This article was originally published in The Examiner on Dec. 21, 2017.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
Two alligators snapping turtles, Brutus and Caesar, were special guests at a press conference Dec. 15 where the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced sentences for illegal trafficking of the endangered species.
Brutus and Caesar curled up on blankets beside a table filled with the empty turtle shells of their dead kin, tagged as “evidence.”
Attorney-in-Charge Matt Quinn called the turtles “modern day dinosaurs.” He explained that they are among the largest freshwater turtles in the world, can weigh more than 200 pounds when fully grown, and can live more than 100 years.
The turtles are protected under Texas law since they’re considered as being threatened with extinction, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but Quinn
explained that the turtles are not as protected in Louisiana.
“I understand state law allows individuals in Louisiana to kill one per day for personal use, and as a result, there are fewer and fewer of these large turtles in Louisiana,” Quinn said. “Because of that, these three defendants came to our great state of Texas to capture and kill these turtles.”
Brutus and Caesar came from Lake Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend, where the poachers captured them and took them to Louisiana to be killed, processed and their meat sold, Quinn said.
Travis Leger of Sulphur, Louisiana, and his half-brother Jason Leckelt of Wilberton, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Lacey Act through illegally trafficking alligator snapping turtles, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Lacey Act makes it a crime to engage in the interstate trafficking of wildlife taken in violation of state wildlife protection laws.
Leger was sentenced to 21 months in prison and Leckelt was sentenced to 16 months.
A third defendant, Rickey Simon of Sulphur, Louisiana, was sentenced to three years of probation, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a news release.
All of the sentences were ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Marcia A. Crone.
“These three defendants admitted to taking over 60 turtles like this from the state of Texas back to Louisiana to be processed and killed at a value of tens of thousands of dollars,” Quinn said.
According to information released from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the market value of the turtles that Leger poached was between $40,000 and $95,000. Leckelt’s turtles were valued between $15,000 and $40,000.
Brutus and Caesar are now being cared for at a fish hatchery as part of a program to breed and restock the species in East Texas waters, Quinn said.
“Many of you here today know our record of prosecuting environmental crimes,” Quinn said, mentioning a 2015 case involving two Bridge City brothers shooting a bottle-nosed dolphin with a compound bow and a 2016 instance in which a Beaumont teenager shot two whooping cranes with a hunting rifle.
“We take these cases seriously in the Eastern District of Texas,” he said.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Phillip Land said that stopping this illegal trade is a priority for his office and emphasized the importance of working together.
“We would not be here today if it were not for a local game warden who saw something and took appropriate action to report it,” Land said, explaining that Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden Sam Smith discovered Joseph Guidry III poaching from a creek.
“He immediately contacted one of our agents with the information,” Land said. “That call initiated the investigation, which resulted in three men pleading guilty today.”
Federal agents later seized about 30 of the turtles from ponds on Leger’s property in Sulphur in a July 2016 raid.
Leger, Leckelt and Simon were all charged in a six-count indictment in April 2017 with illegally taking 60 large turtles during multiple fishing trips to Texas in spring and summer 2016 and then transporting them to his property in Sulphur before sale, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The three men pleaded guilty Aug. 22.
Leger admitted to selling a live, illegally taken 171-pound turtle for $1,000 in May 2016 and another 168-pound turtle for $500 in June 2016. The turtles were later seized by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the buyer, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Simon admitted to selling an illegally trafficked 120-pound turtle to an undercover special agent from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on May 19, 2016.
Investigating the trafficking has taken about four years, Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden Captain Tom Jenkins said.
Eleanor Skelton 