Hall

Complainants are associations or corporations organized and being operated for the purpose of furnishing Hunting grounds on which their members can shoot migratory waterfowl. They allege that their lands have been prepared at great expense and that in their natural state such lands in the main were arid and without vegetation,; that by the digging of wells water has been impounded; that their properties are not valuable for other purposes. It is alleged that the defendants, the United States Attorney, the United States Marshal, together, with the defendants Federal Game Protector and Federal Game Warden, threaten to enforce a regulation made by the Secretary of Agriculture under the provisions of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (as amended, title 16, §§ 703 to 711, U.S.C.A.), with its criminal penalties, which regulation as approved August 12, 1936, reads as follows:

It is asserted that the statute and regulations are grounded for authority on the Migratory Bird Treaty entered into between the United States and Great Britain, and that such regulations exceed the power designed to be given by that convention. Further, that plaintiffs are vested with valuable property right worth…