By Eric Freedman
They were heinous crimes with lethal results. A conspiracy by father and
son, planned with malice aforethought. Perpetrated over a period of
years. Bodies, lots of bodies. Dozens of bodies. Followed by lies and
cover-ups. And ultimately arrests and a plea bargain in the deeply
troubling saga of the Sowinski family.
From 2007 through 2010, Alvin Sowinski – the father in this tale – was
poisoning wildlife on the family’s potato farm in northern Wisconsin.
Why? “Because of the belief that predators were destroying their efforts
to raise game on their property, including pheasants and deer,”
Assistant US Attorney Peter Jarosz, the prosecutor in the case, told me...
Three years later, law enforcement officers found at least nine sites on
the property baited with the remains of deer and beaver, as well as
processed meat. One site contained a coffee can with antifreeze. More
Carbofuran was found at several sites...
As for the cover-up, a wildlife trail camera caught Alvin’s son, Paul,
picking up the corpse of an eagle near a bait pile, throwing it into the
brush, and later tossing it into a burn pile. Paul later admitted
disposing of a federally protected gray wolf in an abandoned truck on
the farm. Of course, authorities have no way of knowing the total
wildlife death toll during that period. The casualty list could be far
higher.
Restitution means returning stolen property to its rightful owners or
compensating them for their economic loss. Under current law,
calculating restitution requires determining the “empirical value” of an
animal, regardless of whether it’s rare, iconic, or belongs to a
popular species.
To me, the case of the poisoning farmers raises intriguing questions.
The first question is simple: Should people who illegally kill wildlife
make restitution to the public? Another federal judge, Mark Moreno of
South Dakota, explained why the answer is Yes as he ordered one
Charles Ross to pay $28,000 – $1,750 each for 16 hawks – in restitution
for “aiding and abetting the unlawful taking of various species of
hawks.”
My second question is tougher: How can courts compute the economic value
of an illegally killed animal, whether a raven, a skunk, an eagle, a
squirrel, or a manatee? How much is fair? Is $1,750 per hawk reasonable?
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