Roanoke County, VA Animal Ordinances: Bird Protection (2026)

Chapter 5's general article opens with a narrow, address-specific bird-protection rule rather than a county-wide wildlife ordinance. Section 5-3(a) sets aside a single tract, described by a lengthy metes-and-bounds survey running from a point on Ruritan Road (Virginia Secondary Route 609) around the platted blocks of the La Bellevue Subdivision, and declares it a wild bird sanctuary. Section 5-3(b) lets the county administrator approve suitable markers on the roads entering the sanctuary so the public knows the boundary is in force. The operative prohibition sits in § 5-4: inside the area described in § 5-3, it is unlawful and a Class 3 misdemeanor for any person to shoot at, trap, kill, destroy or molest any birds.

Both sections trace back to a 1980 ordinance (Ord. No. 2664, adopted September 9, 1980) folded into the 1985 code recodification, and the cross-reference notes tie § 5-4 to the county's separate discharge-of-firearms ordinance at § 13-4, so a hunter who fires a weapon inside the sanctuary risks two separate charges. 5) rules apply county-wide instead, but they are not bird-sanctuary protections. A resident asking whether shooting or trapping birds anywhere in the county is regulated should look first at whether the property sits inside the La Bellevue sanctuary boundary; if it does not, § 5-4 does not apply to it.