killing dispute divides an Albany County community

9-MILE LAKE—Initially, Jay Benson was OK with the idea of taking out some white pelicans to protect the Alco Rod and Gun Club's pricy stock of put-and-take trout.

Often during the summer, he said, a few dozen of the hefty native piscivorous birds rafted out on the club's exclusive 9-Mile Lake outside of Laramie to take advantage of the easy salmonid meals. Targeting a few pelicans seemed "reasonable." He's on the club's governing board, and he even voted to sponsor a federal permit allowing the club to kill some of the birds, which are ordinarily protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act .

But attitudes took a turn after watching pelicans get chased around and shot up, one week after another.

"This is a neighborhood, and we know there's a lot of people — ourselves included — that get tired of all the shooting," Benson said from his kitchen in mid-September.

Spread across Benson's kitchen table were three sheets of paper detailing the pelican hunting and killing. Generated by Pam Benson, Jay's wife, the log described who was there, how many rounds were fired and how many pelicans were killed or crippled. It only documented the occasions she witnessed first-hand.

"It's 6 in the morning until 9 at night," Pam Benson said, "and sometimes it's multiple times a day."

Many of the residents whose properties circle 9-Mile Lake are largely on the same page, tired of the pelican-killing activities. Others are supportive of the Alco Rod and Gun Club's efforts to protect the stocked rainbow, brown and golden trout that inhabit the manmade lake on the Laramie Plains — a water-filled former rock quarry once mined for glassmaking. High on the list of supporters are the men whose names appear on the federal permit, authorizing them to kill pelicans.

"I'm the president of the club and I feel I have a fiduciary responsibility to the members, first and foremost," Mark Rozman said from his home.

Every four years, he said, the club spends around $100,000 on hatchery-raised fish — and the pelicans have earned his ire by damaging the carefully curated fishery.

"They eat fish," Rozman said. "I like fish."

Judging by neighborhood talk, it's clear that relations have taken a toxic turn. Rozman described the pro-pelican crowd as "crybabies," contending they've called the sheriff on him "10 or 15 times." Neighbors have filed for restraining orders against the gun club president. Surreptitious monitoring of each other has become the norm.

Longtime 9-Mile Lake resident Tom Bustinduy lamented the change: "It's not the family-oriented, friendly lake that it used to be," he said.

Rozman said that he's willing to talk it out, but that neighbors won't come to the table.

"Because they don't like the truth," Rozman said. "They want to paint their own picture: 'There's a little pretty pelican sitting on my fence post kind of thing.'"

Rozman has come to view the flocks of migratory pelicans as a savvy, hard-to-kill seasonal scourge that have ruined the fishing and menaced other species, even ridding 9-Mile Lake of its entire population of goslings because they're so voracious. Pelican numbers have exploded, he said.

Hazing and hunting pelicans isn't easy, said Pete Kontaxes, a fellow gun club member who helps Rozman with shotgunning the big birds.

"We've got them trained so well now that if they see a white truck, they go paddling out into the middle," Kontaxes said. "Past 40 yards, you can shoot them all you want — BBs will bounce off of them."

Jay Benson sees it differently. Some birds that get hit, he said, are sustaining injuries and even slowly dying.

"Several times we've seen them wound birds," he said. "Sorry for the description, but they're flopping while going down the lake."

It's unclear how common nuisance pelican killing is in Wyoming. Alco Rod and Gun Club's permit, which allows up to 30 pelicans to be killed, was approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service's regional migratory bird permit office. WyoFile requested but did not obtain records from the office before this story was published.

In 2017, pelicans were identified as a "species of greatest conservation need" by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department because their breeding range in the state is limited and little is known about their population. Historically, there have been two larger breeding colonies in Wyoming, one at Yellowstone Lake and another at Pathfinder Reservoir. Although classified as "uncommon," numbers are on the upswing according to the most recent account of the species in Wyoming .

Pelican numbers have been increasing and new breeding colonies have been documented — and continue to be found in the state, biologists wrote. But counts of fledged birds and the sizes of the new Wyoming colonies are unknown.

In other parts of the United States, pelicans have been considered problematic for commercial fisheries. According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture technical report , they're "perceived as nuisance wildlife by aquaculturists and sport fishermen because of their predation of farmed fish or sport fish prized by anglers."

Pelicans have keyed in on catfish farms in the deep south and affected native cutthroat trout and other recreational fisheries in southern Idaho, where adult nesting birds have "increased dramatically," according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's pelican management plan . That plan established population objectives for colonies at Blackfoot Reservoir and the Minidoka National Wildlife Refuge — and it calls for some lethal actions, among other strategies, to achieve those goals.

Although they can be a nuisance, pelicans are among the largest birds in North America, they're visually striking and even awe-inspiring.

"The first time I saw pelicans, I just stopped my car," said Laramie resident Donal O'Toole. "I couldn't believe I was actually seeing pelicans."

It's not a species the Ireland-raised veterinarian associates with North America, let alone the Laramie Plains. O'Toole has paid attention to the 9-Mile Lake pelican dispute, and his sense is that there could be a more forgiving response to managing the damage caused by the big birds.

"Just going out and killing them does not seem like a good solution," he said.

The Alco Rod and Gun Club's permit does require that Rozman and Kontaxes exhaust their other options.

"Lethal take is not to be the primary means of control," the permit states. "Active hazing, harassment and other non-lethal techniques must continue in conjunction..."

Pam Benson acquired the permit via a Freedom of Information Act request and shared it with WyoFile. The club president, she said, was unwilling to share it voluntarily — or disclose how many birds he could, or has, killed.

Rozman declined to share the tally of pelicans he and Kontaxes have killed with WyoFile. The reason he cited is that relations have soured so significantly, and that neighbors would use the numbers to micromanage his operations — and they'd "cry about it, too."

"Game management is an adults-only activity," he said.