Law Enforcement Officer Kory Collins approaching a group of fishers along the Malibu coast.
In 2008, Gene Thome was driving on a long stretch of highway in Bakersfield. Out of the corner of his eye in a meadow to his right, he saw someone duck.
“Just breaking good daylight,” the guy responded when Thome stopped to talk. But he had a gut feeling that the situation “didn’t look right. [This is when] you call the game warden.”
Thome, owner of Bear Mountain Sports shop, reported the man on the new CalTIP smartphone app. Minutes later, the game warden caught the hunter red-handed with a dead deer in his truck.
The illegal take of wildlife happens all over the world: over three quarters of Africa's elephant population has decimated over the last decade, according to a 2014 study. California is trying to fight the activity that supplies an estimated $1 billion black market, that throughout the state includes taking lobsters along the southern coast, abalone near the Bay Area, and deer in mid-state counties like Tuolumne.
Poaching is not just limited to rural areas in the state. In the first half of 2016, Los Angeles saw two separate unsolved poaching cases in which two bears were left to die by the side of the road after having their gallbladders removed, Public Information Officer for the wildlife department told the Los Angeles Times.
In 2008, several high-profile cases of extreme poaching, or excessive illegal taking of wildlife, in many cases, by poachers undeterred by previous convictions, led the wildlife department to call it the “Year of Extreme Poaching;” at the time, poaching was still considered a misdemeanor.
Through the Eyes of a CDFW Officer
Examples include:
In San Diego County, officers arrested a man for the fourth time for poaching lobster in the La Jolla Conservation Area.
One poacher was arrested for the fourth time and another given a fourth violation in the San Francisco Bay Area for poaching dozens of abalone.
One hunter was fined $10,000 and served 90 days in jail for killing 26 deer near Sonora.
Two Monterey County men were caught poaching 66 abalone from an area that is completely off-limits to abalone harvest.
Since then, the number of citations issued by the wildlife department has dropped from 14,543 to 12,901 in 2015 as a result of increased public education, harsher penalties, and less hunters in the field, according to Lt. Mike Milotz.
What is Poached?
Abalone, bears, sturgeon, and deer are still among the most at risk for poaching, says the department.
Abalone grows slowly and doesn’t reproduce often, which makes it highly susceptible to extinction, says Julie Du Brow, Communications Director for The Bay Foundation, which works to restore ecosystems and wildlife numbers in the Santa Monica Bay.
Abalone is a meaty invertebrate that attaches to rocks and has been in high demand in California restaurants since World War II. Five of the seven species in California were fished to near extinction between the 1960s and 1990s, according to the state deparment.
Abalone sells for up to $58 per pound on the black market, says Milotz. White abalone, considered the tastiest species, was placed on the federal Endangered Species List in 2001 followed by black abalone in 2009.
Abalone season is open from April 1 to Dec. 1 with a month-long break in July. Each diver is only allowed to take three a day with a maximum of 24 per year.
Bears are also a popular target in California for their gallbladders and bile. Like abalone, they are extremely popular in Chinese markets but for medicinal purposes, according to the Animal Asia Foundation. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, gallbladder treats liver ailments, including damage due to alcoholism. Bile is said to treat life-threatening cancers, pain in the eyes, asthma, and burns.
Bear gallbladder and bile is so popular that the Southeast Asia bear population has seen a significant decline; the sun bear species alone dropped 30 percent in 30 years. Meanwhile, the rest of Asia’s five species are considered vulnerable to extinction, based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, a list of the conservation status of animals worldwide. The American Black bear with populations in California is the only species worldwide that is relatively secure.
International laws have tried to prevent the poaching of bears to extinction. Trade of any of Asia’s bear species is banned commercially by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Some efforts have worked. A TRAFFIC Network report in 1995 concluded that the availability of gallbladder in some East Asian markets due has dropped due to new requirements for licensing and registration and governmental seizures of existing stock.
California has done its part to closely monitor its native species. In 1968, it reduced the bag limit from two bears per person to one and in 1970, banned the killing of females with cubs according to the wildlife department.
Despite this, bears are still one of the most susceptible animals to poaching in the state with sales of its prized parts fetching as much as $30,000, says the wildlife department. In the U.S., the sale is banned in 34 other states including California.
Sturgeon is also a popular target for poaching. Its long reproduction timeline - it can take a female 20 years to start producing eggs - makes it susceptible to extinction if poached. It is one of the biggest sources of caviar in Asian restaurants and can cost up to $200 an ounce, says the wildlife department. One female can hold 100 pounds of eggs, making it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. In comparison, possessing white sturgeon for the first time is a $500 fine.
CLAW's Ali Simard on the Importance of Wildlife
(Chris Porter/Annenberg Media)
Teaching a New Generation
Public education is a major key to decreasing poaching, according to the wildlife department.
Educational programs are available through hunting groups such as the California Deer Association, which provides Conservation Education, results on conservation projects and Hunter Safety Education classes. According to their website, its mission has been to protect, preserve, and expand deer populations and habitat.
Fishers and hunters spend an average of $3.5 billion annually, according to Pat Fitzmorris, Senior Field Director of the Northern California Region of The California Deer Association. Their spending supports 56,000 jobs and generates $487.5 million dollars in state and local taxes. “These are some impressive numbers and that is why sportsmen and women are so important for conserving wildlife and for our state’s economy,” he says.
The state department of fish and wildlife also holds hunter education courses that teach participants about how many fish and animals they can take, and public access hunting areas.
Education regarding conservation and hunting regulations is critical to conservation efforts, says Robert Pelzman, Captain of Hunter Education and the department of wildlife. He says that education occurs in formal and informal settings such as mandated and informal mentorships between people.
Percentages of CDFW Citations By Region
Click or tap anywhere in the state to see the percentage of citations that region contributes to the state's total, based on the most recent data from the California of Fish and Wildlife.
Ways to Deter Hunters
Increasingly harsher laws have also been passed to conserve wildlife. Marine Protected Areas, areas off the coast limiting hunting of certain species, were established in January 2012 from the Marine Life Protection Act to preserve marine populations. Penalties of poaching in these areas can be higher than in other areas.
In 2009, an increase in poaching incidents led the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to pass Assembly Bill 708, which forces poachers to pay increased fines for repeat offences and sets a minimum fine of $5,000. If caught with more than three times the daily limit of take, poachers are automatically guilty of a misdemeanor.
Officials say they hope these harsher penalties will deter these offenders from repeating the crime. In September 2016, two men were fined $120,000 in fines for poaching abalone and spiny lobster off the coast of Catalina Island and had to forfeit their equipment.
“Hunting today in the state is fairly closely regulated to help guard against of further extinctions and the negative effects that they their loss engenders,” says Dr. Douglas McCauley, assistant professor in ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The number of legal hunters in the field has also dropped, according to a 2015 study by the California Sportfishing League. The study found that the number of annual fishing license sales has dropped by 55 percent since 1980. In California alone, the cost of a fishing license, $47.01 per year for residents and $126.36 for nonresidents, is 76 percent more than in other states.
“The cost of fishing licenses has really fired people up,” CSL Executive Director Marko Mlikotin says in a 2015 press release, “There is really an unprecedented decline in fishing participation.”
The wildlife department says this drop in the hunting population has led to decrease in the number of annual citations.
So, What's the Problem?
Even though the number of law enforcement officers has gone up from 192 to 350 from 2008 to 2015, it is still devastatingly low, according to the department.
“I’ve been fishing [at the Santa Monica Pier] for 15-20 years, and have never seen a game warden,” agrees recreational angler Jonathan Rodriguez.
What’s stifling is the nearly 839 miles of coastline and a population of 38 million, growing by half a million each year, says wildlife department Law Enforcement Officer Kory Collins. “There’s only so much we can do,” noting that officers, “can’t be everywhere all the time.”
Why not get more officers? The budget for law enforcement has stayed stagnant for the past decade. California is of comparable in size and wildlife diversity to Florida, yet, only receives 13 percent more than Florida’s wildlife department.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Social media has brought awareness to poaching and its consequences, says Alison Simard, chair of Citizens Los Angeles for Wildlife, a non-profit that advocates for wildlife and works to protect wildlife habitats in Los Angeles. While shared news articles help spread the awareness, Facebook pictures provide visuals for people to see what is actually happening, which makes it strike the heart, Simard says.
Additional information is posted on the wildlife department's social media pages. The department says social media has made it more available to answer common questions on its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This summer, it even posted a video introducing the new smartphone app.
With the new CALTip smartphone app, hunters can report suspicious activity immediately. What’s new? Tipsters can do so anonymously. In its first year, the app made up 9 percent of the 4,613 tips submitted. This year, that number has gone up to 17 percent.
The app has “exceeded the program coordinators’ expectations”, says Milotz. He says the app has allowed for a different demographic to voice their concerns and increases the likelihood that the witness will report the violation. The public is encouraged to download the app or call the hot tip line 1-800-CALTIP or text tip411 if they see anything suspicious.
