Bill would stiffen penalties for shooting livestock, seeks to clamp down on thievery of livestock dogs
SALT LAKE CITY — A person who shoots farmers’ livestock could lose their hunting license under a bill that’s advancing through the Utah Legislature.
HB166 would stiffen penalties for shooting or stealing livestock. It also would clamp down on thievery of livestock dogs — which are typically the big, white Great Pyrenees dogs seen roaming in rural areas with herds of sheep.
Sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, it advanced through the Utah House on Friday on a 67-4 vote. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Snider said the bill is “significant and timely” in a day and age when more and more Utahns are recreating in the state’s rural areas and causing trouble with farmers.
“Many of you who are not from rural Utah have discovered a love of rural Utah, which we very much appreciate ... but what’s happening is some of your friends are not being responsible,” Snider said. “We’re seeing this year in ways that we’ve never saw before livestock being shot indiscriminately.”
Snider said current law allows hunting licenses to be revoked for wildlife poaching, but not for shooting of livestock. His bill would allow a judge the option to revoke a hunting license in the case of a livestock shooting.
“We’re finding many instances people who may commit these crimes are more scared of losing their right to hunt than they are of the penalty that is assessed for killing livestock,” Snider said.
On top of horses and cattle being shot, Snider said more and more people are also stealing “all types of animals off the mountains,” including herding dogs.
“If any of you have been around a band of sheep, there’s always a big white puffy dog there,” Snider said. “He does not like you, he does not want to go home with you, but people think that he should, and there has been significant amounts of theft of those animals.”
Last year, a dog made headlines in Utah after a woman who believed she found an abandoned Great Pyrenees who’d mothered puppies was charged with theft and obstruction of justice, both third-degree felonies, in Logan’s 1st District Court.
The bill lowers the threshold of penalties to make sure when damage happens, “whether it’s from loss or destruction or death, that people are sufficiently charged with the crime,” Snider said. It specifies that a person could be charged with a class B misdemeanor if the value of the livestock is $250 (down from $500) or less; a class A misdemeanor if the value of the livestock is more than $250 but less than $750; a third degree felony if the value of the livestock is more than $750 (down from $1,500); and a second degree felony if the value of the livestock is more than $1,500 (down from $5,000).
Snider’s bill also classifies those livestock guardian dogs as livestock and specifies the owner of the livestock dog is presumed to be the same owner of the livestock the dog is guarding.
Rep. Scott Chew, a Republican from Jensen who is also a rancher, said shooting and stealing of livestock and their guard dogs can “result in thousands of dollars of damage in addition to creating orphan livestock.”
He noted that livestock dogs are also “extremely expensive and difficult to train, and it is a great loss to the producers when these dogs are not out there doing their job.”
Chew said several years ago his father caught three men “butchering one of our cows,” which was at the time valued at $850. They were both fined $250 and paid restitution. Around the same time, he said two men illegally shot a cow elk, and they lost their hunting privileges.
“It’s a pretty serious activity that people have kind of scoffed at the penalties that we’ve gotten out there right now,” Chew said, adding that had the crime been committed 100 years prior “there’s a great possibility ... (the perpetrators) may have wound up in the nearest tall cottonwood tree.”
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/3t6yfsh
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