Berlin – A German appellate court in Stuttgart proposed a $19,500 fine Tuesday against a 70-year-old man who fatally beat an escaped golden eagle with his walking stick after it attacked his dachshund.
The court agreed with a lower court’s decision that a wildlife center that let the eagle escape was partly responsible, but it attributed even more blame to the pensioner.
The man was walking with his wife and leashed dog in Siegelsbach in southeast Germany in October 2005 when a passer-by told him the eagle – recently escaped from the center – was nearby.
The man then approached the eagle. When the eagle attacked the dachshund, the man hit it with his walking stick two to three times, he told the appellate court. The blows broke a wing and several bones of the bird, which died a few days later.
“The eagle pounced on my dog,” he said. “I had to rescue it.”
The 19-year-old male bird was to play a prominent role in the wildlife center’s proposed breeding program for the endangered species and was therefore “priceless,” according to the center’s Claus Fentzloff. The court estimated the bird’s value at $30,000.
The lower court had found the dog owner bore the bulk of the responsibility because he had been warned not to approach the bird and should have known an eagle might regard a small dog as prey.
