1994_05 The Daily Collegian May 1994

              8—Back Page
THECOLLEGIAN
Friday, May 6,1994
POACHING, from
When Spada got tc the scene, all
three animals were dead. The hunt¬
ers were poachers.
That really hurt," said Spada,
-npw a"leven-year veteran game war-
Gen. 'It was a blatant waste. It still
Ijugsme"
^ Poaching has become a major
buck market business. It is a multi -
million dollar business in Califor¬
nia, and although the U.S. Wild¬
life Service won't put a national
figure on the problem, one agent
said it could be- almost a billion
dollars.
Christopher Patin, Region 4 Pa¬
trol Chief for the state Department of
Fish and Game, said from his Fresno
office that his agency pinpointed the
state's black market income for 1993
at $65 million.
"We're talking big bucks," Patin
said. "It would be nice to get the
public aware of poaching as a big-
time business. It's a big economic
loss."
Poaching falls under three cat¬
egories: hunting out of season, tak¬
ing overlimits and taking protected
.
Taking overlimits is a simple
misdemeanor that many fishermen
may not be aware of. California Sport
Fishing Regulations for 1994 set the
limit of fish taken in one day at five
per person.
If a fisherman is haying a great
day and takes six fish home, he is a
poacher.
However, while poaching can be
a simple crime, such as taking one
fish over the limit, commercial
poachers are the number-one target'
for the U.S. Wildlife Service and the
California Department of Fish and
pagel
Game.
"We want to go after the i nten-
tional violators," Patin said. "We
stress those individuals who poach
for economic gain."
Even though the Wildlife Protec¬
tion Service has been investigating
'professional poachers for years, a
new phenomena in California, espe¬
cially in the San Joaquin Valley, has
helped increase the amount of per¬
sonal poachers — the recent influx
of Southeast Asian immigrants and
the continuing increase of illegal
aliens from Mexico.
"These are people whose subsid¬
ence came from -the land," Spada
said. "When a person takes an
overlimit of fish, there's only so
many that can be eaten. A majority
of [Asians] who catch 20 fish are
going to eat all 20. But they still are
violators."
Spada said that fish poachers are
the largest violators, he remembers a
case three years ago in which he
stopped some suspected poachers
and found three ice chests filled to
the brim with trout
But Spada said that he doesn't
specifically go after unintentional
violators. His concern is the profes¬
sional poachers.
"These guys know exactly what
they're doing," Spada said. "A lot of
these guys have been poachers for a
long time, and now their kids are
poachers."
Greg Laret, deputy chief in the
California Wildlife Protection Divi¬
sion, oversees from his Sacramento
office the undercover force for the
Special Operations Unit ofthe Cali¬
fornia Department of Fish and Game.
Laret' s unit goes after the profes¬
sional poachers who are making large
sums of money. He says that they
may work on a case for two years
before malting arrests, and that his
office of 10 agents arrests about 15-
20 poachers per year.
"In many areas the pressure to
poach is increasing," Laret said.
"Poachers are criminals, and crimi¬
nals are inherently selfish. They're
doing what they're doing for their
own gain."
Laret said that his office arrested
lastyearapoachingringthat brought
Korean nationals into the country to
hunt bears for their gall bladders.
Bear gall bladders can bring up to
$20,000-525,000 apiece in the Asian
black market because they are used
for medicinal purposes.
Duet also mentioned a case three
years ago in which his office inves¬
tigated and arrested an abalone
poaching ring.
'Taking abalone is illegal north
of San Francisco," Laret said, "and
these guys were going up the north
coast and taking 600 abalone at a
time. At that time, that amount of
abalone would get a poacher about
$10,000.
"These guysdidn'tcare about the
long-term effects they had on the
abalone population," he said.
"We work with cases that some¬
times involve 25 defendants." Laret
said. "What we talk about is the
people we arrest are the ones making
the largest impact on the market."
While the abalone poachers were
getting $10,000 for their haul, a
poacher in Kern County was making
even more.
Spada said that last year a man
was found guilty of poaching large
amounts of freshwater clams in the
Kern River and selling them to su¬
permarket chains.
During the trial, Spada said, it
was found that the man was earning
about $80,000 to $100,000 per year
poaching the clams.
Because the clams were filter-
feeders for the river, the clams were
t for human consumption.   -
s was a case of an individual
> was poaching and also hurting
the public," Spada said.
Spada. who works in the Wildlife
Protection Division of the state's
Department of Fish and Game is
able to cite poachers under Section
700 of the California Fish and Game
Code.
As the business of poaching has
increased, the number of citations
issued has also gone up.      *» .
There were 790 citations issued
in 1992, according to the Wildlife
Protection Division. Although the
division doesn't break the citations
down by code, Patin said a large
number were poachers.
In 1993,1,947 hunters and fish¬
ermen were cited by the Wildlife
Protection Division, an increase of
146 percent
Most of those citations were mis¬
demeanors; there are only two felo¬
nies that involve poaching—selling
bear parts and hunting endangered
species.
Steve Pearson, a senior resident
agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, helps oversee the Northern
California portion of Region 1, which
encompasses Idaho, Nevada, Cali¬
fornia, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii
and the Pacific Islands.
Pearson's job is to help enforce
the Endangered Species Act and also
to assist state fish and game depart¬
ments in locating poachers who go
from state to state.
Pearson's agency works within
the framework of the U.S. Constitu¬
tion— to regulate international and
interstate commerce.
"A typical situation would be
someone who goes to Montana to
poach and then comes back to Cali¬
fornia," Pearson said.
Pearson likened the public's
growing awareness of the harms of
poaching to drunken driving.
"Years ago, people who drank
and drove were treated with humor,"
he said, "but then when people real¬
ized how much harm they were caus¬
ing, people's toleration for that be¬
havior lowered. The same could be
said for poaching.
'People do not like to see indi¬
viduals who abuse wildlife," he said.
Pearson first said that poaching
could be a billion-dollar business
nationally, then backed off the fig¬
ure.
It is difficult to tell, he said, just
what the cost is, because it is a largely
unreported crime.
'In the case of poaching," he
said, "the victims — anirnflk —
can't report poachers."
While professional poachers are
motivated by greed, personal poach¬
ers are motivated by the thrill of the
hunt, just like tlie two Southern Cali¬
fornia hunters that Spada caught three
years ago.
'It's the thrill ofthe kill," Spada
said, "and the thrill of not getting
caught It's ego, knowing mat they
might be getting an animal that will
be prized."
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