ndraise off of it. Although the exemption makes our work infinitely harder, we will never betray the animals we are sworn to protect."

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Letter sent to PA legislators:



When we at Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) first read the text of Libre’s law we were excited, as it changed important language from Pennsylvania’s previous animal cruelty language, making the statute much stronger. However, that excitement turned to horror when we realized that an amendment had been added to ACT 10 of 2017 that gave an exemption for, "Shooting activities not otherwise prohibited under this subchapter.” In other words live pigeon shoots.

SHARK is the preeminent organization working against pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania and around the country, and we are the only group currently on the ground at PA pigeon shoots both documenting the cruelty and rescuing wounded birds. If you’ve seen video exposing pigeon shoot cruelty from the past seven years, there is almost no doubt that it came from our hard work.

It is our understanding that you had been informed that pigeon shoots were already legal and that the exemption language maintained the “status quo.” Please understand that this is 100% false. Pigeon shoots were illegal under pre-existing law. 

Any confusion about the legality of pigeon shoots come from a PA Supreme Court decision from 1891 when the laws were very different from today. We published a detailed report on this which you can read on the following link: http://www.sharkonline.org/images/handouts/whypigeonshootsareillegal.pdf

To summarize our report, pigeons were neither covered under game code regulations nor were they exempted from the cruelty statute. Therefore, as an un-exempted “animal” they were a protected species. 

We were not the only ones who knew that pigeon shoots were already illegal. SHARK released videos with five current and former humane police officers who went on the record stating the illegality of pigeon shoots. These included Former PA SPCA Exective Director Erik Hendricks, Retired PA Humane Society Police Officers Clayton Hulsizer,  Johnna Seeton, Debra Hartman and Berks County Humane Society Executive Director Karel Minor. That pigeon shooters were able to get away with what they did had to do with the untouchability that their wealth, power and political connections bought them, and not what the law actually said. 

We understand that you have received information from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) saying that shoots were legal, however, even within the groups supporting Libre’s law there was opposing views on this. For instance, the aforementioned Karel Minor, of Humane PA PAC and Federated Humane Societies of PA, stated in a recent article that his organization "continues to believe pigeon shoots to be illegal under current law,” but that they supported the legislation for other reasons.

The point is, when you have such opposing views regarding the previous cruelty statute within the coalition that supported Libre’s law, you should be very alarmed about what information that was fed to you saying pigeon shoots were already legal, and that the exemption maintained the “status quo,” for it most certainly did not.

The humane groups that supported Libre’s law, with the exemption, did so because they gave up on getting prosecutions under the previous law, and were willing to sacrifice pigeons just to get a win. Once again from the recent article:

“Since the existing law has not been successfully used to prosecute a shoot,”  Minor contended,  “this exemption is not standing in the way of successful prosecutions,  since none are occurring.  In the counties where shoots occur,  District Attorneys have actively quashed prosecutions on any grounds,  including in Berks County by Humane Pennsylvania, regardless of current law.”

This too is 100% false. Last year, video SHARK took at a pigeon shoot in Bucks County, where a worker tortured pigeons, was given to the Local police and District Attorney. That person was charged with and pled guilty to charges of animal cruelty. This was an historic event and we proved it was possible to obtain successful prosecutions. 

SHARK was working on a strategy to end pigeon shoots using our legal arguments when ACT 10 was passed with the exemption, which negated years of hard work. It is truly unfortunate that you were so mislead about the law, but now we must move forward.

There have been many newspaper editorials published calling for an end to pigeon shoots, and the overwhelming majority of people in PA oppose shoots as well. We implore you to take immediate action to pass legislation banning pigeon shoots and correct the terrible mistake made in Libre’s law.

Sincerely

Stuart Chaifetz
East Coast Director, SHARK