If you want to learn more about the topics of
today's episode, visit the podcast website at
naturessecretservice .com. Thanks for listening.
This is Nature's Secret Service, the podcast
that puts you in the room with the men and women
of wildlife law enforcement. Welcome to this
week's episode. I'm Ed Newcomer, your host. This
week, I'm super happy to welcome Keith Swindle,
former special agent with the U .S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and biologist by education and
prior experience. Keith, when he became a special
agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service, he was
immediately sent to our Sacramento, California
field office. but was quickly recruited to go
work in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was a field
agent there and eventually made his way up to
resident agent in charge of all of the Hawaiian
Islands district there, which Pacific district
really, which includes Hawaii, Guam, American
Samoa, Northern Marianas, and all of the US possessions
in the Pacific. So big area that he was in charge
of for a while. He also did a stint at headquarters
as what's called a desk agent, which means he
was a special agent that worked at our headquarters
office and served as a wildlife law enforcement
attache in Africa covering all of the countries
in the Horn of Africa, which basically made him
senior most diplomatic representative of the
service in that part of Africa. So there's a
lot we can talk about with Keith. But today we're
gonna talk about a really interesting case He
did while he was in Hawaii that actually honestly
I've been dying to talk to him about in some
capacity in a public forum for a long time So
Keith welcome to the podcast. I really appreciate
you being here You are coming to us remotely
from your house in Northern, California, but
thank you so much for making the time to be here
Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it and I'm
excited to excited to be on You know, one thing
I forgot to mention in your stellar background
is since you retired from the Fish and Wildlife
Service about what about a year ago, you have
you're now the executive director of the Autobahn
Society for Hawaii, which is absolutely the perfect
fit for you. I was so happy to hear that news.
So congratulations. That's great. That's great.
Yeah, thanks. I'm excited for that too. And it's
been a I've just been doing that for a month
or two. And it's been a lot of fun. And I'm having
to kind of commute back and forth right now because
we have some issues here going on in the mainland.
That's a tough job to have to have to commute
back and forth between Northern California and
Hawaii. I'm used to these really difficult locations
like, you know, Nairobi, Kenya, Honolulu. You
definitely suffered in your career, didn't you?
So you know We've talked about this you and I
before because we've known each other our whole
careers as agents and we're friends You know
one of the cool things about being an agent with
the Fish and Wildlife Service is there's a Historically,
there's a pretty diverse background among agents
particularly over the last you know, maybe 25
years or so and your background, you were a biologist
and did a lot of endangered species work in the
northwestern part of the US before you were hired
as an agent. You know what, just real quick,
what what drew you to wanting to come over to
law enforcement from a biologist's background?
Yeah, you know, I was recruited by by an agent.
What happened was and this is the along these
lines like you and I discussed in the past, you
know, it's such a a cool thing that we've had
people with diverse backgrounds because that
background really drives what you do as an agent,
you know, and really informs that. And that was
really true for me because I was, as you mentioned,
a wildlife biologist and a researcher in Oregon.
and I had a background in northern spotted owls.
I did a decade of research. I led a few research
programs on that and worked for the Oregon Cooperative
Wildlife Research Unit at that time. And because
of that background, somebody that knew me that
was working for the US Fish and Wildlife Service
recruited me to become a an expert witness, because
unbeknownst to me, well, I knew that these cases
were going on, but I didn't know anything about
the special agents that were doing them in the
Pacific Northwest. And basically those agents
needed expert testimony in some of the cases
that they were doing on forest birds like the
northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. And
so I was hired to the Fish and Wildlife Service
as a biologist to provide that expertise. And
I did that for a couple of years. And then the
agent came to me one day, and he said, you know,
do you know how you go into these meetings as
a biologist? And you go into it. some company
that is violating maybe the Endangered Species
Act, and you tell them what they ought to do
to comply with the law. And then when you walk
out of the room, you feel their middle fingers
go up behind your back. And he said, as an agent,
if you had a badge and a gun, that's a very different
experience, those types of meetings. And I actually
got to see that directly. Yeah. And my first
meeting of the same exact kind of meeting as
an agent with a badge on my belt and a sidearm,
instead of maybe just having a consultant with
the company, like a biological consultant that
I would meet with, suddenly it's the CEO, it's
legal counsel, sometimes some extra legal counsel
from the outside, and then maybe they're consultant
biologists who would sit in the corner and not
say anything. So it was a it really was a different
thing and that's that's kind of what drew me
in because When I was a researcher, I felt like
I was ultimately when I was doing endangered
species work I felt kind of like to look really
cynically at it like I was documenting the demise
of species and And when I became a fish and wildlife
service biologist, I was essentially a regulator.
And then after just a couple years of that, I
really felt like I'm just kind of regulating
my species. You're giving advice. Yeah. That's
it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the thing that appealed
to me, and this is the way that agent that recruited
me, named Pete Nylander. He said, you know, you
went from essentially documenting their demise
to regulating their demise. Now you can actually
do something about their demise if you work for
us with the Fish and Wildlife Service Office
of Law Enforcement. And I felt like that's what
got me over the edge. I never had a desire to
be in law enforcement, but that's what put me
over. Sometimes those turn out to be the best
agents are the ones who'd have never picked up
a gun in their life before and you just train
them the way you want to train them and and You
know, they bring a different background and mindset
to the whole thing. I Yeah, I had so many similar
experiences in Southern California when I was
an agent there I don't know how you handled it.
But whenever I would have those meetings with
the corporations or you know, maybe the Municipalities
or the you know local governments or whatever
that were violating Endangered Species Act or
some other law. I always made a special point
to wear that, you know, plain black suit with
the white shirt and the plain tie. And then I'd
go into the I'd go into the conference room and
very casually take off my jacket, make sure they
saw the gun and they saw the badge on my belt.
And yeah, the attitude and the response you get
from corporate violators changes dramatically.
And I've said this so many times in so many settings.
You know, I'll say it again and anybody who watches
or listens to this podcast is gonna get tired
of hearing it but I don't know if you ever heard
this but one of the great quotes from Abraham
Lincoln is that the law without enforcement is
nothing more than good advice and That is so
true when a biologist is telling you hey this
shouldn't be done. That's advice When a law enforcement
officer sitting in the room a special agent with
the federal government is telling you hey you
guys are violating the law That's a different
message for sure, right? Yeah, absolutely. And
I'm going to throw you under your own bus here,
because I remember about 20 years ago, you and
I were talking about that quote. And because
I think I maybe I may have had it in a talk or
something that you saw it or you I don't know
how it came up. Oh, did I steal it from you?
I maybe I don't know. I might have gotten it
from you. But what I remember is this conversation
because this blew me away. And this says a lot
about you. You you went to the Library of Congress,
I believe, to find out the origin of that quote
and to try to get the original the original quotation
and I can't remember what you found. You found
that it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln but
there was no documented record or something like
that? Is that right? Something like that, yeah.
Yeah, that all came about because there were
some actually some people who were attributing
that quote to a very well -known, very well -respected
assistant US attorney. And I was like, No, I
don't think the US attorney said that. I think
a president of the United States. And you know,
me, I was determined to go find out exactly where
that quote came from. I think we probably both
got it was that was was that Bob Anderson or
John Webb? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Bob
Anderson. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very well respected
and kind of famous. I won't say infamous. He
was a famous US attorney who worked on absolutely.
Yeah. so this actually leads in perfectly to
the discussion I want to have with you today
and Just if we go long Keith, we'll just turn
this into a two -parter but so I don't want to
I don't want you to feel like you're rushed to
tell the story because this is a good one, but
you know We're gonna talk today about a bird
which you know perfect that you worked previously
on spotted owl stuff And I want you to tell us
about that bird in a second, but most mostly
Right now I want to ask you the hard hitting
question. Why do you hate high school football
so much? That's a low blow. All right, so you
don't have to answer because we're going to get
into the answer to that question. But for right
now, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
For right now, tell us what is a Newell's shearwater
bird? It's a bird. What's a Newell's shearwater?
Yeah, yeah. And for the record, I love football.
Yeah, so the Nuala Shearwater is one of a couple
of species that almost no one knows anything
about. And it's a species of seabird that is
endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. In other words,
it's found nowhere else on Earth. and another
species called Hawaiian Petrel is also endemic
to the Hawaiian Islands and they're kind of similar
in a couple of respects. And one of the amazing
things, and this is exactly what we were talking
about, because of my background, I was recruited
specifically to work this case and that was So
I was recruited because I knew stuff about spotted
owls and I became an agent. But on the hiring
panel of the agents that interviewed us when
we applied for our job was an agent named Paul
Chang. And Paul is a native Hawaiian and he was
on the panel and because I was one of the few
biologists that was hired in my cohort. And I
had purely like an endangered species enforcement
and regulatory background. Paul called me up
when I was in Sacramento as in my first duty
station. And he said, I really want you to go
to Hawaii. I really want you to consider to transfer
to Hawaii. And I did, ultimately, and he tasked
me with this case about the Newell Shearwater.
And another pivotal person, unbeknownst to me,
but a friend of mine that I knew in the Spotted
Owl work, was a solicitor for Department of Interior
named Steve Siegel. And Steve saw kind of a standard
report come out of the Hawaii Office of the Fish
and Wildlife Service that mentioned that since
1979, and this was probably like around 2000,
the year 2000, since 1979 to 2000, over 30 ,000
Newell's shearwaters were grounded. In other
words, they were taken from the sky, more or
less, for various reasons. And then retrieved
and many of them released. And Steve Siegel being
an attorney was like, well, wait a minute, that's
a threatened species under the Endangered Species
Act. And it's a migratory bird under the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act. And when he found out why they
were being grounded, it was all man, human causes.
So that was, as you know, you know, what we would
call take under the Endangered Species Act. And
so Steve, like I said, it was kind of like a
routine report coming through, and these reports
were coming through every year. But it took Steve
to see it and recognize, well, wait a minute,
what is this? And it turns out, you know, it's
probably the largest take of a single land animal
species, you know. When I say land animal, the
shearwaters, I'm talking like a vertebrate, not
a fish. Well, a land vertebrate, not a fish or
not an insect or something like that that have
high numbers. I can't think of another incident
where there's been 30 ,000 of one species that's
on the Endangered Species Act that was taken
due to due to humans that wasn't a fish or, or
something like that. Right, right. So the the
Newell's Shearwater, and what we'll try to do
here is I'll get some photos of the Newell's
Shearwater and the petrol and we'll put them
on the Nature Seeker Service website so people
can go see what these things look like. Yeah.
But basically, when you talk about grounded,
There's a couple things I want to talk about
here. One is the law. But the other is when you
talk about grounded, I think it would help people
understand what that means really, if you kind
of describe, you know, the habits or the behaviors
of your waters and petrols, how do they, you
know, what's their process of fledging their
chicks? And what do you mean by grounded? Yeah,
yeah. So, you know, even though I was a certified
wildlife biologist, you know, I had never heard
of a newel shearwater when I went to Hawaii in
about the year 2001. And so what I'll do is I'll
tell you exactly, your question is exactly the
initiation of the process I had to go through
to figure this out. Because basically, Paul Chang
Steve Siegel said to Paul Chang, look at this
problem. Paul Chang knew about the problem from
when he was a kid in Hawaii, and he really wanted
somebody to fix that. And so that's what he tasked
me with doing. And so I moved there knowing,
I mean, I moved there basically with this commission.
You got to fix this problem. and uh so nice all
by yourself by the way right yeah so um so what
i did is i went around you know i mean just being
a biologist i knew i needed to find the people
that knew about the birds you know and i found
the other biologists the researchers the state
biologists the federal biologists the university
researchers that had been doing these studies.
And we knew, you know, this data that over 30
,000 had been grounded, you know, came from somewhere,
right? So I went and found those people and,
and talked to them. And the Newell Shearwater
and grounded grounded you. I'm sorry, grounded,
you mean, basically, they, they were flying and
something for some reason, they were knocked
out of the air, not of their own choice, right?
They either come down and they're injured, killed
or Yeah. They just can't get back in the air
by themselves. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And so Newell
Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels are types of
seabirds that they kind of need a long runway
to get going in terms of flight. And so if you,
unlike a mallard, like a duck, that can jump
from the water into the air, these would be more
like some of the diving ducks that have to run
along the surface of the water before they can
get airborne. You know, so, sure waters and and
petrols need a little bit of runway. And so what
where that's meaningful is that if they're if
they've come out of the sky for some reason onto
the land, they either need a drop off or a clear.
clear runway or a real strong headwind and a
combination of a drop off to get airborne. These
two species probably, what few people realize
these days is that seabirds for the Hawaiian
islands and the whole Hawaiian archipelago sea
birds were what I would consider the buffalo
of those islands in terms of being foundational
species to that tropical island ecosystem. Like
buffalo are that foundational species to the
Great Plains at one time. And we're starting
now to recognize that role that buffalo played
in the Great Plains and the prairies and grasslands.
Well, seabirds were that for tropical islands.
These islands had no mammals whatsoever on the
land. There was a, you know, with the exception
of a small bat and a monk seal, you know, that
came as far as the beach. But on land, there
were no mammals. But there were tons and tons
of bird species, especially and the ones that
I think were foundational were the seabirds.
For this reason, the Hawaiian Islands were volcanoes
that popped up out of the middle of the ocean.
So imagine an eruption and this this volcano
appears and what you have is nothing but rock.
Two thousand miles, you know, a couple thousand
miles away from from any continent. And the only
thing, if you think about creating soil out of
rock, the only things we have are wind and rain
and sun. But then if you add in seabirds that
would colonize the island, they would bring...
tons of nutrients to these islands. And if you
imagine a volcano in the middle of the ocean,
it's bare rock. And then you populate that with
almost two dozen species of seabirds in their
millions from beach to mountaintop. And then
those seabirds are making daily flights out to
catch squid and fish and other things in the
ocean. And then they come back and they defecate.
you know, all birds defecate and urinate pretty
much at the same time. So there's uric acid when
they defecate. So they like add a little bit
of acid and a bunch of nutrients. And that acid
helps the rain break down volcanic rock. Fascinating.
Yeah. So if you, and then you compound this out
over time, you know, basically we owe seabirds
the fact that we have soil on a lot of these
islands. Right. So really a critical component
to the ecology of the islands. And that was true
of a bunch of different species. So now back
to your original question. So cool. What's unique
about the Newell's Shearwater and the Hawaiian
Petrel is that there were two of the seabird
species that could breed way up in the mountains,
which is in itself just incredible. Because you
imagine you're on the ocean in Hawaii, and it's
85 degrees or something like that. And then you
fly up. to like 10 ,000 feet on top of one of
the islands, like the Big Island or on Maui,
maybe even higher than that. And then that's
where your nest is. Sub -zero at night, or I
mean sub -freezing at night at least, you know,
maybe in the 20 degrees. And then to feed your
chick, if you're the Hawaiian Petrel, for example,
you're going to fly almost to California or to
the Aleutian Islands. And in one feeding trip,
like you go out, you catch fish up in, you know,
south of Alaska. And then you fly all the way
back to your nest 10 ,000 feet up on this volcano.
You know, it's just that's crazy. It is crazy.
It is crazy. So anyway, that's some of the cool
stuff about those birds. But they're they are
nocturnal when they go to nest. So the only time
that they come to land is as the sun is setting
and after dark. And I don't entirely understand
why that is. There may have been some ancient
predator in the daytime that's extinct now that
maybe made them that way. But for whatever reason,
they come in at night and they also leave at
night or leave before daylight to go out to sea.
And what happens is for both species, They raise
one chick in this hole in the ground up high
in these mountains, some of which are forested
and some are just barren, like looking like Mars,
like up on Mauna Loa, for example. And when it's
barren, they're nesting in a little lava tube
or a little crevice or something under the rock
so they can get some shade. When it's vegetated,
they might burrow down into the soil or the roots
of plants, or even on the surface under plants.
But then they raise this one chick starting in
late spring. And then that one chick is there.
Their only egg is literally in one basket. And
then come October, those chicks mature enough
to make their maiden voyage out to sea. And they
have one shot at it. They're not like a lot of
other birds where they can. try to fly and then
fail and then perch somewhere and then and then
you know get fed again and and that sort of thing
they have to wait till they can actually they're
gonna yeah they're gonna launch off their their
cliffside nest and if they don't if they don't
make it they ain't taken off again basically
right exactly exactly and so They get airborne
often by climbing. They'll literally climb trees.
They'll climb brush. They'll climb rocks. And
then they'll get a little bit of height that
way. And if the wind is right, they'll launch.
And then they're airborne. This is at night,
right? Yeah. And that flight, they have to make
it to the ocean. If they don't make it to the
ocean, they're pretty much toast. And so what
we think happens is they navigate by moonlight
and starlight, and they fly out toward the ocean.
So this flight could be from the center of these
islands. It might be 10, 12 miles or just a couple
miles. But anything in their way is a problem.
And so as they come down, if there's power lines
in their way that they can't see in time, and
they have good night vision, but not perfect,
and bear in mind, it's their first flight. They're
not that great at maneuvering. And then the one
phenomenon which causes what we call this grounding
or fallout. we would call it fallout, is light
attraction. So like a moth to a light, Newell's
shearwaters and some other sea birds that are
nocturnal will see a light and they'll start
to circle it. And so these are unshielded lights.
And you have to think about a light, like if
you're looking at a street light, If you are
above the level of the light and you can see
the light bulb itself shining in your eyes, that's
an unshielded light. It's a light that's shining
skyward in addition to downward. Rather than
straight down. Exactly. If you have a fully shielded
light, as soon as you're at the same level as
the base of the fixture, like let's say a light
pole, on our street light. As soon as you're
up at the same level, you can't see the light
bulb anymore. So the light is all directed downward.
And if you're flying and I took this photo a
long time ago from this seabird colony, a new
shearwater colony. I was up in the mountains
and it was sunset. And after the sunset, I'm
looking out over the island. And here is this
beacon of light. And I'm at like 4 ,000 or 5
,000 feet, well, 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 feet elevation.
And I see this light essentially down by the
beach or down by the city near the beach. And
what that was was a football stadium. And so,
yeah, that's kind of the the issue. So if they
start circling the light, they basically get
tired and then they fall down, they hit the ground
and then they're either nailed by a cat, a dog.
You know, these are invasive species to Hawaii
or cars or or they're in a location where they
can't get airborne again because it's relatively
flat. And if they're in a like area where there's
not enough wind and not enough space, they can't
get off the ground again and then they're susceptible
to even rats and cats and things like that. Or
they just get dehydrated and die. Yeah, I was
just gonna say dehydrated. They're not eating.
They're expended all their energy. Their life's
short at that point. Yeah. So when I said that
we knew that there were like 30 ,000 that had
done that, that was years of collection by the
public. of these birds that grounded themselves
and people found them. And there was this guy
named Tom Telfer a long time ago and some of
his colleagues and associates, another guy named
Thomas Kayakapu. Those guys had this program
called Save Our Pure Waters on the island of
Kauai. And so if you imagine the island is basically
a circular island, just imagine more or less
a volcano with the caldera kind of broken off
and eroded. But the road goes about 80 % around
the outer edge of the island. There's essentially
a road along parallel to the beaches all the
way around. And there's little communities all
the way around that road. And in each community,
there's a fire station. And at each fire station,
they would put what looks like a apartment building
mix made out of kind of like milk crate material,
the old plastic milk crates. And each one of
these mailboxes might have maybe like 12 compartments.
and a little door on it. Okay. And you take your
sheer water, you know, which is about the size,
a little bit bigger than a pigeon. And you'd
open the door and stick it in a slot and then
leave it. And, and so that so if the so if the
public if the public's out and comes across a
down to grounded sheer water, and they it's alive,
they can take it to their local fire station
and essentially, somebody will take care of it,
try to get it back to the wild. Yeah, exactly.
It is really cool. The thing is, and a lot of
the criticism I got early on was, well, you know,
look at all these people are doing all these
good things. And they would take the, what would
happen to the bird you put in the box at night
is the next morning, a biologist from the state
would come around and collect the birds and then
release them out at the beach, you know. And
the problem is that We found they found since
1979 to 2000 they found 30 ,000 How many did
they not find and how many were dead? You know
when they found exactly and then sometimes when
the guy would come in the morning The bourbon,
you know had sat there all night So the lucky
ones get found by a person and taken and put
in this box but Some of them a good percentage
would die overnight, you know a dehydration or
whatever And then the ones that are being released,
you know, there's no they're being just released
in whatever condition they are Sometimes they
couldn't even leave the beach, you know, they
wouldn't fly, you know, they've just end up dying
there so And then what about all those, you know
tens of thousands undoubtedly that were never
found and and so so that's kind of the scenario
that I've been occurring Yeah, so now now is
a good time to make sure that everybody understands
the law because I can I can just imagine there's
a lot of people like Yeah, so what's what's a
special agent involved for and why so that you
already mentioned? Shear waters and petrels are
both listed under the migratory bird treaty act,
which is a federal federal law that prohibits
the take of any bird listed under that act. I'll
just give I'll just give a quick rundown Keith
and correct me if I'm wrong. But with with the
MBTA, that's an old federal statute. And it's
a good one. But because it's basically a strict
liability law. So you know, if you doesn't matter
if you set out to kill a bird or you intentionally
did something that killed a bird, you kill a
bird on the on the list and technically you violated
it. That's strict liability. But the shear water,
the Newell's shear water is listed also under
the Endangered Species Act as threatened. Yeah,
the petrol is actually listed as endangered.
Yeah. It's endangered. Okay. So that's a different
level of protection. And taking, killing, capturing,
doing anything that harms them is considered
take. can be a criminal violation, but there
has to be some type of either, you know, intent,
they're somehow involved, either, either you
intentionally set out to do it, or you were told,
hey, this behavior is resulting intake, and then
you don't change that behavior. So that turns
into your intentionally acting now, right? And,
you know, businesses can get tangled up in this,
right? So you mentioned, you know, how the birds
see lights as maybe they confuse it with stars
or moons. You know in Southern, California when
they started to build all of these solar fields
What you know right under the Pacific Flyway,
which is a major migration route for migratory
birds What we started to see out in California
was at night Water birds waterfowl geese ducks
loons whatever Mergansers would be flying and
they would see these solar fields reflecting
in the starlight or the moon light, and they
would think it was a lake. And they come down
to land on this lake and they hit the panels
and kill themselves in the thousands, right?
So the question is, you know, the company that
puts up the lights or the company that puts up
the solar panels or the wind turbines, they may
not know at the time, they probably should if
they did their due diligence with their biologists
ahead of time, but they may not have known that
they were building right under a major flyway.
And so then the question becomes they start to
kill birds unintentionally, they never set out
to do that. Obviously, they're just trying to
provide light or generate power. But as these
birds start to get killed, particularly in high
numbers, it goes way beyond incidental take,
and it could actually impact the population.
So what normally happens is the company is advised,
usually by that biologist, like Keith Swindle
was before he became an agent says, Hey, you're
You're killing a lot of birds out here, right?
And here's some things you might do to minimize
that or to stop it or to reduce it dramatically.
And then at that point, if the company, whether
it's SoCal Edison or a power company or a private
business that owns these wind turbines, if they
don't change the way they operate their equipment
in a way that reduces their numbers of killed,
then essentially they're intentionally violating
the ESA, Endangered Species Act. Just wanted
to kind of cut through the explanation because
sometimes I think people they don't really understand
well So somebody built solar power. That's a
good thing Why would that company be potentially
criminally liable for killing wildlife and it's
it's not that simple You know, there are a lot
of things these companies know ahead of time
about where they're building and there's a lot
of things they know that they could do to reduce
deaths or eliminate deaths, but it costs money
and they don't do it and so they just hope that
they're not going to get in trouble. I mean,
is that a fair explanation of kind of where you
were with Shearwater when you got there? Absolutely.
Yeah. And, you know, along those lines, you know,
some of the, this is not a not the right term.
Some of those that were responsible for the particular
lights that were causing this to happen and the
particular power lines, you know, they were early
on kind of involved in the Save Our Shearwater
program, more or less passively, you know, often.
In other words, like the state biologist might
say, you know, I want to do this Save Our Shear
Waters program, they might give them a little
money to buy the milk crate material or something
like that, or they might contribute in other
ways, maybe publicize it or something, because
this is only happening every October and November,
and only during the new, well, primarily during
the new moon phase of October and the new moon
phase of November. And that's when the fledgling
season for these species was. And so, you know,
there was these efforts, mostly voluntary efforts
by not necessarily the people that were doing
the, that had the facilities that were harming
these species. But, you know, they were either
supportive, you know, just generally supportive,
but really not taking the, you know, responsibility
to make things better. in my view. Throughout
my career, and you've raised this really interesting
almost dilemma, where if somebody is basically
causing, unintentionally causing the demise of
a species through whatever their facility is
or whatever their action is, then How punitive
do we want to be against them? And then how do
we bring them into quote unquote compliance where
they're no longer doing that? And the sad reality
of humans is, and just like our favorite quote,
without enforcement, the law is just advice.
Yeah, and often when financial interests compete
with advice, financial interests win. Yeah, I
used to when I would give my talks and I would
use that quote, I used to say, you know, from
a financial perspective, it's arguably bad advice.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. And but you know,
it's, you know, we could go off on a whole tangent
about, you know, criminal justice education and
criminal justice concepts. But one of the things
that I think is so cool about living in a democratic
society is that it essentially the citizens of
the United States give their permission to have
law enforcement officers enforce the law against
them, right? Like, The only reason a law enforcement
officer has authority to make an arrest is because
voters gave them permission to use force if necessary
to enforce the law. And, you know, a non -democratic
country, that is not true. And we can change
it too. So, you know, if you just look at marijuana
laws 20 years ago, you could have gotten arrested
for having marijuana. In many states now, it's
legal. And that's because voters decided they
wanted it to be legal. And when they do, the
cops won't arrest you for it anymore. Right?
And so as a society, we make a choice, we want
to protect these animals, we do not want new
shear waters to go extinct. So yeah, we're gonna
have to there's going to be a financial in, you
know, burden that's gonna have to come with that.
Yeah, it's not a huge one. But that's what we
decided. And so that's what the law enforcement
officers are going to do. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so because of this kind of, I use the word
dilemma, I didn't go out and say, look, you're
violating the law, you're under arrest, we're
going to jail right now. What I did is I spent
about eight years of educating, basically finding
all the locations. So for over a 10 year period,
Oh, yeah, go ahead. So wait, we got to back up
just a second. Because we got to talk about something
really important that you bring to the table
when you come into this case. And that is what
has been going on before has been efforts of
biologists and the local community who want to
save these birds. And it's been very ad hoc grassroots.
Yeah, we found this many and you know, we don't
really know what happened to the others and now
as a special agent from the US Fish and Wildlife
Service, you arrive on on scene now, and you
are going to bring a law enforcement perspective
to this. And so just you know, what does that
mean? Like, what is what is what is the arrival
of a special agent from US Fish and Wildlife
Service change? Versus what's been going on before?
Yeah. It's really documentation. Yeah. something
that I've I call it the fragile coalition. So
what I mean by that is you as an agent you show
up and then there's this whole community of people
that are saying, you know, the status quo is
good enough and and we are all volunteering.
We're all working and we're you know, this hall
is great. We pick up all these birds. Look at
all these birds we picked up and we've released.
How great is that? And I'm sitting there looking
at it like, yeah, but how many of you missed?
Why are they coming down in the first place?
That's a violation of law. And just trying to
do essentially, basically putting a Band -Aid
on the skin cancer is not a solution. And so,
yeah. My mentor agent, Pete Nylander, the guy
that recruited me originally, used to have this
saying, and he said, you have to break eggs to
make an omelet. Nobody wants to break eggs. Basically,
you have to come in as the agent and break those
eggs. And then, you know, and that's by enforcing
the law and the eggs represent like the fragile
coalition that everybody is. It's just the status
quo. It's the norm. You know, it's the way we've
been getting by all this time without anybody
complaining. Meanwhile, all your sheer waters
are disappearing, right? Yeah. And even, you
know, I know how much you love football, but
we're going to explain how even in the Friday
night football games on Kauai, The football players
themselves were able to document the demise of
their own species. We're gonna talk about that
later. Don't forget But you know what what you're
doing differently than what the community did
before is you're looking you're coming over now
as an agent and you're saying hey is a crime
occurring and if so That's something that potentially
is gonna get charged and now there's a whole
different level if you're gonna charge a company
or a person or whatever with violating the law
there's a process that has to be done. There
has to be a very neutral, fair, complete professional
investigation done. And that's what you bring
to the table when you arrive in Kauai. You're
going to investigate this case, right? Which
means documenting the who, what, where, when,
and why, and how. Exactly. Yeah. So I spent...
Yeah, go ahead and years of nights in October
and November and that that is the craziest part
of this. And there's a reason for the 10 years.
And when I think when listeners hear why it took
you 10 years, why you worked on this case for
10 years, it will change their whole perspective
about how they view law enforcement, and in particular,
federal agents, because we get a bad reputation
sometimes for being heavy handed. too aggressive.
And it's always the bad guys who accuse us of
those things. But there's a reason it took you
10 years to do this. And we are going to have
to talk about that in the next episode. Because
this is going to be a two parter because this
is too good. So so right now, we're going to
wrap up this episode. And I'm going to tell you
join us next week because Keith is going to tell
you why it took 10 years to work on this case,
and the fabulous outcome that resulted. So thank
you very much for tuning in to Nature's Secret
Service for this week. We'll see you next time.
Nature's Secret Service is written and produced
by me, Ed Newcomer, and is co -produced by the
DHTV team here at California State University
Dominguez Hills. Follow us on social media and
connect with us online at naturessecretservice
.com.