A Connecticut man is facing criminal charges after he shot and killed a black bear earlier this month, and the outcome of his case may hinge on whether his chickens are considered livestock or pets.
The 39-year-old was charged with illegal taking of a black bear after it broke into a chicken run and ate some of his flock. The chicken owner said he actually saw the bear chowing down on one of his birds before he shot it. He also believes the same bear killed his goats back in August, and apparently realized this guy’s property was a pretty good buffet.
So why does it matter if the chickens in question were pets or not? Well, Connecticut law says that if a bear is attacking a human, a pet, or trying to enter a home, lethal force is justified. If a bear is attacking livestock, on the other hand, then the livestock owner is supposed to apply to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for a permit to kill the bear. Until that permit is issued, the livestock owner is supposed to engage in non-lethal methods to discourage the bear from snacking on the livestock in question.
The law is only a few years old. Adopted in 2023, S.B. 1148 authorizes lethal force against bears threatening the lives of humans and their pets, but if a bear is instead damaging crops, livestock, or bees, then a permit is required before it can be shot.
Interestingly, another bill introduced the same year would have established a “clear statutory authority allowing the use of lethal force against a black bear that poses an immediate threat to the life and limb of livestock,” but the bill defined “livestock” as cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses, donkeys, mules, buffalo, oxen, llamas or alpacas. Chickens didn’t make the list.
Another part of Connecticut statute defines “livestock” as “any camelid or hooved animal raised for domestic or commercial use, generally used to produce food or fiber and considered to be farm animals.” That would also seem to put chickens in another category. And in another twist, the current statute that allows for lethal force to be used on bears attacking pets does not define “pet.”
If this chicken owner only had a small backyard flock, I would not be surprised at all if he considers them to be pets. I currently have eight chickens, and I certainly don’t think of them as livestock. I’m definitely not making any money off of them, and unless this guy is running a commercial poultry operation I doubt he’s deriving any kind of profit from his flock either.
Connecticut’s law is unnecessarily restrictive for those who are depend on livestock to make a living. In 2022, there were nearly 150 “conflict reports” involving bears and livestock. Certainly not every one of those incidents should have led to a bear being culled, but that’s still a significant number of interactions, and if a black bear really is harming livestock there might not be many goats, sheep, or other animals left in a herd by the time DEEP gets around to issuing a permit.
In this particular case, though, I don’t think the chicken owner needs to argue that the law unfairly discriminates against livestock owners. All he really needs to do is show that his chickens were treated as family pets. If he has evidence to that effect, I don’t see how on earth prosecutors could hope to win at trial.
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