The maximum penalty for poaching one Chinook salmon – a species that is protected under the endangered species act – is $750 per fish. If officials assessed fines for every salmon killed, Heckathorn could be asked to pay nearly $14m
Fucking do it. Throw the entire library at this fucker.
To be fair, these are tiny juvenile fish, not adult fish which the authors of the law presumably had in mind. The article indicates that only two- to four-hundred of the juveniles were expected to survive long enough to return as adults, which would correspond to a fine of $150,000 to $300,000. Still more than this guy would probably ever actually pay…
“a fertilized egg is a person”… Hm, so a salmon lays thousands of eggs and the male just mass fertilizes last I knew. I doubt the season matters much when they are kept in controlled environments. Wouldn’t they breed year round as their birth place is there home? If so. Jump that number up by a lot. If someone murders a pregnant mother the judge doesn’t say, well there is a x% chance it doesn’t make it to adulthood.
If I go out and kill a newborn fawn in the woods for shits and giggles without the appropriate tags, out of season, etc. it’s still poaching, just the same as if I went out and killed an 8 point trophy buck I didn’t have a tag for, took it home, ate it, mounted it’s head on my wall, etc. That fawn may not have survived, it may not have grown into anything impressive, but at the end of the day I killed a deer I was not legally allowed to kill. The guy writing the law probably didn’t have killing fawns for fun in mind, they probably pictured something more like the second example I gave, but I think most of us would agree that the fawn-killer should be punished just as or maybe even more harshly that the buck-killer.
I can’t think of any good reason it shouldn’t be the same for fish.
EDIT: also, usually with fishing regulations, there’s also size limits, you can’t keep a fish under a certain size, it has to be thrown back. These fish were almost certainly under the legal size. Not to mention creel limits, even if they were somehow all of a legal size, and even if he somehow did everything else legally (which he didn’t,) I suspect the creel limit on salmon is significantly lower than 18,000
What are the costs to grow another cohort of fish? What is the time value of setting the program back for the number of years that it will take to get back to normal, and that is assuming that we can?
Need to bring back forced labor for people that intentionally harm society.
Let them slave away the rest of their days, if they want to eat they will work 12 hours a day. If not they don’t eat and our problem takes care of itself.
That’s literally what For Profit prisons are designed for. And it’s constitutionally legal:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Fucking do it. Throw the entire library at this fucker.
To be fair, these are tiny juvenile fish, not adult fish which the authors of the law presumably had in mind. The article indicates that only two- to four-hundred of the juveniles were expected to survive long enough to return as adults, which would correspond to a fine of $150,000 to $300,000. Still more than this guy would probably ever actually pay…
So the law doesn’t specify size? Sounds like dude owes 14mil
“a fertilized egg is a person”… Hm, so a salmon lays thousands of eggs and the male just mass fertilizes last I knew. I doubt the season matters much when they are kept in controlled environments. Wouldn’t they breed year round as their birth place is there home? If so. Jump that number up by a lot. If someone murders a pregnant mother the judge doesn’t say, well there is a x% chance it doesn’t make it to adulthood.
Jurisprudence shouldn’t be based on some random persons presumption.
The law says fish and doesn’t specify age. Therefore I presume that’s exactly what they meant.
Throw the book at him.
If I go out and kill a newborn fawn in the woods for shits and giggles without the appropriate tags, out of season, etc. it’s still poaching, just the same as if I went out and killed an 8 point trophy buck I didn’t have a tag for, took it home, ate it, mounted it’s head on my wall, etc. That fawn may not have survived, it may not have grown into anything impressive, but at the end of the day I killed a deer I was not legally allowed to kill. The guy writing the law probably didn’t have killing fawns for fun in mind, they probably pictured something more like the second example I gave, but I think most of us would agree that the fawn-killer should be punished just as or maybe even more harshly that the buck-killer.
I can’t think of any good reason it shouldn’t be the same for fish.
EDIT: also, usually with fishing regulations, there’s also size limits, you can’t keep a fish under a certain size, it has to be thrown back. These fish were almost certainly under the legal size. Not to mention creel limits, even if they were somehow all of a legal size, and even if he somehow did everything else legally (which he didn’t,) I suspect the creel limit on salmon is significantly lower than 18,000
reads comment
Looks at user name
You made that up.
What are the costs to grow another cohort of fish? What is the time value of setting the program back for the number of years that it will take to get back to normal, and that is assuming that we can?
Need to bring back forced labor for people that intentionally harm society.
Let them slave away the rest of their days, if they want to eat they will work 12 hours a day. If not they don’t eat and our problem takes care of itself.
That’s literally what For Profit prisons are designed for. And it’s constitutionally legal:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
For the record, that’s fucked up.
If only animal law was actually enforced like tree law…