Federal prosecutors in Montana charged two men with poaching federally protected bald and golden eagles in a black market scheme that involved selling their feathers and body parts to buyers around the country.
The two men, Simon Paul and Travis John Branson, are accused of killing about 3,600 birds, including the eagles, on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana and elsewhere over the course of about six years, according to court filings.
They were indicted on charges including conspiracy, violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act - which restricts the killing and capturing of the two species - and violating the Lacey Act, which prohibits trafficking of illegally acquired wildlife. If convicted, they could face up to several years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Prosecutors recorded at least 11 incidents in which a whole golden eagle or its body parts were sold, and at least two incidents in which a bald eagle or its body parts were sold. It's unclear how much money Branson and Paul were accused of earning in the sales, and prosecutors were not immediately reachable for comment late Wednesday.
According to the indictment, Branson had sent messages acknowledging the illegal nature of his poaching and told buyers he was "on a killing spree" to harvest feathers from eagle tails and wings for profit. Paul served as a shooter and shipper of bald and golden eagles on the black market for Branson, who would travel to the area around the Flathead Indian Reservation from Washington state, it added.
Bald eagles, the U.S. national bird long regarded as a symbol of freedom, reached an all-time low in 1963, when federal officials estimated that there were just 417 nesting pairs. In 1978, the species was designated as endangered in most U.S. states, but the population was able to recover to nearly 9,800 breeding pairs in the contiguous United States by 2007, and was fully removed from the list of threatened and endangered species that year.
The bald eagle population across the Lower 48 U.S. states is about 316,700, according to data from 2018 and 2019. The golden eagle population in the interior western United States was estimated to be about 31,800 in 2016.
Although killing or trafficking bald or golden eagles is illegal in the United States, there are exceptions that allow some Native Americans to possess eagle parts on the grounds of religious or cultural use.
