The Pennsylvania Recreation Fee is soliciting the general public’s assist after an osprey was illegally killed in Adams County, in response to a launch.
That launch, issued via the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Operation Game Thief, shared {that a} deceased osprey was reported on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025 inside the Lake Meade Neighborhood, which is situated inside Studying and Latimore townships in Adams County.
“The state recreation warden’s investigation prompt the animal was shot with a small caliber firearm,” in response to the discharge.
“The osprey was beforehand banded for analysis functions,” the fee shared.
Whereas ospreys have been at one time listed as “extirpated” in Pennsylvania in 1979, many years of profitable reintroduction campaigns throughout Pennsylvania have introduced them from “endangered” standing to “protected” in 2017, according to a Game Commission fact sheet.
By 2010, a survey of nesting websites discovered that there have been 115 osprey nests in 21 counties of Pennsylvania, with much more discovered within the years which have adopted.
Although they’re not listed as “endangered,” ospreys stay a protected species underneath the Recreation and Wildlife Code and the Migratory Hen Treaty Act of 1918, in response to the fee.
Anybody with info on the osprey’s killing was requested to contact the Pennsylvania Recreation Fee’s Southcentral Area at 1-833-742-4868, the Operation Recreation Thief hotline at 1-888-PGC-8001 or on-line at http://bit.ly/PGCOGT.