BrianGarst.com

Government busy bodies claim they write laws to protect things, like animals. But this is betrayed by how the same bureaucrats react when confronted with people actually doing what it is they purport their laws are there to do (Hat-tip: Cato@Liberty):

Eleven-year-old aspiring veterinarian, Skylar Capo, sprang into action the second she learned that a baby woodpecker in her Dad’s backyard was about to be eaten by the family cat.

“I’ve just always loved animals,” said Skylar Capo. “I couldn’t stand to watch it be eaten.”

Skylar couldn’t find the woodpecker’s mother, so she brought it to her own mother, Alison Capo, who agreed to take it home.

“She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go,” said Capo.

But on the drive home, the Capo family stopped at a Lowes in Fredericksburg and they brought the bird inside because of the heat. That’s when they were confronted by a fellow shopper who said she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

…The problem was that the woodpecker is a protected species under the Federal Migratory Bird Act.  Therefore, it is illegal to take or transport a baby woodpecker.  The Capo family says they had no idea.

…So as soon as the Capo family returned home, they say they opened the cage, the bird flew away, and they reported it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

…”They said that’s great, that’s exactly what we want to see,” said Capo. “We thought that we had done everything that we could possibly do.”

But roughly two weeks later, that same woman from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up at Capo’s front door. This time, Capo says the woman was accompanied by a state trooper.  Capo refused to accept a citation, but was later mailed a notice to appear in U.S. District Court for unlawfully taking a migratory bird.  She’s also been slapped with a $535 fine.

Fish and Wildlife later claimed the citation was processed and delivered in error. Part of their statement:

Upon speaking with the subject, later identified as Alison Capo, on June 27, the agent determined that no further action was warranted. A citation that had been previously drafted by the agent was cancelled on June 28.

Unfortunately, the citation was processed unintentionally despite our office’s request to cancel the ticket. The Service has contacted Ms. Capo to express our regret. The Service is also sending Ms. Capo a formal letter explain the clerical error and confirming that ticket should never have been issued.

I don’t give these agencies the benefit of the doubt on such matters, but rather tend to assume that they are simply lying and only withdrew the citation because of public outcry. That said, even if we take their explanation on face value, there’s something fundamentally wrong when people can’t even go shopping without being confronted by some random federal bureaucrat enforcing an obscure infraction.

There are simply too many federal rules for anyone to possibly be aware of, much less follow. In Federalist No. 62, believed to have been written by James Madison, the danger of overgovernment is aptly described:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Overgovernment U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service