$120,000 and no duck hunting for 3 years....This one will make Trad smile!
A federal investigation into illegally hunting waterfowl over bait on a ranch in Anderson County has resulted in the trust that operates the property agreeing to pay a $120,000 fine and eliminate migratory bird hunting on the property for the next three years.
The Edwin L. Cox Sr. Trust agreed to pay the fine after a two-year investigation by special agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the 10,000-acre Lochridge Ranch in northeastern Anderson County, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tyler announced Monday.
Edwin L. Cox Sr., is a Dallas oilman. He is also the father of Ed Cox Jr., a former chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission.
According to a violation notice provided by government, grain sales invoices from January 1999 to November 2004 obtained by FWS agents indicated "over 95,000 pounds of milo had been purchased by one of the Coxes, and delivered to the Ranch by Kerens Grain & Elevator, Kerens, Texas. The milo was stored in a Ranch barn until employees were directed to broadcast it into the marshes just prior to and during the annual Texas duck hunting season."
FWS Special Agent Steve Hamilton, of Fort Worth, the lead investigator in the case, said former ranch employees who contacted him tipped him to the baiting practice in 2003. Over the length of the investigation, Hamilton said he interviewed witnesses from across the country, tracking the baiting practice back five years.
According to the notice, FWS agents entered the ranch during the waterfowl season last November where they located several Cox family members, who were not identified, and two employees hunting. They discovered what they estimated as several hundred pounds of milo in and around the water at a marsh on the property. The two ranch employees admitted to the agents they had been told to spread the grain using a tractor about three weeks earlier. The family members told the agents they did not know the area had been baited.
Although none of the Coxes were identified in the notice, it did identify the two ranch employees, ranch manager and general manager, and noted they had knowledge of the baiting practice.
Hamilton said the 47½ tons of grain purchased during the five-year period was a significant amount.
"Without polling every agent in the country, it is a substantial amount. It is the biggest amount of grain I have investigated," Hamilton said, adding that the $120,000 fine is also the largest he has been involved with in a bait case.
Under federal law, a corporation could receive a maximum fine of $200,000, while an individual could receive a fine up to $100,000 and/or up to a year in prison.
Alan Jackson, assistant U.S. Attorney in Tyler, said charges were filed against the ranch owner because the baiting practice appeared to have occurred over a long period of time.
"We thought we had two options. We could go after each of the individuals involved, but since it appeared to be systemic over a couple of years and appeared there was some corporate involvement it made more sense to pursue the owner of the property and to essentially do it as a global settlement," Jackson said.
He said no individual charges were filed in November because "we did not know for sure at the time what we had or what we were going to do with it," Jackson said.
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