Sacramento County, CA Animal Ordinances: Bird Protection (2026)

04, Desecration of Cemeteries, one of four short sections the Board of Supervisors adopted by Ordinance 309 in 1945 to protect burial grounds in the unincorporated county. 020 bars cutting, breaking, plucking, removing, destroying, or injuring cemetery trees, shrubs, plants, or flowers, and separately bars destroying, injuring, or molesting a bird, its nest, or its eggs, all within the boundaries of a cemetery located within the limits of the County. 040 bars loitering with intent to commit crime or mischief. Read together, the chapter treats a cemetery's birds and plantings the same as its headstones: protected features of the grounds, not a general county wildlife statute.

020 extends the bird protection to yards, parks, or open space outside a cemetery's boundaries, and the section carries no separate definition of "molest" and no exemptions for pest control, so the ordinary meaning of the word controls when a complaint reaches Animal Control or the Sheriff's office. The chapter sets no dedicated fine schedule of its own; instead it falls under the countywide default penalty clause, which applies whenever a specific chapter is silent on punishment.