Working a Beat for Wildlife
hoW U.S. fiSh anD WilDlife SeRviCe offiCeRS enfoRCe WilDlife laWS
By Sandra Cleva
Sandra Cleva is a
Writer-Editor for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service Office of
Law Enforcement in
Arlington, Virginia.
Credit: lavonda Walton/USf WS
On December 1, 2009, a whooping crane (Grus americana)—one of only 500 indi- viduals of the species—was found dead near
Cayuga, Indiana, shot down not far from a road.
Special agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), in cooperation with Indiana Department
of Natural Resources conservation officers, sprang
into action to investigate the crime—a violation of
the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as well as the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
This investigation is just one of the more than
13,000 that the FWS Office of Law Enforcement
conducts during a typical year. Unlike park rangers,
refuge officers, and other federal law enforcement
officers entrusted with conservation responsibilities,
FWS special agents, wildlife inspectors, and forensic
scientists work a beat that goes beyond the boundaries of the nation’s public lands. Their efforts help
protect fish, wildlife, and plants around the globe.
The Service shares some enforcement responsibilities with other federal agencies. It works with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-
a wildlife inspector at the los angeles international airport discovers that a shipment of
coral skeletons from australia—identified as plastic on a Customs form—were actually real.
imported without a permit and without being declared, the corals had been purchased by an
interior designer and were on their way to furnishing a client’s home when they were seized.
Credit: USf WS
Fisheries, which investigates violations involving
specific marine mammals and marine species listed as
endangered or threatened. It also works with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service, which inspects imports of globally
protected plants. The FWS Office of Law Enforcement has the broadest enforcement mission in terms
of species protected and officers on the job, which
totaled 190 special agents and 121 wildlife inspectors
at the beginning of 2010. “Enforcement of the nation’s wildlife laws supports virtually every aspect of
the Service’s conservation mission,” says Chief Benito
Perez, who directs the Office of Law Enforcement.
Given the breadth of the task, however, the program’s
resources are clearly limited. The annual budget for
the Office of Law Enforcement—about $65.8 million
in FY 2010—averages only about 5 percent of the total
funding appropriated to FWS each year. Nevertheless, the impact of the enforcement office on efforts to
conserve wildlife and wildlife habitat is huge.
A Brief Look Back
The FWS Office of Law Enforcement traces its history back to a 1900 statute, the Lacey Act, which
committed the federal government to keeping specific harmful non-native wildlife out of the country
and helping states protect their game resources. The
nation’s first federal wildlife officers were six men
hired as “Lacey Act inspectors.” They monitored the
ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
New Orleans, and San Francisco to intercept injurious wildlife—specifically, mongooses, fruit bats,
starlings, and English sparrows—the last of which
were deemed “rat[s] of the air…vermin of the atmosphere” by the congressman sponsoring the Act.
A series of legislative actions in the following two
decades expanded the federal government’s role in
wildlife law enforcement. A 1913 law authorized the
government to set waterfowl seasons and bag limits.
In 1916, negotiations established an international
treaty to protect birds that migrate across national
borders, and the 1918 passage of the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protected not only game birds but songbirds and other migratory species.
