Animal rights groups are welcoming the Trump administration’s decision to revoke approval of traps—used to target animals such as coyotes—that critics have dubbed “cyanide bombs.”
Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr

Conservation and animal rights advocates celebrated a rare Trump era victory Thursday after the Environmental Protection Agency reversed its approval of so-called “cyanide bombs” to kill wildlife on public lands, a decision made last week that provoked impassioned public outcry.

“Obviously somebody at EPA is paying attention to the public’s concerns about cyanide bombs.”
—Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense

“I am announcing a withdrawal of EPA’s interim registration review decision on sodium cyanide, the compound used in M-44 devices to control wild predators,” agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement Thursday, referring to the traps by their official name. “This issue warrants further analysis and additional discussions by EPA with the registrants of this predacide.”

Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, a wildlife group that opposes the spring-loaded poison traps, said in a statement to The Guardian that the EPA’s reversal seemed to be the result of widespread outrage over the agency’s […]