Sponsors (17)
The bill lets livestock producers quickly remove black vultures to reduce animal losses and creates a federal data stream, but it risks harming a protected species and ecosystem services, raising welfare and enforcement challenges and adding reporting burdens.
Farmers and livestock producers can immediately remove black vultures harming animals and property without waiting for federal permits, reducing livestock deaths and economic loss and speeding on‑farm mitigation.
Creates a federal reporting requirement that will generate data on vulture–livestock interactions to inform wildlife management decisions and help state agencies better target prevention and response.
Rural communities and ecosystems could be harmed because the bill allows killing a protected migratory bird species, potentially reducing vulture populations and degrading ecosystem services like carcass removal.
Farmers and animal welfare advocates may see increased use of lethal control instead of nonlethal prevention, raising animal welfare and ethical concerns and potentially disincentivizing preventive practices.
Narrowly exempting only one species could create enforcement and compliance complexity for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and producers who must distinguish species in the field, risking inconsistent application and disputes.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Permits livestock producers and employees to take black vultures harming or threatening livestock despite the MBTA, bans poison, and requires annual reporting once a USFWS form is available.
Official title: Authorize livestock producers and their employees to take black vultures to prevent death, injury, or destruction to livestock, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 20, 2025 by Markwayne Mullin · Last progress May 20, 2025
Allows livestock producers and their employees to take (capture, kill, disperse, or move carcasses of) black vultures that are causing or reasonably likely to cause death, injury, or destruction to livestock without being subject to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, while prohibiting poisoning. It also requires the Fish and Wildlife Service Director to create a reporting form within 180 days and requires covered persons to submit an annual report to the appropriate USFWS Regional Office by January 31 for takings during the prior 12 months, but only once the Director makes the form available.