State
wildlife officials are drafting a rule to protect Florida’s native songbirds
from illegal trapping. Officers are seeing an increase in bird trafficking for
the pet industry.
It's
illegal to capture songbirds, but wildlife officials say it's hard to make a
case when they catch people with empty traps.
"What
this rule would do is it would regulate the use, placement, possession and
transport of the traps themselves," said Craig Faulhaber, an avian
conservation coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"And
that'll allow our law enforcement officers, if they find traps in the wild,
they'll be able to confiscate those traps and help to make cases based on those
traps rather than having to wait and hope to find a bird that's already caught
in the trap."
He said
illegally trapping and selling native songbirds is big business and fairly
profitable.
"We
think that the numbers are increasing and the process is spreading and so we
want to take this opportunity to try and address the problem now," said
Faulhaber.
No comments:
Post a Comment