It's even worse than criminal. I just finished talking to some truly expert birders I work with and they're telling me the "western" yellow-billed cuckoo is not even a sub-species (race) of the continent-wide yellow-billed cuckoo. DNA studies and morphological studies prove that the "western" counterpart of this bird is identical in all ways to the "not endangered" eastern bird. It's merely an outlier population of the typical YBCU.
Put simply, this bird has absolutely NO business being put on a threatened status.
Sheer lawlessness is EXACTLY what this is!
Thanks for the Pings, guys!