ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100021
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
A game warden's discovery of live foxes in the back of a Kentucky man's truck on Interstate 81 led to the conviction of two men, including a Floyd County schoolteacher, for illegally transporting the animals into the state.
Donnie Quesenberry, 42, of Floyd was convicted in U.S. District Court in Abingdon this week for selling the animals without permits and health certificates showing them to be disease-free. He was selling them to fox pen owners and fur farms.
Quesenberry was fined $4,000, sentenced to six months' home confinement and put on a year's probation for bringing foxes into Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina illegally. The owner of a Wisconsin fox farm, Donald Schendel, previously was sentenced to home confinement, which allows defendants to go to work and to approved locations but restricts them to home most of the time.
Fox pens are popular with dog owners who want to let their hounds track foxes in enclosed land where the dogs can't run deer or get lost. Quesenberry also was selling the arctic foxes and red foxes in Floyd County to fur farms.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service tracked down and killed 115 foxes sold in 1994 and 1995. Foxes that haven't been checked by a veterinarian can introduce such diseases as rabies and parasitic tapeworm into an area that can wipe out native populations, Special Agent Andy Cortez said. Cortez, who is stationed in Fish & Wildlife's Richmond office, investigated the case.
The foxes had received a vaccination approved for minks, but had not been certified by a veterinarian. There is no known rabies vaccine for foxes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Mountcastle said. The men had not received the required permits either, he said.
The confiscated foxes were tested for rabies after they were killed and were found to be free of the disease, Cortez said.
Quesenberry charged about $55 per fox and sold them mainly in the spring, according to the government.
None of the fox buyers was charged.
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