This is the lesson that Seaside Aquaculture owner Khan Vu has hopefully learned after being charged, found guilty, and sentenced under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Both Vu and the company were ordered to pay $40,000 to the Texas Park and Wildlife Foundation and a $5,000 fine and put on eighteen months probation after being found guilty in federal court. How bad was Vu and company? According to evidence presented at trial:
“The agents found the carcasses of approximately 90 brown pelicans, 17 great blue herons, five great egrets, four black-crowned night herons, four turkey vultures, two osprey, two gulls and one scaup. Seaside’s employees denied shooting any birds; however, owner Vu admitted to shooting six pelicans to prevent them from eating his fish. At trial, and again at the sentencing hearing today, the defense unsuccessfully attempted to assert that the birds had died as a result of running into power lines.”
Birds are protected and can’t be shot at will, even in Texas. When will people learn this lesson?
Vu is a hero: he shot birds who were about to kill his friends and allies, the fish. After all, another Texas hero once assured us that he knew human beings and fish could co-exist peacefully. If it wasn’t for those darned birds!
I grew up on an island in Maine. On late night high tides a local fisherman and his crew would encircle schools of herring in our cove with a purse seine. Often the seine was left, full of fish, for some time until a boat could come and empty the nets. Whenever this was done the common practice was to shoot a few cormorant (“shad” or “coots” locally) and leave them floating in the net to deter others. The idea of shooting these birds and the gunshots in such close proximity to our home always left me uncomfortable. I wonder if this is still a common practice.