Wildlife photographer pleads guilty to violating Endangered Species Act

[Bryan Munn]

I have never met or photographed with Jim Neiger, and I am not going to sit here in judgment when I don't know the facts of the case. However, I would like to address a few things that really tick me off.

Most of these researchers are doing far more harm to birds than any nature photographer ALL IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE. Sometimes when I am photographing bandings, I am actually wincing. I don't like the way the birds are struggling when trapped in mist nets or removed from nest cavities when they are only days old to be poked, prodded and banded...not to mention the GPS devices now being placed on a # of species. Remind me why we as nature photographers are being vilified?

Everyone knows that the media likes to put a slant on almost all stories in an attempt to sensationalize them and make more money. The real facts of the case one way or the other are never going to be known b/c the case is being plea bargained and speculating, just like ***uming, will only make you look like one.

Don't folks on FB have anything better to do that kick people while they are down and rush to judgment when they don't know the man or the facts and probably never will??? I suspect that many of them are living in glass houses, and the hypocrisy is baffling!!! It seems some photographers are posting stories simply to bring attention to themselves rather than to bring about a healthy debate on an important topic. Doesn't anybody have better things to do than trash people they don't even know on social networks?

Nature photographers are not the root cause of issues with endangered species...loss of habitat is. Maybe folks need to be more focused on how they can leave less of a foot print in their own lives rather than talking trash about others. I am just so sick and tired of all of the negativity and hypocrisy out there.

Stepping down off of my soapbox now!

Very well said.

IMHO there is so much hypocrisy and irrationality in federal law, it is hard not to look at incidents like this with a very jaundiced eye. In the USA at least, it has come to the point that if you know what Federal, State, City or County regulatory code to look in, by the letter of the law almost everything is illegal. I am not just talking about wildlife photography, but life in general. It is how the law is enforced, which is in no way consistent or predictable, that the politics of the moment rears its ugly head.

I have no opinion on what this photographer did or didn't do, since I have no firsthand knowledge of the incident. I do know the federal authorities will eagerly hang him out to dry and do all they can to ruin him and "make an example". But a local developer with the right political connections who sends money to the right people will be given gleeful federal, state, and local blessing to bulldoze and develop the very same sort of nesting habitat of the birds that this photographer may or may not have in some way "disturbed".

I have always thought that Point Reyes National Seashore in California illustrates this hypocrisy quite well. The area is managed by the National Park System, so I am sure all you know what that means. It is patrolled by National Park Service rangers, who typically enforce the "letter" of the law without any interpretation, discretion, or injection of common sense. If the ranger interprets that you have "disturbed" any creatures, or damaged any feature of the park in any way, you can usually count on formal enforcement action being taken against you. I guess that would be "OK", as long as we all know and are all bound by the same rules, right? But here is the hypocrisy...cattle ranching is allowed within most of the open terrain in the seashore. So nearly everywhere you go, you are confronted with herds of cattle grazing and trampling the "protected" terrain into a morass of mud and cow manure, ranchers driving their pick-up trucks through the meadows, etc.

This is why I take incidents like this with a grain of salt. Federal law is "political" law, and its long arm is generally only wielded against those without the money or political connections to be "above" it. Photographers typically make easy targets, despite the fact that whatever environmental "damage" they do is usually minimal or non-existent.

End of rant.