Friday, July 17, 2009

Must Read - "Animal Investigators"

As a former Game Warden this book review really hit home. Vermont now has fewer wardens than when they hired me in 1971!

From the Wildlife Management Institute website:

Worth Reading
The worth-reading/review book for this month deals with other wildlife abuses, ranging from poaching walruses for their ivory and bears for their gall bladders to smuggling of Native Brazilian costume and ceremonial garb festooned with parts of threatened and endangered Brazilian wildlife. I wouldn't put Animal Investigators in the "really well-written" category, but the book certainly is readable, and its coverage of various areas of wildlife-related shenanigans is engrossing...

It is easy to put the blame on a lack of enforcement, and “lack” is an understatement. There are about 200 federal wildlife special agents and 3,300 state conservation officers. This compares with 12,000 FBI agents, 5,000 Drug Enforcement Administration special agents, 33,000 border patrol agents and 675,000 sworn state and local police. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 115 wildlife inspectors serving 17 ports and 20 other locations. At each of the major ports, in the United Stats, approximately 20,000 containers arrive every day. Maybe 20 are inspected. Houston, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, we have a problem.
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