newjerseynewsroom.com

BY PAT SUMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

Last May 13, Princeton’s animal control officer (ACO) walked into a town park carrying a rifle and shot two beavers to death. State rules for wildlife forbid trapping or killing beavers without express written approval/permit from the New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW).

Local coverage of the killing generated outrage among Princeton Packet readers, who wrote letters to the editor and comments on stories that appeared in the paper. Most cited earlier unilateral actions by Mark Johnson, the ACO, and/or claimed he was being protected.

That was in May. By early June, it was still essentially “business as usual” for the ACO, whose supervisor, health officer David A. Henry, described the local police investigation as “a personnel matter,” meaning it couldn’t be discussed. The same was true of reports on the incident to come from the NJ DEP and the Dept. of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), where laws pertaining to animals and ACOs reside.

More than three months later, in late August, there were still no state agency reports and the event was still described as a “personnel matter.” By then, Henry, had produced a large binder with standard operating procedures for the ACO (who had by then been on the job for about 16 years without such a reference).

By this time, the ACO had received one summons from DEP, and the designated court began migrating from Princeton (conflict of interest) to a series of other municipalities in Mercer county.

For months, not much else happened and the beaver-killing ACO remained on the job. Early in the new year, Henry indicated a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for Jan. 12 in the Hamilton Township municipal court.

He also disclosed on Jan. 6 that DHSS had ruled it would take no further action IF the ACO followed the wildlife manual (produced entirely since the beaver shooting) did not kill any NJ DEP-protected animals/animals requiring a permit.

On Jan. 13, eight months to the day from when the ACO shot the two beavers and the day after the scheduled hearing, Henry replied to a question about its outcome: “The prosecutor present yesterday is also the prosecutor for Princeton Township so there was an immediate conflict. The pre-trial hearing will be re-scheduled with another prosecutor in Hamilton at a later date.”

Now approaching the year mark since the two beavers were killed – seemingly illegally –the case is still unresolved and the ACO remains on the job.

The string of inactions following the incident is open to interpretation.

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Princeton beaver-shooting case on hold

Princeton’s beaver-shootings unresolved as fall approaches

Freelance writer Pat Summers also blogs at www.AnimalBeat.blogspot.com and www.nj.com/pets.