Trump’s Interior Department seeks to end abuse of migratory bird treaty Act

January 23, 2018 by Bonner Cohen, Ph. D., 1 Comment

Continuing its systematic rollback of Obama-era policies and regulations that centralized power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats and their political allies, the Trump administration is moving to bring much-needed clarity to a century-old bird-protection statute whose enforcement has vexed courts and government officials for decades.

The original Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) of 1918 was enacted to implement the 1916 Convention with Great Britain (for Canada) for the protection of migratory birds whose flyways traverse international borders. Through amendments over the years, the MBTA now covers implementation of similar treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. and Japan, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union (now Russia).

Administered by the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the law makes it illegal to “pursue, hunt, take, [or] capture” any migratory bird “by any means whatever [and] at any time or any manner.”...........To Read More.....