California already suffers from the lowest number of game wardens per capita of any state in the USA (or Canada for that matter), with approximately 200 currently patrolling the state.
Still, that number may soon be a nostalgic memory; budget cuts could force a further reduction to only 100 wardens for the entire state.
With California’s financial crisis worsening, the news only gets worse. If employee furloughs to save budget dollars aren’t enough, as many as 45 percent of the state’s already-beleaguered “environmental cops” will be gone.
At that point, there would be only 100 game wardens to police the entire state.
Poachers and idiots already operate in California with a large degree of impunity, and imagine their newfound freedom to operate when the numbers of law enforcement officers falls below the triple-digit mark.
Wildlife is already suffering the impacts, though – sadly – I think we haven’t seen anything yet.
A video production company produced a documentary about the problem, which will hopefully open a few legislator’s eyes:
The Underground has chronicled its admiration for our local “Ghost Warden” Joe Powell and hope he – and his colleagues – aren’t hung out to dry.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
pathetic. I hate what this world is coming to.
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It’s the same story on every budget crisis – the two departments that are also on the chopping block are Parks and Rec (State Parks) and Fish and Game.
You have to be an outdoorsman to understand what these departments provide – and each new Governor see them as “non-essential.” Ahr-Nold narrowly missed closing many of the state parks earlier .. while he’d earmarked their closure the backlash made him rescind the directive.
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To a whole series of governors, they’ve provided income and headaches, though not in equal quantities.
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I just got more and more angry everyday.
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And some of you laugh when I carry a .45…let’s see one bulllit (approx. 33 cents) against a phone call ( and my time ) while your waiting 6 to 8 hours for authorities to arrive to take statement and gather evidence (bad guy long gone).
No brainer …shoot a few of these bastards…and this behavor will stop.
Ya I know a bit extreme…but, you ever wonder why no drug problem in China…if your caught with dope your left hand is cut off (on the spot). No drug problem there.
Just one example of the fact there needs to be consequences…to change people mentality toward lack of respect.
“You just wait till your father get’s home you are going to get it”….got to love the the way youngun’s are raised today. No wonder they have no respect, for anything.
Ok…I’m done.
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A “bit” extreme?
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Hey Tom,
The same thing has been taking place in Indiana under the direction of Republican Governor Mitch Daniels.
I got to know one of the Fish & Game personnel at one of the flood/wildlife retension areas that I fish for largemouth . Two years ago he said that Mitch had given them orders to cut their budgetary costs by reducing the amount of workers in addition to cutting everyone’s pay down to $7.50 p/hr. He also said that they had closed down the outdoor gun range, where he taught weapon safety courses. This was a statewide mandate. Now the trash barrels rarely get emptied once a month, the only handicapped parking is located on a gravel boat launch that pitches downward about 15 degrees immediately off of the only access road in and out of the area, and the muskrats are tunneling under that as well as the levee that separates this area from the Kankakee river. I’ve only seen him twice since then.
The Fish & Game people used to pester me quite a bit, (to the point of being a nuisance), but there is simply way too much of this cost-cutting crap going on all over. They keep raising the prices of the licensing fees, but are doing less and less. Seems that they spend a lot of our monies on developing golfcourses, instead of putting the money back into the environment.
I kinda guess that I’m asking;
How do we turn this problem around? what has been done in the past that was effective? Short of another election?
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Same Issues in Maine. The Allagash is HUGE and the number of Wardens has virtually been cut in half over the past 5 years. A crying shame considering all the poaching the locals do up in that vast region that is the North Woods.
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The real impacts aren’t on fisheries (though the illegal take of stripers, salmon and sturgeon is going to soar), but on wildlife like deer and bears, which already suffer hugely from poaching.
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Yet year after year we see increases in both pay and positions for the CHP and prison guards, both of which have big, loud unions… The wardens I know are extremely knowledgeable, vastly underpaid and far more dedicated than any correctional or CHP officer. Ever hear a warden grouse about overtime like the CHP does regularly? Nope. These guys will go on multi-day stakeouts in the delta with no financial incentive, while the CHP will collect overtime for sitting at a construction site with their lights on and then ask for a pay raise.
How bout that “green governor” of ours, right?
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Livin here in Missoula, we could use a few more wardens as well, the poaching is a common thing when you go off road and you see the leftovers some j ass left behind or a guy from North Carolina with a metal stringer hangin from his belt loop!
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The part I’m never quite clear on is why wardens are paid less than other law enforcement.
When a warden’s dealing with poaching hunters, everyone he’s confronting is basically armed to the teeth, and there typically isn’t any backup for many, many miles.
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Makes you wonder (a) why anyone takes the job in the first place, and (b) if the future of DFG enforcement is more of the surveillance style of op that your ghost warden and his colleagues pulled off. Collect evidence of the poaching from a safe distance, and then wait to confront the offenders in a less remote area, e.g. the trailhead. Would it be possible to involve non-DFG law enforcement as the provider of backup for these situations?
Warden observes and documents the offense, then tracks the poachers to wherever they’re going. They’re almost certainly headed back to a vehicle, right? Warden gets the tag number, notifies the cops (be they local or CHP), and Bob’s your uncle.
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Surveillance really only works when you know where something’s going to happen, which is rarely the case with poaching. Fish hog Larry Baker fished the same two spots all the time; bear poachers (they send bear parts to Asia) can be anywhere. Poaching rings are typically busted through undercover work, which is pretty dangerous stuff considering the players.
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Hey, at least you CA guys can be proud that you governator just launched the Green Corps :D
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All true, and Baker made it easy by conducting his poaching with all the subtlety and guile you’d expect from an arrogant moron. But the key to that bust wasn’t really that they knew where the poaching was happening, right? It was that they knew who was doing it.
If you know who’s doing it, you can tail them while they lead you to where they’re doing it. Which speaks to the need (in my opinion, at least) to emphasize the intelligence gathering aspects of the job over the enforcement aspects. Game wardens as “cops in the woods” isn’t going to be effective, even if, instead of slashing their ranks, we increased them tenfold. There’s just too much woods. The presence you’d need to police a “jurisdiction” of that size isn’t economically viable, I would think.
So why not make game wardens less CHP and more CIA? I know the answer: money. But still, it would make sense to do a pilot program and start training a handful of people in different techniques to see if they can get some results.
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“BLM manages 15.2 million acres of public lands in California – nearly 15% of the state’s land area” – http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html
That’s just BLM land, and it’s one warden per 1.5 million acres. Ridiculous.
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