Kill Devil Hills, NC Animal Ordinances: Bird Protection (2026)

Kill Devil Hills Town Code § 94.03 declares the entire corporate limits of the town a bird sanctuary, making it unlawful for any person to shoot, destroy or in any way harm birds within town boundaries, subject only to the exception the section itself carves out for G.S. § 160A-188, the state law authorizing municipalities to designate bird sanctuaries and regulate hunting inside them. The provision sits in Chapter 94, Animals, alongside the town's general cruelty-to-animals section, § 94.02, which separately makes it unlawful to molest, torture, torment, cruelly beat, wound, poison or kill any animal, though that section carves out hunting and fishing allowed under the North Carolina General Statutes; § 94.03's bird sanctuary designation is narrower and does not carry that hunting carve-out, so discharging a firearm at a bird anywhere in town, on the beach, in the maritime forest around Kitty Hawk Woods or on a residential lot, is barred outright rather than merely discouraged.

Enforcement runs through the Kill Devil Hills Police Department's Animal Control Division, the same office that investigates animal cruelty and nuisance complaints under the rest of Chapter 94. Because § 94.03 does not set out its own penalty clause, a violation falls back on the chapter's cross-referenced remedies and the town's general penalty in § 10.99, which treats an unspecified violation of the code as a Class 3 misdemeanor under G.S. § 160A-175 and G.S. § 14-4, in addition to the escalating $50-to-$500-per-day civil penalty the town can impose after written notice.