Dolphin found shot to death on Louisiana beach, $20,000 reward offered

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Nearly 200 programs to raise baby salmon in a controlled environment dot the rivers in Oregon, holding them before releasing them into the wild to live out their life cycle.

Last week, a man broke into the Winchester Bay Salmon Trout Enhancement Program (Step) and poured bleach into a Chinook salmon tank, killing about 18,000 fish.

Authorities arrested 20-year-old Joshua Alexander Heckathorn, a resident of Gardiner, Oregon, on 23 April, a day after the chemicals were dumped into one of the hatchery rearing ponds.

He told law enforcement officials he had visited a storage area the day before and picked up a bottle of bleach, according to a Facebook post by the Douglas county sheriff’s office. Heckathorn was arrested and booked into the Douglas county jail on Tuesday for second-degree burglary, criminal trespass and criminal mischief.

The maximum penalty for poaching Chinook salmon – a species that is protected under the endangered species act – is $750 per fish. If officials assessed fines for every salmon killed, Heckathorn could be asked to pay nearly $14m, state fish and wildlife officials noted, adding that “the case represents a significant loss to the Step program”, a non-profit volunteer group dedicated to raising Chinook salmon for wildlife purposes.


Volunteers drained the pond and removed the dead fish, which have been frozen and taken to Oregon state police as evidence.

“What would possess someone to do something like this?” wrote the hatchery in a Facebook post, adding that the young fish, returning from the ocean as adults in three to four years, would have added 200–400 fully grown salmon available for harvest for fishers, generating much-needed revenue in local economies.…….

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/30/oregon-salmon-bleach?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other