In a development with interesting new implications for wildlife protection law, two federal courts recently have ruled that a conviction for killing waterfowl protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)¹ does not require proof of scienter, or an intent to kill. Defendants, who sprayed pesticides on farmland in one case² and inadvertently allowed pesticides to escape into a waste water pond in the other,³ were held criminally liable for a number of resulting but unintentional bird deaths. Although the facts in the two cases differ significantly and the reasoning of the two courts was less than crystalline, the end result in both, read broadly, was an imposition of strict criminal liability, to be mitigated, if at all, only by discretion in prosecuting or in sentencing offenders.