CHATHAM, Mass. – A refuge-commissioned sharpshooter killed nine coyote pups, and displaced a tenth, Tuesday on South Monomoy Island. The last pup died in captivity on Monomoy. The National Wildlife Refuge has been the site of coyote killing since 1999, when a federal agent first killed a female coyote. The refuge has been responsible for the deaths of 34 coyotes since that time.

This year’s slaughter and those before it were commissioned to protect federally endangered roseate terns and federally threatened piping plovers. In 2001, the refuge reported a total of six pairs of roseate terns and 28 pairs of piping plovers.

“Monomoy is no refuge for wildlife,” said Jessica Almy of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “This inhumane killing, when the refuge deliberately waits for the birth of pups and then kills the entire family, lies beyond logic.”

In addition to killing mammalian predators, the wildlife refuge killed 1,717 gulls in 1996 by feeding the birds poisoned sandwiches. Of those, 529 herring gulls and 67 great black-backed gulls slowly died of poisoning on the mainland, often in people’s yards, after ingesting the bait.

The HSUS has offered to help buy fencing to protect bird colonies, but this offer was declined by refuge officials.