Død delfin fundet skudt på Louis Isianas vestmaes strand med kugler i hjerne, rygrad og hjerte som noaa tilbyder $20.000 belønning

Whoever put bullets through a young dolphin off the Louisiana coast has not been caught. The carcass washed up on West Mae’s Beach in Cameron Parish on March 13, 2024. A necropsy at the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans found rounds lodged in the brain, the spinal cord, and the heart. Audubon Aquarium Rescue, a NOAA stranding partner, said the animal died of that trauma at or near the moment it was shot.

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is still offering up to $20,000 for information that leads to a criminal conviction or a civil penalty. The reward has been on the books since April 2024. No arrest has been announced. Tips can go to the NOAA Enforcement Hotline at 800-853-1964. Anonymous calls are accepted, but a name and a contact are required to collect the money.

Killing a wild dolphin is not a local nuisance case. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 makes it a federal crime to harass, harm, feed, or kill these animals. Penalties run as high as $100,000 and a year in jail per offense. NOAA still posts the same instruction it posted the week the body was found: if you see a stranded or injured marine mammal, call the Southeast Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline and leave it to trained responders.

Et dyr, en hel bugt

Dr. Moby Solangi, president of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, has said for years that bottlenose dolphins live in tight family groups and that killing one animal can scramble a whole social unit. West Mae’s Beach sits near Barataria Bay, Louisiana’s largest estuary and a year-round home for a bottlenose population scientists already treat as stressed. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, that bay’s dolphins suffered reproductive failure and chronic illness tied to oil. Later surveys put the remaining Barataria animals at roughly 2,000.

Det er den sammenhæng, en skytte gik ind i: en befolkning, der allerede var blevet forgiftet af industrien, derefter færdig med en riffel. AEGIS Alliance har sporet det samme mønster af behandling af marine liv som mål praksis eller et sideshow, fra de lande, der Endelig forbudt dræberhval og delfin avl til de registrerede besætninger California søløver, der overtog San Francisco 's Pier 39.

Sagen er stadig åben. NOAA har ikke nævnt en mistænkt. De $20.000 er stadig på bordet. For mere om, hvordan regeringer behandler vand, dyreliv, og de mennesker, der bor ved siden af begge, se AEGIS Alliance 's Miljø dækning og rapporten om Nestlé trækker vand fra canadiske byer på udløbet tilladelser.