Wrist-slap optional? I can't understand while this miserable excuse for a human didn't get prison time. I wonder how long he's been doing this?

Grrrr.

"A Gilroy man was given a hefty fine and probation for what wardens are calling one of the largest cases of poaching "since the market-poaching days of the early 1900s," California Department of Fish and Game officials said Monday.

Peter Ignatius Ciraulo, 42, pleaded no contest in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Nov. 3 to three poaching-related charges for killing and keeping about 335 waterfowl over the course of the 2007-08 hunting season, said Warden Patrick Foy, Department of Fish and Game spokesman in a press release.

As part of his sentence, Ciraulo will be fined $7,105, be placed on two years of probation and be forced to serve 100 hours of community service at a waterfowl conservation group, Foy said. He'll also be banned from hunting for one season, he said.

Ciraulo is believed to have shot the 335 birds across Northern California, Foy said, concentrating mostly in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. The birds were found frozen in a freezer at his Gilroy home, he said. All had not been plucked or dressed, Foy said.

"The dead birds included specimens of almost every waterfowl species that migrates into California," Foy said in a press release. The waterfowl found included several protected species such as the tundra swan and sandhill crane, he said.

The possession limit in California is 14 ducks and eight geese, Foy said, well under the 253 ducks and 58 geese Ciraulo had at the time of his arrest.

In addition, Ciraulo had in his possession seven live, wounded snow geese he'd shot, Foy said.

"There was no indication he was trying to sell them and no indication he was trying to eat them," Foy said. "There is no real rationale."

Foy said catching Ciraulo was one of the biggest arrests they'd made since the early 1900s, when poachers would shoot a hundred birds and sell them to local markets. These days, someone shooting twice their limit is considered a big deal, he said.

Foy said the consequences of such a grand-scale level of poaching can be devastating on a local ecosystem.

"If you kill that many birds, you'll see local population declines," he said.


--Sacramento Bee 11.17.08