The National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service could issue a permit to Jemez Pueblo to kill 8 eagles at the Valles Caldera this fall. This is happening despite a criminal investigation of Jemez Pueblo’s killing of 6 eagles and hawks at the Caldera in 2023.
In the fall of 2023 Pueblo hunters violated the terms of an NPS permit allowing them to kill one eagle and restricted their activities in the Preserve while doing so. It is extremely unusual for anyone, regardless of ethnic background to hunt threatened and endangered species on National Park Service land. Doing so is a violation of NPS regulations at 36 CFR 2.1(a) and (d).
Caldera Action was concerned about the 2023 eagle hunt at the time, but we received very little information from the NPS from our Freedom of Information Act requests or otherwise. But Public Employees for Environmental Ethics (PEER), a Washington DC group, managed to get far more information than we did and the information they got paints a concerning picture of federal conduct surrounding the eagle hunting. (This writing is based on the documents PEER received.)
In short, the USFWS and the NPS issued a permit to Jemez Pueblo to hunt one eagle only and it restricted their activities such as driving heavy trucks around or any ground disturbance. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has authority of threatened and endangered species. NPS law enforcement rangers discovered that the hunters had taken 6 eagles when they were permitted to take only one. Also, they drove large trucks around in the woods and meadows and dug a big hole, all in endangered Jemez Mountain salamander habitat.
Meanwhile the part of the Preserve where the hunt was taking place was closed to the public and carried out activities prohibited for the public.
By exceeding their permitted “take” in 2023, the Pueblo hunters were violating several Federal wildlife protection laws – the Lacey Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
After NPS rangers apparently wanted to press charges against the hunters for violating the terms of their permit, they and VCNP top management ended up in a long conversation with USFWS officials and the Department of Justice and Department of Interior Solicitors Office about how to proceed. Efforts by PEER to get access to this conversation documents through FOIA were denied and the documents remain secret. But given who was involved in the conversation, a criminal investigation was likely being discussed. VCNP law enforcement rangers submitted eagle remains to the USFWS Forensics Lab in Ashland, Oregon as part of the investigation. The crimes under investigation are felonies.
Understandably, the federal agencies may have been concerned that pressing charges against Native Americans who were hunting on their ancestral lands and who are members of a “sovern” nation could be complicated.
It should be noted that in those days the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior Solicitors office still had integrity before Trump took office a second time. The NPS referred the case to the Department of Justice offices that could prosecute. They didn’t. Nor did the NPS issue citations for violating the terms of their permit regarding driving on meadows and forests and digging big holes, something the NPS has the authority to do on its own.
The full record of this event and subsequent investigations is available to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Yet they are or have issued a new permit to Jemez Pueblo to repeat the hunt, this time with permission to kill 8 eagles, likely a significant portion of the eagle population at the Caldera. Nobody knows how many eagles they will kill or whether they will again drive large trucks in endangered species habitat among other activities. They have no disincentive to violate the terms of their any new permit.
