Fowl Play

Raptors are being slaughtered by the thousands all across our nation by people who, for one reason or another, don’t like them. This is, of course, criminal activity—specifically a Class B misdemeanor under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (MBTA).

The maximum fine, rarely levied, for dispatching a raptor that isn’t a bald or golden eagle or listed under the Endangered Species Act is a mere $15,000. And though such a crime technically can land you in the slammer for six months, jail sentences are invariably suspended. The MBTA does have felony provisions if the United States can prove intent to sell, but the only intent of almost all raptor killers is to ditch the carcasses without being seen.

Another Class B misdemeanor—according to our legal system, just as egregious as knocking off a peregrine falcon—is using a rendering of Smokey the Bear sans permission from the U.S. Forest Service. Every state and federal wildlife-law-enforcement official you engage on the subject will tell you this: The courts routinely deal with rapes, murders, smuggling, drug trafficking, and the like. No way are they going to take Class B misdemeanors seriously.

So unless the law is amended to allow U.S. attorneys to seek felony charges where appropriate, raptors are going to keep dying at rates unimaginable to most of the public.

If you doubt this, consider Operation High Roller, at this writing still being conducted across the country by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s law-enforcement division. For once the “high rollers” aren’t rich trophy hunters. In fact, they’re not even people; they’re birds.

“Roller pigeons,” popularized in Birmingham, England, are bred for a genetic, seizure-like disorder that, in flight, causes them to simultaneously and uncontrollably throw up their wings, cock back their heads, and flip backward, somersaulting repeatedly for hundreds of feet, not always recovering before union with terra firma converts them to carrion. Regulated by the National Birmingham Roller Club (NBRC), the oldest and largest organization promoting the hobby, local clubs throughout the United States compete to see whose birds tumble best.

The hobby has attracted such high-profile participants as boxer Mike Tyson, whose sex therapist is quoted by USA Today as explaining that Iron Mike has a special connection with his rollers because he “doesn’t take the normal tumbles like the average person [but] gets real high, then crashes.”

Despite such emotional benefits, roller flyers face a major frustration: When their pigeons start doing their thing, birds of prey see them for exactly what they are—genetic invalids ripe for plucking. As Tony Chavarria, owner and publisher of the Birmingham Roller Pigeon Discussion Board (roller-pigeon.com), perceptively notes, “Many fanciers have been forced to leave the hobby/sport due to incessant attacks by these birds of prey which seem to focus on these roller pigeons as a primary food source (especially in the cities).”

Solution: Make the world safer for rollers by continuously killing raptors as they gravitate to roller lofts from all compass points, like stars to black holes.

Operation High Roller has been rendering this practice increasingly difficult and costly. Handling the case in California is Special Agent Ed Newcomer. Like all the special agents I’ve worked with over the years, Newcomer is highly educated, highly motivated, and horribly overextended. Before signing on with the service five years ago he had worked as a private attorney, assistant attorney general for Colorado, and assistant attorney general for Washington. He’s one of only 191 federal wildlife officers responsible for all states and territories, the lowest number since the mid-1980s. Such is the priority our society places on wildlife crime.