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Travis John Branson, 48, has agreed to plead guilty to
conspiracy to kill bald and golden eagles and unlawfully traffic
the birds, according to a plea agreement filed in the U.S.
District Court in Missoula, Montana, on Tuesday.
A March 20 change of plea hearing has been scheduled. Branson
faces up to 12 years in prison for the counts he has agreed to
plead guilty to.
The plea agreement did not say whether Branson will assist
prosecutors in their case against Simon Paul, 42, who was
indicted by a grand jury in December along with Branson, or any
other persons involved in the trafficking scheme.
Paul failed to show up for an initial court appearance in
January and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. He remains
at large.
Federal prosecutors say Branson and Simon killed over 3,600
birds, among them an unspecified number of protected bald and
golden eagles, from January 2015 to March 2021, often on or near
the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana.
Prosecutors allege Paul and Branson would hunt the birds on the
reservation and elsewhere.
"The defendants then illegally sold the eagles on the black
market for significant sums of cash across the United States and
elsewhere," the indictment read, without specifying for how much
money.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the bald eagle nearly
went extinct in the mid-1900s because of habitat destruction and
the contamination of fish, its primary food source, by the
insecticide DDT, which made the eagles' eggs thin and easily
breakable.
The U.S. Congress made killing bald eagles illegal in 1940. The
birds were placed on the endangered species list in 1967. They
were removed from all endangered and threatened species lists in
2007.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; editing by
Donna Bryson and Sandra Maler)
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