Woodchucks, Anamil cruelty?

The speaker in the poem begins as a peace-loving farmer.  The speaker agreed with the general attitude held in his community that the woodchucks were a nuisance. You feel in the poem how much this was affecting the farmer and how deep the feelings of anger grew and grew for these woodchucks.  The speaker then aggressively participated in the first attempted extermination of the rodents.  Their survival and subsequent invasion of the garden is a turning point for the farmer.  He begins to take their presence personally.  When they "[nip] the broccoli shoots" and [behead] the carrots," he sees this as taking "the food from our mouths" (lines 12 and 13).  They have upped their rank from being general nuisances to personally targeting the farmer.  This is the last time the speaker narrates in plural terms; he continues on in first-person singular narrative. This represents how this has become a personal war for him.  The speaker in the end wishes the woodchucks would have died quietly like those who died in the Holocaust.  But does this make the speaker a more compassionate killer? I feel this is a strange poem to write considering the poet is an animal activist.  I feel it shows that a common person can turn to killer in the right circumstances.