Filed at December 14, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key and Environment by Keys
In a letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The Humane Society of the United States asks the federal agency to immediately halt a trapping program in the Florida Keys because it is needlessly killing raccoons and other native wildlife species. Local residents and wildlife advocates have expressed outrage over the senseless trapping of native wildlife. In its letter to USFWS Southeast Director Sam Hamilton, The HSUS points out that the Fish and Wildlife Service may be violating federal law by carrying out this reckless and indiscriminate killing campaign.
Last March, the USFWS hired USDA Wildlife Services to humanely trap feral and free-roaming cats and bring them to animal shelters, which then would place them in colonies or return them to their owners. The stated goal of the program is to reduce predation upon the endangered marsh rabbit. However, instead of removing cats, it turns out that Wildlife Services has been trapping and killing large numbers of raccoons and other wildlife under a program which costs taxpayers $50,000. “The irony is that the main species they are trying to protect – the Lower Keys marsh rabbit – is rarely preyed upon by raccoons,” explains Laura Simon, field director of urban wildlife for The HSUS. “The federal government is killing dozens of raccoons and other species indiscriminately, for no good reason, and taxpayers are footing the bill.” Read more »
Filed at December 7, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key by Keys
A convicted alligator killer has violated his probation by drinking alcohol and taking opiates while on work release from the Monroe County Detention Center this week, authorities said Thursday.
Jordan Milo, 21, of Big Pine Key, was returning to jail after a day’s work at a construction site Tuesday when corrections officers suspected he was under the influence of some substance. A urine test and three Breathalyzer tests showed opiates and blood-alcohol levels of 0.11, 0.12, and 0.13, according to sheriff’s spokeswoman Becky Herrin and Assistant State Attorney Val Winter, who prosecuted the case. Milo could have his probation reinstated or be sentenced to serve five years in prison, the maximum he could have received for poaching the alligator in the Blue Hole wildlife preserve last year. He also risks losing the chance to have the felony charge expunged from his criminal record, one of the terms of his probation.
“The judge could do anything,” Winter said.
An arraignment has been scheduled for 8:45 a.m. Thursday at the Monroe County courthouse on Whitehead Street. Milo either can admit violating his probation or deny it and request a hearing. His attorney, Nathan Eden, did not return The Citizen’s calls for comment Thursday. Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office has revoked Milo’s work-release privilege, Herrin said. Work-release inmates have more freedom than the general population, but they also are monitored more closely, she said. “They ride a bike to work and we know how long it takes to get there and back, and the employers are given a session on how to supervise the inmates,” she said, “but these things happen and we catch them when they do.”
Milo and his accomplice, 19-year-old Marathon resident Timothy Goll, began serving a six-month jail term in September, to be followed by five years on probation. Judge Mark Jones ordered them to complete eight hours of public service a month, half of which must be for environmental causes, during the first three years of their probation. The judge also ordered both receive psychological evaluations and the appropriate treatment, and banned them from the Blue Hole wildlife preserve. Both pleaded guilty in June to third-degree felony charges for blinding and bludgeoning to death a 6-foot female alligator they then ate at a backyard barbecue in March, photos of which they posted on www.myspace.com.
Filed at September 8, 2007 under Animals and Florida Keys/Lower Keys/Big Pine Key by Keys
The two young men who killed Cola the alligator with a high-powered pellet gun and souvenir baseball bat, ate her at a barbecue and gloated with pictures on MySpace.com are going to jail. ”They picked the wrong gator to kill,” Gordon Sharp, the arresting officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said Friday during the impassioned five-hour sentencing hearing.
Cola lived with its mate Bacardi at the Blue Hole, an abandoned rock quarry turned pond on a federal refuge on Big Pine Key. She was visited yearly by thousands, and described as “semi-tame.”
Circuit Judge Mark H. Jones, saying he rarely has seen a case with as much public interest, sentenced Jordan Milo, 20, and Timothy Goll, 19, to six months at the Monroe County Detention Center, five years’ probation, community service and a psychological evaluation. Before being led away in handcuffs, Milo, a sergeant in the 194th Army Reserve unit with orders to go to Iraq, blurted: “I will be dishonorably discharged.” That prompted an angry Jones to tell Milo: “You still don’t get it.” Read more »
