Massachusetts Environmental Police

The Massachusetts Environmental Police is a Massachusetts, US, state government law enforcement agency, which is the primary enforcement agency of Massachusetts's boating and recreation vehicle laws and regulations and is responsible for registering boats, off-highway vehicles and snowmobiles in Massachusetts. The agency is also responsible for the enforcement of fish and game laws, including commercial and recreational harvesting of the living marine resources along the state's coastline.

The mission of the Office of Law Enforcement, more commonly known as the Massachusetts Environmental Police, is to protect the environment and natural resources of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through enforcement, education, and public outreach. The Office is further charged with protecting the health, safety, and individual rights of the public and preserving our environment for future generations.

The current director of the Massachusetts Environmental Police is Colonel James McGinn. The current Assistant Director is Lt. Colonel Brian J. Perrin. The agency is under the supervision and control of the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, who is appointed by the Governor. The current Secretary of EOEEA is Matthew Beaton.

Massachusetts has had a long history of protecting its natural resources. Some of the earliest hunting and fishing laws date back to 1627 when the Colony of New Plymouth created a law that declared hunting, fowling, and fishing shall be free2. The Massachusetts Bay Colony also declared hunting and fishing to be free in 1641.

"Every inhabitant who is an house-holder shall have free fishing and fowling in any great ponds, bays, coves, and rivers so far as the sea ebbs and flows within the precinct of the town where they dwell unless the freeman of the same town or general court have otherwise appropriated them."

The colony also created many laws that paid bounties for killing wolves. In 1630, the Colony created a law that paid one schilling to any colonist who killed a wolf. In 1640, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law which gave forty schillings to any man who killed a wolf with hounds. Many colonists hunted wolves because forty schillings was a sizeable bounty in 1640. The 1640 bounty was equivalent to twenty seven days of a laborers pay.

“Early Massachusetts laws encouraged residents to keep dogs, such as mastiffs and greyhounds, to use in hunting wolves and authorized town governments to use public funds to purchase and keep wolf-hunting dogs. Towns were also required to set out and bait specific numbers of wolf traps. Any town that neglected its obligation to trap wolves was assessed a fine.”

In 1636, a law was created which stated that no guns or iron traps could be used near the highway. During the colonial period, alewives were a very important fish used for food and fertilizer. Plymouth colony created some of the country’s earliest fishing regulations to protect the alewives. In 1645, the colony created a law that prohibited the use of nets to catch alewives in the Sandwich river with a fine of ten pounds. In 1661, the Plymouth Colony banned any foreigner without permission from fishing on Cape Cod. In 1668, to protect cod, haddock, and pollock during spawning the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned all fishing in December and January. Fishing of mackerel was also banned in May and June. The penalty for fishing during the spawning period was 5 schillings per barrel.

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