LANSING, MI (AP)-- A Michigan Department of Natural Resources official has rejected a request from an animal rights group to immediately stop plans to kill thousands of mute swans.
The Detroit Free Press reports Monday that Russ Mason, chief of the DNR's Wildlife Division, says, however, that his office is reviewing a formal proposal from the Humane Society of the United States. The proposal also calls on the DNR to appoint local and statewide mute swan advisory committees to discuss "nonlethal management options."
The DNR wants to reduce the state's mute swan population from about 15,500 to fewer than 2,000 by 2030. State officials say the birds are an invasive, nonnative species with a destructively voracious appetite for vegetation.
Mute swans have been in Michigan for about a century.
