Protection of Animal Life Act

Section 1(a) excludes from protection eagles, hawks, owls, crows, galancian, and mayas.
Section 1(a) allows keeping any bird for a domestic pet and provides that nothing in the Act prevents such domestic pet keeping.
Section 1 requires the prohibited actions and possession restrictions to apply only to birds and mammals protected by the Act’s coverage rules and exclusions.

Section 2 prohibits hunting, wounding, taking, or killing protected birds or mammals except by the use of a gun, spear, lance, or bow and arrow.
Section 2 prohibits laying or setting any trap, snare, net, bird lime, swivel gun, deer lick, pitfall, or any other contrivance or device with intent to catch, take, or kill protected birds or mammals.
Section 2 prohibits using any artificial light, battery, or other deception or contrivance with intent to attract or deceive protected birds or mammals.
Section 2 allows the use of decoys in hunting game birds.
Section 2 provides that constructing or setting a trap or snare adapted for taking or killing protected birds or mammals is prima facie evidence of intent to take or kill.

Section 3 exempts hunting, wounding, taking, or killing of a bird or mammal, or taking eggs of a bird, to secure food for oneself or one’s family.
Section 3 exempts persons holding a permit conferring the right to take birds, their nests or eggs, and mammals for scientific or other purposes.
Section 3 requires scientific permits to be granted by the Secretary of the Interior to a properly accredited person age fifteen years or upward for strictly scientific purposes only.
Section 3 limits such permits to one year only from the date of issue and states the permit is not transferable.
Section 3 provides that if the permit holder proves to have killed a protected bird or mammal or taken a protected nest or eggs for other than scientific purposes, the holder is subject to the penalties as if the holder had no such permit.
Section 3 preserves licensed taking of so-called edible bird’s nests under Act Numbered Seventeen hundred and sixty-nine.

Section 4 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior, whenever deemed necessary for the public interest to protect fish, bird, or mammal of the interior, to issue an order subject to approval of the Governor-General.
Section 4 allows the order to declare and publish a close season for birds or mammals listed in Section 1(b) and Section 1(c), or for any fish, bird, or mammal for a period not to exceed five months in any one year.
Section 4 provides that the close-season order may apply to the entire Philippine Islands or to specified province or provinces.
Section 4 requires issuance of the order at least two months before the commencement of the close season.
Section 4 requires publication for three weeks before the order goes into effect in at least three daily papers in the city of Manila and at least one daily paper published in the province(s) covered, if any.
Section 4 requires a copy of the order to be posted in the main entrance of the provincial building of the province or provinces covered.

Section 5 requires punishment for violating any regulation or order of the Secretary of the Interior under the Act.
Section 5 sets the penalty as a fine not exceeding one hundred pesos for each fish, bird, or mammal unlawfully killed, taken, kept, shipped, possessed, or exported, or for each nest or egg taken or destroyed in violation of the Act.

Section 6 grants an informant who provides information leading to a conviction one-half of the fine imposed.
Section 6 imposes a duty on the court, when rendering judgment of conviction, to ascertain and declare the name of the informant entitled to receive one-half of the fine imposed.

Section 7 prohibits interpreting the Act or regulations under it as preventing the hunting, wounding, taking, or killing of wild pig in any manner or at any season.

Section 8 directs that the bill’s passage is expedited in accordance with section two of “An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws,” passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.
Section 9 states the Act takes effect on its passage.
The Act was enacted on October 12, 1907.