Two men are being charged on more than a dozen counts this week after authorities reported them for shooting and killing roughly 3,600 bald and golden eagles, then selling their feathers on the black market for more than half a decade.
Each of the men, Simon Paul of St. Ignatius, Montana, and Travis John Branson of Cusick, Washington, were indicted in Montana on one count of conspiracy, 13 counts of unlawful trafficking and one count of violating the Lacey Act.
The Lacey Act is a federal law that combats the trafficking of wildlife illegally removed from nature.
Federal prosecutors stated in court that they discovered messages sent by Branson, 48, in which he bragged that he was on a killing spree.
“These two men sold the birds or parts of the birds for significant sums of cash across the United States and elsewhere by using the black market,” prosecutors testified.
Branson and Paul, 42, had killed roughly 3,600 birds, including eagles, within the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana between January 2015 and March 2021.
“Branson and Paul would hunt birds by luring them in with deer and other prey they had also killed, waiting for the birds to swoop in before shooting them,” prosecutors added to their testimony.
Prosecutors presented a handful of messages in their Montana federal court filing they say were sent from the men during that period, which highlighted how they planned their killings, how they contacted buyers for different parts of the birds, and how they coordinated with each other.
In one message, Branson allegedly acknowledged that he was out committing felonies.
The men would each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on the conspiracy charge.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, Bald eagles were first adopted as the national symbol for the United States in 1782, but have faced extinction in the mid-1990s due to the destruction of their habitats, degradation, and the illegal shooting and contamination of their food sources.
But the symbolic birds have made a recovery in recent decades with an estimated 316,700 bald eagles in the lower 48 states in 2019. The bald eagle was removed from the nation’s endangered species list in 2007.
“The recovery of the bald eagle is one of the most well-known conservation success stories of all time,” according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
