Trial opens in killing of eagle
jflynn@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD – With preserved carcasses of a bald eagle and red-tail hawk on display a few feet away, U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Service Agent Thomas F. Ricardi testified yesterday about his first impression of the Mohawk Trout Fishery in 2005.
“There was a smell. It smelled like dead stuff,” said Ricardi, taking the stand in U.S. District Court in the trial of hatchery owner Michael Zak, 59, of Sunderland.
“Then I saw carcasses of what I thought were blue herons. … I counted about 50 of them,” said Ricardi in the first day of Zak’s bird-slaughter trial.
Before the trial began, Zak pleaded guilty yesterday to four counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for killing blue heron, osprey and other protected birds at his hatchery off Route 116 in Sunderland.
Zak has pleaded innocent to the remaining misdemeanor count of violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A co-defendant, Timothy Lloyd, 30, of Easthampton, pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Act on Friday.
Tall, silver-haired and wearing a blue suit, Zak sat at the defendant’s table as federal agents offered graphic details of how the trout hatchery was turned into a killing field for federally protected birds attracted to his fish pools.
Great blue herons, ospreys and bald eagles feed primarily on fish, and the hatchery pools, where thousands of trout were being raised, did not appear to be protected from predatory birds, prosecutors maintain.
Between September 2005 and May 2006, Ricardi said he and other agents found hundreds of carcasses scattered around the hatchery. During one visit, they spotted a freshly-killed osprey hanging from a tree, and a blue heron that had been run over and chopped up by a lawnmower, Ricardi said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly P. West also played a video that she said showed Zak wheeling around the grounds on a golf cart, carrying a rifle.
In the footage shot from the woods by Ricardi, Zak stops the cart, aims his rifle and appears to shoot toward the treeline.
In May 2006, as federal agents were preparing to shut down the hatchery, Ricardi said he found a dead immature bald eagle that had recently begun circling the hatchery with two older bald eagles.
The bird, lying on its stomach, with its claws clenched, had been shot a few hours before, Ricardi said. The bird had been banded, and was being tracked by a wildlife group, he said.
After yesterday’s session ended, federal agents rolled a cart carrying carcasses of a bald eagle, an osprey and a red-tailed hawk out of the courtroom.
“That was our bird,” said Susan Sirko, of Enfield, who attended the trial as a member of the Connecticut-based Bald Eagle Study Group that tracked and banded the 2½-year-old eagle.
“That was our baby,” she added, as prosecutors stopped and allowed her to examine the bird.
Testimony will resume tomorrow in U.S. District Court, with U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor presiding. Zak waived his right to a jury trial on Friday.
(source: The Republican)