endangered wildlife and plant species from the impacts of predators, invasive species, and disease. Partners seeking assistance, including private organizations and Federal, State, and local wildlife agencies, financially support most of these operations.
  • PDR C. Identifies the specific resources protected and the number of incidents in which a particular wildlife species was reported damaging or threatening damage where a stakeholder, cooperator, or WS employee reported a value associated with the damage. More than two-thirds of the recorded wildlife conflicts were associated with wildlife damage to property and agricultural resources.
  • PDR D. WS reached more than 266,000 participants in more than 74,000 information-sharing projects. These technical assistance projects, including telephone or onsite consultations, written materials, and training, help individuals resolve wildlife conflicts they are experiencing. PDR D details technical assistance projects by State, type of service, and wildlife species.
  • PDR E. Highlights WS’ work to reduce aviation strikes with wildlife at 803 airports. The airports and agencies requesting assistance from WS’ Airport Wildlife Hazards Program paid for this work under cooperative service agreements. In FY 2025, WS trained 9,339 personnel on airport wildlife hazard identification and management.
  • PDR F. WS wildlife disease biologists collected 78,895 wildlife disease samples to test for 23 different diseases and conditions in wild mammals, birds, and reptiles as part of the National Wildlife Disease Program. This remains on par with FY 2024 sampling (80,000 samples) and higher than other recent fiscal years due in large part to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) sampling. Avian influenza accounted for approximately 31.1% of the disease samples taken in FY 2025 (24,568). About 14.4% (11,368) of the samples were collected for the National Rabies Management Program. WS employees also collected 6,098 SARS-CoV-2 samples in FY 2025. Additionally, WS took samples from feral swine for 13 specified diseases or conditions, genetics, and other nonspecific disease sampling. Most sampling in feral swine was for African swine fever, classical swine fever, swine brucellosis, pseudorabies, and genetics.
  • PDR G. Provides the number of animals dispersed, killed/euthanized, or freed during WS’ wildlife damage management operations. WS implements an integrated damage management approach, which uses a variety of effective and practical nonlethal and lethal methods to resolve wildlife damage problems.
  • WS methods are highly selective toward the species causing damage. More than 99.9% of the animals lethally removed were the intended targets of WS’ wildlife damage management actions. However, WS did unintentionally remove 2,246 native animals. WS tracks and reports unintended removal and adapts field operations to minimize unintentional take wherever possible.
  • Invasive species accounted for 86.7% of all lethally removed wildlife in FY 2025, including 131,740 invasive feral swine removed as part of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program. Feral swine reported as Freed/Released/Relocated include radio-collared feral swine, which are tracked with telemetry, to be removed at a later time.
  • In contrast, native species accounted for only 13.3% (375,616) of all animals WS lethally removed. WS must sometimes remove native species because of the risk they pose to human health and safety or damage they are causing to the environment or to endangered species. Lethal actions for damage management remove a very low percentage of native wildlife compared to their overall populations or range.
  • Invasive European starlings, native blackbirds, and other species listed on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Depredation Order comprise 77.3% of animals WS lethally removed in FY 2025, totaling 2,189,429 birds with minimal population effect. WS removed less than one-half of 1% of the national estimated red-winged blackbird and brown-headed cowbird populations of 170 million and 130 million, respectively, according to the Partners in Flight Database. In FY 2025, favorable weather conditions for blackbird migration stopovers paired with rising concerns about HPAI contributed to Nevada producers requesting additional DRC-1339 treatments. In response, WS employees increased efforts to protect dairy facilities from European starlings, helping to reduce potential HPAI impacts on milk production and protecting producers from economic loss. This work led to an increase in invasive European starling take compared to previous years. These abundant birds cause extensive damage to food crops, such as rice and other grains, livestock, property, and other commodities, and they also pose a human health and safety concern. WS used nonlethal methods to disperse an additional 15.8 million starlings, blackbirds, cowbirds, crows, grackles, and magpies nationwide from areas where they were causing damage.
  • Due to their nationwide abundance, coyotes are the most common predator of livestock, killing more than 300,000 head of cattle/calves, sheep/lambs, and goats/kids annually according to National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) surveys of livestock producers. The 2020 NASS Sheep and Lamb Death Loss Report noted that coyote predation accounted for 32.6% of sheep losses and 40.1% of lamb losses. More than three-quarters (77.1%) of producers used nonlethal predator damage management methods, spending approximately $51.4 million to prevent predation on livestock. WS works in partnership with livestock producers to reduce predation through integrated damage management programs. In FY 2025, WS removed 61,383 coyotes and 220 coyote dens nationwide during wildlife damage management operations to protect resources.
  • WS treated 15,529 acres of land in rural and suburban areas in accordance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered product labels to resolve damage to resources and property. WS applied zinc phosphide primarily to oats and wheat on 7,513 acres for damage management from various burrowing rodent species. WS applied Delta Dust insecticide on 8,016 acres to reduce plague-vector fleas in prairie dog tunnels for the protection of the endangered black-footed ferret.

Most species whose damage WS actively manages are abundant or have increasing populations and/or expanding ranges. WS balances its focused efforts to resolve wildlife conflicts with stewardship responsibilities toward the long-term maintenance and health of wildlife populations.

As a Federal agency with public trust responsibilities to manage wildlife for present and future generations, APHIS complies with all Federal and State laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Endangered Species Act, as well as executive orders pertaining to invasive species management. APHIS conducts careful environmental review of all agency actions through a NEPA process that includes public involvement. To learn more, visit APHIS Wildlife Services.