The State - News from July 1, 1988

Federal and state agencies are investigating a fish farmer in the Merced County community of El Nido, after officials found a burial site containing more than 700 birds on his ranch. U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigators obtained a search warrant and used a backhoe to uncover birds buried on Marvin Carpenter’s fish farm in mid-April, state Fish and Game officials said. Carpenter hired Merced College students to shoot the birds, officials said. In addition, traps were set in Carpenter’s fishponds and a chemical was used to disinfect the ponds, killing birds that fed on the dead fish, according to authorities. Carpenter had been issued federal permits in 1984 and 1987 to kill 50 birds a year as they fed on his goldfish, but a Fish and Game investigator said Carpenter apparently was “shooting more than he should have been shooting.” One man who was hired by Carpenter to shoot birds on the 400-acre fish farm said, “I was told to shoot anything that moved.”