As recently noted here, shortly after the Trump administration took office last year, the Solicitor’s Office for the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) withdrew a legal opinion it issued in the waning days of the Obama administration which concluded that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) prohibits incidental take of migratory birds, pending further review of the question.  The results of that further review were revealed on December 22, 2017, when the Solicitor’s Office issued a new opinion reaching the opposite conclusion.

Continue Reading The Other Shoe Drops on the MBTA

Uncertainty has reigned for a number of years about the scope of the take prohibition under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). In the latest effort to address this problem, the House Committee on Natural Resources has attached an amendment to a pending energy bill that would clarify that the MBTA does not prohibit incidental take of protected birds.

The MBTA, a criminal statute enacted in 1918, is one of the oldest wildlife protection laws on the books and covers over 1,000 bird species, including approximately 90 percent of all birds occurring in North America and many common species. The MBTA makes it illegal for any person to “pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture or kill, possess, offer for sale, sell, offer to purchase, purchase, … ship, … transport, … carry, … receive … at any time, or in any manner, any migratory bird, … or any part, nest, or egg of any such bird.” 16 U.S.C. § 703.

Continue Reading De-Criminalizing the Inevitable: Some Hope for Rationalizing the MBTA?