An Accomack County man pleaded guilty in federal court to killing a bald eagle on his property on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
William Custis Smith of Hallwood was sentenced to a day in jail, 50 hours of community service and nearly $10,000 in fines after entering a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia in March.
According to court documents, Smith admitted to using a trap and a banned neurotoxin to poison fish in order to sicken raptors on his property. On its website, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources reported that Smith admitted to killing upward of 20 raptors.
The DWR statement said Smith had built a waterfowl impoundment on his property as a way to attract wild ducks. According to Bratton, Smith was an avid duck hunter and was trapping the raptors because they were killing ducks on his property.
Federal court records state that in January 2023, the DWR contacted federal officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with information from an anonymous source that a pole trap was spotted near a waterfowl impoundment on property in Hallwood. A pole trap is a post or platform that’s outfitted with a leg-hold trap used to capture birds of prey like hawks, owls or eagles.
In February 2023, investigators from DWR and USFWS visited the property and found the carcass of a juvenile bald eagle.
The investigators seized the bird and set up a camera at the site of the trap.
Necropsy results from the juvenile bald eagle showed that it had been poisoned with the neurotoxin carbofuran — an insecticide that has been banned in the United States since 2008.
In March, a review of the camera footage showed that on Feb. 19, 2023, at 8:47 a.m., a red-tailed hawk landed on the platform and the jaws of the pole trap captured the bird.
Hours later, at 3:13 p.m., court documents state that Smith was recorded bludgeoning the hawk with a pole he had retrieved from the back of his truck. He then removed the carcass from the trap, leaving it on the ground nearby.
Under the plea agreement, Smith admitted to poisoning the bald eagle. Court records explain that “This statement of facts … does not include each and every fact known to Smith or to the United States and it is not intended to be a full enumeration of all of the facts surrounding Smith’s case.”
William Bowerman, a professor of wildlife ecology and toxicology at the University of Maryland, told WTOP that while bald eagles and other raptors are federally protected, it’s not terribly unusual to see cases where people kill them, either by poisoning or shooting them.
He said in many cases, people who keep poultry or livestock will kill raptors out of a desire “to protect what we value from predators.”
There are several federal laws designed to protect wild birds, including the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Protection Act of 1918.
A first violation of the BGEP Act can carry a fine of $100,000, a year or prison, or both. Penalties increase for additional offenses.
But regarding the potential for substantial jail time in cases where birds are poisoned or killed, Bowerman said, “We’ve not really seen that in our courts.”
USFWS Special Agent Ken Dulik told WTOP that he has witnessed many carbofuran poisonings in his 30-plus years.
“When they go into convulsions, their tail and wings spread out and their head arches over the neck backward,” he said. “It’s a fast and brutal death. Once you’ve seen it, you know what it is.”
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