CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : FRESNO : Bird Killings Draw 13-Month Sentence

The operator of a commercial goldfish farm south of Merced was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison for a conviction of having migratory birds killed to keep them from eating his fish. A federal jury earlier found Marvin Carpenter and Carpenter’s Goldfish Farm guilty of 31 counts stemming from a grand jury indictment. Carpenter was convicted of shooting, poisoning and illegally trapping birds between 1983 and 1987. The indictment accused Carpenter of killing more birds than allowed under permits which limited him to killing 50 birds of specified types each year for two years. U.S. District Judge Edward Dean Price also fined Carpenter and the fish farm a total of $30,000. Carpenter said he didn’t put nets over his ponds to keep birds out because netting cost $2 million--more than he could afford.