We share this planet with many species. It is our responsibility to protect them, both for their sakes and our own.
—PAMELA A. MATSON
THE 1970S WERE GOLDEN YEARS for the USFWS Office of Law Enforcement (OLE). A growing awareness of the plight of this country’s wildlife had grabbed the American public by its shirttails. Federal agents undertook a series of daring undercover exploits in Louisiana to save the American alligator, a species that had been poached nearly to the point of extinction for its skins. Another sting operation targeted the biggest ivory dealer in Alaska, along with a former biologist with Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game. This time, the species being plundered was protected walrus. Their headless bodies washed ashore on Siberian and Alaskan beaches, their three-foot-long ivory tusks, and penis bones, having been removed for sale. Included in the arrests was the leader of a drug-dealing motorcycle gang involved in the illegal trade. It was as if the American people suddenly woke up and realized what was happening to the world around them.
Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, followed by the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Newly appointed chief Clark Bavin, known as the J. Edgar Hoover of FWS, began to turn old-time game wardens into professional special agents. OLE was in the process of being pulled by its bootstraps out of the Dark Ages and dragged kicking and screaming into modern times. In 1971, 174 game wardens had primarily been banding ducks and checking hunters for unplugged shotguns. That changed in the mid-1970s when wildlife agents found themselves shipped off to Glynco, Georgia, to receive fifteen weeks of intensive training in criminal investigations, firearms, self-defense, and wildlife law. It was their final evolution from duck cops into a new breed of investigators.
By 1977, an all-time high of 220 special agents, trained in the mode of the FBI, successfully broke the back of the illegal alligator trade. The timing couldn’t have been better. The exploitation of wildlife was rapidly rising as word traveled of the quick and easy money to be made. More sting operations were undertaken that proved to be successful. Operation Falcon exposed a Middle Eastern plot to smuggle endangered wild falcons from North America for the sport of sheiks and oil-rich falconers. Other cases nabbed ivory traffickers, the illegal sale of eagle feathers, and unlawful importation of sea-turtle products. Operation Renegade broke up a worldwide ring that smuggled scores of rare and exotic birds into the United States. Meanwhile, action was taken at home, as well. Undercover agents busted a group supplying poison to ranchers to kill golden eagles and other critters. Compound 1080, thallium, Temik, strychnine, methomyl, and sodium cyanide were available for sale. Enough poison was found to kill every predator, man, woman, and child west of the Mississippi.
The agents of OLE felt a heady confidence about taking on the challenge as protectors of America’s wildlife. They were now federal agents investigating premeditated and well-organized criminal acts that just happened to involve animals. Their numbers were growing and FWS appeared to be solidly behind their work. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Though their mission remained the same, it would all be downhill from there.
FWS is primarily known as a biological-research agency responsible for protecting wildlife and its habitats. In a government body mainly composed of managers and biologists, OLE is forever getting a smaller piece of the pie. The number of their agents slowly dwindles, while their investigative caseload continues to grow. These days OLE has 196 special agents. That’s down from nearly thirty-three years ago. Take away the number of supervisory people and there are probably only about 130 field agents in total. And fewer than 20 of them do any high-level undercover work. By comparison, the FBI has 12,000 special agents. Yet global wildlife crime ranks just behind drugs and human trafficking in terms of profit.
The FWS budget for fiscal year 2009 was $1.4 billion, out of which the Office of Law Enforcement received a paltry $62.7 million to fight an increasingly sophisticated global war. The illegal trade in butterflies alone nets nearly four times as much as OLE’s entire annual budget. It’s a sad fact, since special agents are the thin green line fighting to protect endangered species. That line is constantly getting thinner.
“If we turn sideways, you can’t see us,” Newcomer likes to joke.
In truth, OLE is the most undermanned and underfunded body in the entire federal government.
“We have a lot in common with Rodney Dangerfield. We don’t get no respect,” lamented former special agent Pete Nylander.
Most people don’t even know what FWS agents are or that they even exist. If the public thinks of them at all, it’s as game wardens, not as plainclothes wildlife investigators. But then, a good deal of an agent’s time is spent buried in paperwork and not out in the field.
“Our laws are very important, or Congress wouldn’t have saddled us with them. I think the American people feel the job is being done, and what fools they are,” retired FWS agent Terry Grosz sadly declared.
With so few agents and little money, Fish and Wildlife can’t enforce half the laws that are on the books. The Office of Law Enforcement is left to work on a triage system. Only the most pressing cases get any attention. Agents tire of the fight and quickly burn out. The best are those who work for the animals and try to sidestep the politics of the agency.