Nov. 18, 2006
 
Dog Club Owners Charged with Killing Hawks, Owls
 
By Tom Mooney
The Providence Journal
 
Providence, RI (SHNS) -- The federal government has charged a private dog club with killing and poisoning hawks and owls that were preying on the club's rabbits.
 
Inc. and its president, William Forward, have been charged with one count of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and five counts of illegally using insecticide.
 
Cowesett Road club, which trains beagles to flush rabbits out of cover, and hosts field trials, killed the birds using guns, steel leg-hold traps, and by setting out as bait, eggs and animal carcasses seeded with the insecticide carbofuran.
 
As a result "red-tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks, great-horned owls, northern flickers, northern mockingbirds, turkey vultures and mourning doves" died, according to a statement this week by U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente.
 
The club's members were chiefly targeting the birds of prey, which dined on the stocked rabbits. Most of the other birds -- all of them quite common -- died from insecticide poisoning.
 
None of the birds the club killed is on an endangered species list. Virtually all birds in North America, including the ubiquitous robin and the squawking crow, are migratory and fall under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, said Tom Healy, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
 
The act, first passed in 1918, formed treaties between the United States, Canada, Mexico and other countries to protect the populations of birds that passed through their countries. Exceptions to the act are made for some birds such as ducks and geese, whose numbers are regulated through strict hunting limitations.
 
The club and Forward have entered into a plea agreement, said U.S. Attorney spokesman Tom Connell, and Forward's lawyer C. Leonard O'Brien.
 
"Mr. Forward has decided it best to accept responsibility for what occurred," O'Brien said "He meant no harm but acknowledges these allegations."
 
Under the tentative plea agreement, Forward and the club anticipate paying a fine of $20,000, the maximum allowed under federal law for the six misdemeanor charges.
 
A court date for when the plea will go before a judge hasn't yet been scheduled, Connell said.
 
The charges resulted from a joint investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Environment Police of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.