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Man allegedly pours bleach into Oregon hatchery tank and kills 18,000 salmon (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 6 months ago by Wilshire@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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[-] TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 289 points 6 months ago

The maximum penalty for poaching one Chinook salmon – a species that is protected under the endangered species act – is $750 per fish. If officials assessed fines for every salmon killed, Heckathorn could be asked to pay nearly $14m

Fucking do it. Throw the entire library at this fucker.

[-] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 41 points 6 months ago

To be fair, these are tiny juvenile fish, not adult fish which the authors of the law presumably had in mind. The article indicates that only two- to four-hundred of the juveniles were expected to survive long enough to return as adults, which would correspond to a fine of $150,000 to $300,000. Still more than this guy would probably ever actually pay...

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 89 points 6 months ago

So the law doesn't specify size? Sounds like dude owes 14mil

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

"a fertilized egg is a person"... Hm, so a salmon lays thousands of eggs and the male just mass fertilizes last I knew. I doubt the season matters much when they are kept in controlled environments. Wouldn't they breed year round as their birth place is there home? If so. Jump that number up by a lot. If someone murders a pregnant mother the judge doesn't say, well there is a x% chance it doesn't make it to adulthood.

[-] Tramort@programming.dev 59 points 6 months ago

Jurisprudence shouldn't be based on some random persons presumption.

The law says fish and doesn't specify age. Therefore I presume that's exactly what they meant.

Throw the book at him.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 47 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

If I go out and kill a newborn fawn in the woods for shits and giggles without the appropriate tags, out of season, etc. it's still poaching, just the same as if I went out and killed an 8 point trophy buck I didn't have a tag for, took it home, ate it, mounted it's head on my wall, etc. That fawn may not have survived, it may not have grown into anything impressive, but at the end of the day I killed a deer I was not legally allowed to kill. The guy writing the law probably didn't have killing fawns for fun in mind, they probably pictured something more like the second example I gave, but I think most of us would agree that the fawn-killer should be punished just as or maybe even more harshly that the buck-killer.

I can't think of any good reason it shouldn't be the same for fish.

EDIT: also, usually with fishing regulations, there's also size limits, you can't keep a fish under a certain size, it has to be thrown back. These fish were almost certainly under the legal size. Not to mention creel limits, even if they were somehow all of a legal size, and even if he somehow did everything else legally (which he didn't,) I suspect the creel limit on salmon is significantly lower than 18,000

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 26 points 6 months ago

reads comment

Looks at user name

You made that up.

[-] n0m4n@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago

What are the costs to grow another cohort of fish? What is the time value of setting the program back for the number of years that it will take to get back to normal, and that is assuming that we can?

[-] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

If only animal law was actually enforced like tree law...

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 77 points 6 months ago

He told law enforcement officials he had visited a storage area the day before and picked up a bottle of bleach

That sounds way too premeditated to be explained by simple mental illness.

[-] Jaysyn@kbin.social 39 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

After the past year, I can believe it.

I hope you never have to deal with a family member with paranoid schizophrenia.

[-] Hegar@kbin.social 26 points 6 months ago

way too premeditated to be explained by simple mental illness

Ah, you think it was complex mental illness?

In all seriousness though, moving a bottle of bleach the day before is still within the capability of someone experiencing an acute mental illness.

Of course, it's pure speculation either way at this point.

[-] eltimablo@kbin.social 13 points 6 months ago

I'd argue that premeditating something like this is a rather strong indicator of some form of mental illness.

[-] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works -5 points 6 months ago

Why would you assume he is mentally ill? I didn't see that mentioned in the article.

[-] Hegar@kbin.social 11 points 6 months ago

Firstly, I don't read any assumption of mental illness in that comment - if anything the comment is rejecting mental illness. But given that there's no mention of any motive - and the difficulty in even thinking of one - mental illness is very reasonable to consider as a possibility.

[-] meleecrits@lemmy.world 62 points 6 months ago

This program was doing a good thing for the environment. It has long-lasting benefits for everyone. This is heartbreaking.

[-] _lilith@lemmy.world 43 points 6 months ago

Yep same as that asshole that started that wild fire by multnomah falls. Garnish their wages for the rest of their lives. I don't want them to ever stop paying.

[-] ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 25 points 6 months ago

or the guy that pissed in the holding reservoir in Portland. The utility dumped all (I forget the exact number) 7 million gallons or so but his fine was in the thousands of dollars and not what the retail cost of that amount of water would be.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 4 points 6 months ago

Wait what? Like an outdoor reservoir/lake like thing or something else?

[-] ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

correct. The one I am thinking about but can't find pre-coffee happened in the past couple of years but I found this one from ~10 years ago (38 Million gallons): https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/17/304128931/one-mans-pee-pushes-portland-to-flush-38m-gallons-of-water

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 6 points 6 months ago

That just seems like a bad call to me in ways ... Maybe this is more normal than I think, but ... what if fish get in there, ducks, other animals, some runoff, etc?

Part of that is mitigated by the size I imagine but that should also apply to human urine... I would think anyways?

[-] Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 38 points 6 months ago

Is there a motive?? I didn't see any mention in the article other than someone else asking the same question I have, why the hell did he do it?

[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 17 points 6 months ago

I'm gonna guess meth + boredom considering he lives on the coast.

[-] Delusional@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago

It just takes one asshole to ruin it for everyone else.

[-] Vej@lemm.ee -5 points 6 months ago

Bleach will affect the Salmon Population.

this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
331 points (98.5% liked)

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