If you want to learn more about the topics of
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naturessecretservice .com. Thanks for listening.
Okay, people, listen up. Here we go. This is
Nature's Secret Service, the podcast that puts
you in the room with the men and women of wildlife
law enforcement. I'm Ed Newcomer, your host,
and I was a special agent with the US Fish and
Wildlife Service for more than 20 years. Our
guest today is former special agent Steve Stowinski.
You might remember Steve from season one of Nature's
Secret Service. He's been on the podcast before,
and I'm sure he'll be on the podcast again. But
I'm super excited to have him here today as part
of our season on wolves. Steve, thank you so
much for being back on the podcast. It's always
a pleasure to talk to you and see you. And I
really appreciate you being part of this. Well,
thanks for having me. Good to see you again.
Absolutely. Hey, refresh everybody's memory.
How long were you a special agent for US Fish
and Wildlife Service? Just about 25 years. Yeah.
You came on before me and I can't remember what
year you were hired. Was it late 90s? 98. 98.
Okay. Yeah. We were talking the other day about
what special agent class we were in. And I think
I was in 26 and you were in 23 or two, something
like that. Yeah. I think 23. Okay. 23. Yep, special
agent, basic school, SABs. And before that, you
were a state officer with two different states.
Which states? It was Utah and which other? Wisconsin.
Yeah. So you had experience as a uniformed patrol
officer in the West and the Midwest, and then
a long career as a special agent with US Fish
and Wildlife Service. And most of the time, while
you were an agent, you were based in areas that
where wolves occurred. Yeah, it was Wyoming,
which is kind of like ground zero for wolf reintroduction
in the US. And then where was the other place
that there were wolves with that while you were
an agent? Alaska had wolves, but they were a
huntable population that protected under the
Endangered Species Act. And then Wisconsin, that
other stronghold of wolves on the lower 48 in
the Great Lakes, Western Great Lakes. Right.
And you bring up an interesting point that we
probably haven't talked about enough during this
season of the podcast. And that is a reminder
that when wolves were reintroduced into the lower
48 states, so below Alaska or below Canada, that
was 1995. They were automatically listed. That
population was listed under the Endangered Species
Act. But there had already been a small population
in the Great Lakes area that had persisted and
managed to survive the predator extirpation efforts
of the early 20th century. And those wolves,
of course, were listed. But wolves up in Alaska,
like you mentioned, they're plentiful enough
that they're hunted. So they're not covered by
the Endangered Species Act. That population in
Alaska, is that right? That's right. Yeah. And
an important thing that I reminded myself of
just the other day, I went online and I looked
up the Endangered Species Act and I searched
wolves. And yeah, it reminded me that wolves
were listed under the Endangered Species Act
going back to 1967. And then they were relisted
in the 1973 amendments to the act. And so even
though we hadn't gone through wolf reintroduction
yet, That of course covered the Great Lakes wolves
and then every once in a while wolves would naturally
migrate down from Canada into the US maybe northern
Washington or northern Idaho or Montana and once
they cross that international border They were
automatically listed under the ESA for protection
couldn't be killed. So that was even before reintroduction,
but Anyway, I got a little off there. You worked
in some really important areas for wolf reintroduction
and wolf conservation during your career. How
many wolf cases or wolf investigations do you
think you were involved in during your career
as an agent, just as an agent? Well, excluding
the ones that might have been LACIAC related
in Alaska, I'm going to guess somewhere between
50 and 75. wolf investigations. I say that not
including the number of wolves because some cases
had multiple wolves as part of that investigation,
but every wolf that got killed in one way shape
or form, my office or another agent's office
in Wisconsin or Minnesota was notified. Here
in Wyoming, I and another agent were point agents
for wolf killings here, right before they got
delisted again in 2017. Right. Yeah. I mean,
you worked basically in the Lander, Wyoming area,
which is, you know, I don't know what your particular
area of responsibility was as an agent, but if
you look at a map of Wyoming, Lander is kind
of like, Dead center south east of Yellowstone
National Park. So of course, as wolf populations
grew, lander was ideal habitat, or that area
around lander. So you have an interesting, the
Fish and Wildlife Service, US Fish and Wildlife
Service has a national forensics laboratory.
And they've always said something interesting
about you. What is it they say about you and
evidence? I got to know everybody on staff there
really well, and I didn't really know. I just
thought everybody was sending stuff in, and they
do. But several of the pathologists and the vets
there and the forensics folks said, you send
in more evidence than anybody we know. And a
lot of it had to do with the number of eagles
that were here in Wyoming or in Wisconsin or
the number of wolves especially, because every
wolf I sent in to get an official. um, autopsy
for humans, but knee crapsies for wolves. And
they helped me figure out what caused the death
of each wolf that we recovered. So, yeah. I love
it. I didn't know. I was hoping that that was
a compliment or just bearing them with too much
work. No, you know what? I think that definitely
was a compliment because, you know, in the service,
as we've talked about before on this podcast,
it's a small agency. Everybody knows each other.
And I think the greatest compliment any agent
could ever receive is something along the lines
of, you're a worker. And when you're sending
stuff to the lab, you're working. Obviously,
you're producing. You're doing stuff. And I think
that is a compliment when somebody says, man,
you're producing above and beyond what everybody
else is. That's a compliment. Yeah, true. Thanks.
Yeah, of course. It's also interesting because
we've talked also before on this podcast about
the diversity of work between agents depending
on where they were in the country. And you were
sending a lot of animals to the lab for necropsies,
whether it was bald eagles or wolves or maybe
grizzly bears or whatever, for cause of death
analysis, bullet trajectories, whatever. And
where I was in Southern California, Most of the
lab work we were doing was probably DNA related,
because we had a lot of animal parts coming in
and out that we didn't know what they were. And
we did a lot of caviar cases. And so all of that
requires DNA work. So it's kind of funny, because
different sections of our lab probably knew different
agents based on what the majority of. of lab
requests related to their particular niche was,
you know? Yeah, that's interesting. And I just
thought of something when you said that. In all
the years of working there, I never got to visit
the lab. You never visited the lab? No. I wish
I did. Because so much work got done there without
their help. My god. It just would have been so
invaluable. And I always wanted to go there.
I never got a chance to see the lab with all
that stuff they did to help us in the field.
I just never had to see it. I was kind of a bummer.
Yeah, that's a shame. I mean, I think maybe I
got to go there because I worked in the same
region that the lab was located in. So I got
to go there two or three times. And yeah, every
time I went, it's just so impressive because,
I mean, it is a totally legit crime lab. It's
just completely dedicated to wildlife crime.
It's a pretty impressive facility. In fact, I'm
supposed to go up there soon to volunteer to
help them mount some butterflies for their morphology
section. I just need to find the time. If you
need help, I am retiring. We'll travel, so no
one gets to see the place. Yeah. Well, I'm going
to try to do it this summer, so we'll be in touch.
But hey, before you and I get off talking about
other things like we tend to do when we're together,
let's get back to Wolves. of these wolf cases
that you've done, obviously you and I have talked
about some of them. And I think there were two
that we really wanted to talk about today. And
one's kind of unique because of how it involves
Canada. So let's talk about these two wolf cases
that you and I talked about before. Which one
do you want to start with? You want to start
with the one that involved Canada? Let's talk
about the one involved with Wisconsin, because
that one helps set the stage for some of the
things that we did in Canada. OK, perfect. When
you get experience as an agent, sometimes the
lessons you learn from one investigation help
you on another one. And so I think that order
would be helpful in this instance. OK, let's
do that. So let's start with the year. And then
also, before we jump right into the facts of
that case, can you just refresh listeners a little
bit about the population of wolves there in the
Great Lakes area? So my understanding is back
in the day, pre -European settlement, I don't
know how they estimate this, but they estimated
that there was between 250 to maybe a million
wolves in North America, which is pretty remarkable.
And currently they estimate the population in
the lower 48 to be around 6 ,000. And that would
be roughly 3 ,500 in the Great Lakes area, and
then another 2 ,500 here in the Western states.
And they had population goals for each area.
I don't remember what the population goal was
in the Great Lakes. It seems to me that each
state had their own that they could handle. And
I don't remember what each individual state said,
Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. And being
assigned to Wisconsin, I mostly paid attention
to Wisconsin wolves. Gotcha. And when you say
population goals, you're talking about like recovery
under the Endangered Species Act, right? Yeah,
what they were shooting for and trying to reach
those goals. And then when they did reach the
goal, sometimes there were court cases to keep
them going. Because even though they expanded
in Wisconsin, they may not have reached the population
goal in Michigan. And the packs were usually
interrelated. impact will travel. So, you know,
they set up territories and there's a lot of
territorialism between wolves and wolf packs.
Right. So, yeah, so there was back and forth,
like, right around, like in Wyoming, I, if I
recall correctly, the population goal was 300
wolves. And when at list, at delisting time,
they had exceeded that. And then Wyoming promptly
tried to get them back down to 300. And I think
we're hovering on that now. So. Okay. OK, yeah,
we'll talk a little bit about that at the end
of this episode about, you know, Wyoming's current
wolf management plans and things like that. Yeah.
OK, so yeah, tell us about it. Great Lakes is
rated around $2 ,500. OK. So tell us about this
first case we want to talk about that involved
Great Lakes wolves. You know, one of the bigger
challenges of agents is trying to catch people
that poison wildlife. And poisoning cases can
be challenging. Having to link the victims, the
dead animals, to the poison site, and then the
poison in the baits or whatever they put out
there to the person who put it there. And as
you know, out in nature, there's nobody hiding
around the corner. There's no... And we have
trail camps now, but for the most part in the
early days, you know, nobody came out of the
woods and said, Hey, somebody's poisoning all
of our friends here in the wool and the woods.
So it's a quiet place to commit a crime. Exactly.
This is around. So it's a tough challenge. I
always liked the challenges of those and poisoning
cases are pretty upsetting. If you've ever worked
on one and this in particular, this case. It
was an 8 ,000 acre farm in North Central Wisconsin.
So it was in the heart of Wolf, you know, recovery
area for Wisconsin. And this 8 ,000 acre farm,
they grew potatoes there. And in addition to
the potato farming, By the way, the potatoes
are grown for Frito Lay. So every time I see
a Frito Lay package, I think of this case. So
I'm haunted by that. So in a nutshell, this 8
,000 acre farm had tons of great deer habitat.
And the owners, the father in particular, he
wanted to raise these pheasants to release on
the 8 ,000 acre farm. And they were a unique
pheasant. They were like a blue phased pheasant.
And I remember walking around out there on the
property looking for poisons. I haven't seen
these blue pheasants. It was just weird to see
a bird hails out of Asia in a blue phase running
around the woods of northern Wisconsin. But the
deer population was very important to this family
and this domesticated pen -raised pheasant release
program. So any predator on that property was
to be eliminated. had their own predator management
program on this property. And in particular,
in that area, they really despised wolves because
wolves were a threat to their deer herd. And
anything else that might kill a pheasant or a
deer needed to be killed. So this is the goal
of the poisoning, right, is to eliminate predators.
And astonishingly, these aren't even North American
pheasant. These are like exotic pheasant that
are not native. to the United States. And they're
going to kill native wildlife to protect that.
Yeah. So we have this basically an unauthorized
release of a wild pen -raised animal on this
farm. There are no permits for it. Releasing
these pheasants on this farm and then killing
our native wildlife to protect this pen -raised
animal seems, you know. Uh, just a contradiction
and conservation. So anyhow, the Wisconsin DNR,
uh, there was an officer there. Um, probably
won't say his name just in case he doesn't want
to any publicity, but he was a good officer and
he worked in this area at the time and he had
gotten, uh, you know, he had some good informants
in the area and this family was, uh, pretty well
known, very powerful politically, financially
land base wise. And it's hard to work on this
property without. you know, being questioned
or stopped. And he had gotten a report that there
were some dead animals somebody had seen. And
he went to look at this scene where these animals
were dead. He found a dead deer there. And then
around the dead deer, he found a bald eagle,
a crow, a squirrel and a bobcat. And the further
around the circle of this deer carcass, we called
it the circle of death, where this and he suspected
maybe this was poison. So he called my office
and asked for help because there was a bald eagle
involved. And at that time, bald and golden eagles
were still listed as threatened and protected
under the ESA. And wolves as well were protected
under that. He had known as the local game warden
there, the conservation warden in Wisconsin,
he had known through the community that this
family hated wolves. And most of their, as you
said, most of their poison activities were to
target wolves and any other predator that prey
upon the deer or these pheasants. Ironically,
I remember him telling me this, this was shocking.
They had so many deer on this property, you know,
it was really well populated with deer. And then
they would file for crop damage reimbursement
from the state. So here they're like growing
the herd and then filing claims to collect, you
know, crop damage from the deer and eliminating
all the predators that might keep the deer herd
in check. It was just a fiasco. And then they're
hunting the deer, of course, too. So correct.
And it was a lot. Wisconsin's a big deer hunting
state. And this was important to the, you know,
important tradition and families come out for
the big deer hunt and having all the deer was
important. So this officer, he He kept track
of finding eagles near the property, other birds,
and for about a couple of years, we didn't have
enough to figure out how we're going to figure
out how they're poisoning these things. But we
caught a break in this case, and there's how
this happened. He had heard through the community
that this family was looking for people to come
and hunt and trap predators on their property.
And I'm like, jackpot, I know what to do here.
Perfect. So we found us a very knowledgeable
state game warden who wanted to try his hand
at undercover work. Perfect. But he was an avid
trapper and he liked trapping and the whole fur
trade. Right, so he could talk the talk and walk
the walk. Absolutely. Yeah. So we asked him if
he'd be willing. He's like, heck yeah, let's
try it. So we had a meeting between, oh, and
by the way, because there was poison involved,
I involved the APA. So the Fish and Wildlife
Service took the lead on the case. And then the
Wisconsin DNR participated. They provided us
with a lot of support. And in such, we used this
undercover guy to go out there. It was so easy.
It was just, he went up like, Anybody else would
go up and ask for permission to hunt or trap
on someone's property. He went up and said he
wanted to I catch some coyotes and that kind
of thing and told him what he wants to kill some
predators and they all but hugged him practically
when he showed up right and A bummer in this
part of it. He was nervous about doing this undercover
thing and he didn't want to wear a recording
device So he was just nervous that he'd get checked
or something. So right he went with the father
of this property and Inside of 15 minutes, he
had gotten the whole story of how they poisoned
wildlife on this farm. Unbelievable. And just
told them everything they did, what kind of animals,
what kind of baits, what they were targeting,
how much he hated wolves. They wanted to kill
all the bears. They want to kill coyotes, eagles
they don't care about, fishers, you know, anything
that would kill ravens, anything that would prey
on, you know. animals, they wanted dead. Wow.
So he got all of this and probably inside of
30 minutes when he came back so quickly, I thought,
Oh God, it didn't go well. He came back. He says,
Steve, he goes, you were right. I should have
worn a recorder. I'm like, why? He goes, he told
me everything. Wow. So we had this admission,
but still we have a ways to go. You know, we
got to connect them to it. So he began trapping
out there on the farm. And in short order, he
had won this, the father and his elder son. When
I say son, he was in his forties probably at
the time and the dad was in his seventies. And
old family established up there in Northern Wisconsin.
So our undercover guy got to know them and won
them over. And to tip them over to his side,
We sent him out there with a dead wolf that we
had given him to make it look like he killed
it because we wanted them to have confidence
in them. And they gave him all the instructions
in the world to kill wolves. If he found them,
leave them there and they'll help take care of
it. So he went out there with this wolf and he
was, he portrayed it like he killed it, trapped
it and shot it. And they, they bought it. And
they were all happy to hear about it. And then
he said, oh, just don't go on this side of the
farm. This is where we're putting our poison.
We don't want you to get hurt or anything like
that, which was a green light for us to go out
and try and find active poison sites. So we went
out there in teams, a couple, like three man
teams. And, you know, we don't want to get caught
there. So we'd go on a day when we knew he was
out there trapping. and which part of the farm
the father and son would probably be on so we
could get our field inspections for these poison
sites. And we found 10 of them. Okay. Wow. Around
these 10 poison sites in the first few weeks
that we found them and monitored them, we found
29 dead animals ranging from, you know, bobcats,
coyotes, wolves, no wolves, ravens, crows. songbirds,
like chickadees, any bird that would eat like
suet from a bird feeder will feed on like carrion
or meat they find in the woods, skunks, weasels.
You know, even in the warmer weather, the insects
would land on these poison beaver carcasses,
ground up meat, deer parts, and they would die
right on top of the carcass. The poison was so
lethal. I left out an important detail. And that
first poison site that the officer found, when
we sent it to the lab, they confirmed that all
the animals were, in fact, poisoned. And the
deer carcass that they laced was covered in this
compound called carbophuran, which became a discontinued
pesticide used in agriculture because of its
lethality. That would kill you guys as officers
if you mistakenly touched it or did something.
Yeah, there's like horror stories surrounding
that where one officer walked through a bait
site and came home and had the stuff on his shoes
and his toddler crawling on the floor, put his
hands in his mouth and you know. had to rush
the baby to the hospital and the stuff's just
horrible. So they were using this carbofuran
and it was in all the animals. And then we started
finding more of these bait sites and then dead
animals sent them all to the lab. This is probably
why the lab said that when you do a poisoning
case, you're sending them a lot of dead stuff.
Exactly. And they were testing everything and
it was all coming back to this. Now we know that
they're actively poisoning. They said they were.
We've got the admission of it, but we've got
to put that. in the poison site because they
had helpers there that could have been doing
it that we just needed to pin them to it. So
when we found a few of these poison sites, we
did the throw down kind of like we do with the
wolf. We did that with a bald eagle. I took a
bald eagle from my freezer that we had collected
and I also had a pelican band and I took the
pelican band off the pelican and put it on the
eagle because we had heard rumors that they were
collecting eagle bands from the eagles they had
killed over the years. I thought if we ever get
a chance to find the eagle bands, I want this
one to be unique to that. Like, this was ours.
So we weren't using that eagle or that wolf to
charge them with a crime. They were just to establish
credibility or to show, like, where did this
animal go after they recovered it? Or what did
they do with it? Yeah, you're doing that last
element where you got to connect the suspect
to the crime scene. Correct. So the way we did
that is we found a poison bait site and we set
this eagle as if the eagle had fed on the bait
and died there. And it had been hit by a car,
I think. And we were using this car to kill the
eagle with a pelican band on it. And we set it
in front of the bait site, but then we set up
a surveillance camera so we could watch it. And
sadly, the sun... in his 40s came out there with
his 10 -year -old boy at the time. And they saw
the eagle, picked it up. We had no audio in those
days. And we were just holding up the eagle,
showing his kid this eagle. And then they went
off camera with the eagle. We recovered it later.
They tossed it in the woods away from the bait
site to get it out of plain view where the bait
site was at, just kind of cleaning up the dead
animals. So we put the son at the crime scene.
He was out inspecting and teaching. So you have
the father. He's one generation, his son, the
guy picking up the eagles, the next generation.
And then we got the 10 year old boy learning
the tricks of the trade to erase their landscape
of predators. Unbelievable. Which is a sad story
in and of itself. That is a sad story. Yeah.
So with that said, the covert investigation.
got us the emissions, got us more details of
where to find the poison, and now we put them
in the crime scene. So now it was search warrant
time. So we had, we still, this was, so much
was talked about in wolves between the farmer
and our undercover guy, but we had not found
one dead wolf at this point. OK, that was going
to be my next question is, where's the wolf come
in here? Right. So they talked about how they
had killed wolves, and who had killed them, and
what they did with them. They buried them on
the farm. So we knew wolf killing was going on.
Interestingly, when we went back in the records,
there was a wolf pack in 1998 that lived in and
around this potato farm. And they just mysteriously,
the whole pack disappeared. and we had no idea
how that happened. So we're thinking we'll find
a wolf if they're actually on the property, but
there's still, remember these are threatened
and endangered. There's not a lot of them. And
then if the whole pack disappears in 1998, there's
not a lot of wolf victims. So anyhow, so we...
Got search warrants. We ended up with seven search
warrants to execute at the father and the son's
residences Outbuildings and then the property
itself, even though we had open fields we could
use we still Got an additional search warrant.
We had it up getting 60 officers for the takedown
Wow and they came from the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Wisconsin DNR and Fish and Wildlife
Service. So we all, and I think there were some
from state parks, I mean, we needed all the help
we could because we're gonna be in the field.
I'm glad EPA was involved because they sent out
a super fun like cleanup team that they contracted
with to handle all of the poisons. Cause they
knew we were gonna find these chemicals either
in the buildings or especially in the field.
Cause we already had evidence of that. So we
had a super fun team. do the handling and we
did the crime scene without having to touch anything.
Awesome, huge relief. Yeah, it was really helpful.
So we did the raid, interviewed anybody associated
with the farm hunters, people that they give
permission to, people who got named for killing
wolves and we rounded up everybody on take down
day. And at the end of the day, we found a total
of 14 bait sites, including the 10 we knew about.
So we had four additional ones. And at the end
of the tally was over 75 animals were found in
total on these points. And none of them were
wolves. We had seven eagles. And I don't know
if your viewers know this, but one eagle is a
misdemeanor. two eagles is a felony. We didn't
know about the other five. I know people will
always ask this, like, what took you so long
to go out there and clean this up? But the hardest
part is putting those elements together. At times
we collected the poison bait to get it off the
landscape, but they would just replace it with
more. They just assumed some animal drug it off.
There's some horrific things that you see there.
When you find a dead animal, that's been poisoned,
they die a horrible death. They throw up and
they defecate out, it comes out both ends. And
the worst, I'm still haunted by this. I know
a lot of people hate coyotes for the same reason
they hate wolves. And we can talk about that
later. But the hard part, Ed, was when I found
a bait site when I was on one of the field teams
before the take down, I found a coyote that was
still half alive, half dead. and you know coyotes
are pretty cagey they see you they're gone this
coyote had jumped over a log it scared me because
it was on the other side of the log i jumped
over and was just laying there it kind of flinched
a little but you know its eyes were like when
your dog's sick you know and this thing just
couldn't get up even and we had to we ended up
having to dispatch it to put out of its misery
and then we sent it off to the lab and it had
a bunch of beaver beaver was like a good bait
that they used a skin beaver and the beaver was
laced with carbofuran, and he had ingested a
whole stomach full of beaver. So it's just hard
to watch these animals die, regardless of what
they are or what people's value are from that.
Yeah, when you see a sentient being suffering,
nobody should take any pleasure in that, that's
for sure. You would think. You'd think, but there
are a lot of people that do, particularly with
predators, that the more they suffer, the more.
glee these people get out of it, which I find
particularly kind of important. Yeah. And it
doesn't play well to most juries either. No,
no, it doesn't. That's true. That's true. And
the worst thing about a poisoning case, targeting
predators. They don't care what they kill. Right.
That's probably the most infuriating thing about
these individuals who think poisoning is a good
idea. I'm going to get rid of this particular
predator to make a deer hunting mecca for myself.
And then they end up killing so many other animals
in the forest. Blue jays, black cat chickadees,
night hatches, skunks, weasels, you know, bobcats.
And as far as this family was concerned, the
best predator was a dead one. and but everything
else that was victim of their poisoning nothing
deserved to be poisoned like that and they killed
so much without even even knowing it so on the
takedown um we didn't we still did not find a
wolf but we found a black bear and they had poisoned
the black bear and they'd kill and during uh
interviews with them you know they estimated
that they at one time during the undercover thing
the the farmer bragged he killed over 80 wolves
i found that When we did, uh, after we ended
up rounding them up and charging them, we did
a proffer and they told me and he, they admitted
they killed at least five wolves. Okay. Still
unable to find the carcasses cause it was over
the span of like 10 years. So we didn't have
any tangible proof, but so much of what motivated
this poisoning case was the demise of wolves
and everything other than a wolf bought the farm,
if you will. Yeah. It was collateral damage,
right? lateral damage. So what they ended up
getting charged with was felonies under the Eagle
Protection Act. Nice, okay. And they added the
misuse of pesticides as part of it and they ended
up entering to a plea agreement. And the plea
was for the father. He ended up with a misdemeanor
Eagle Act conviction. He was 74 years old at
the time. Right. He had to pay $100 ,000 in restitution.
That's good. $30 ,000 in fines. And then he lost
his hunting, fishing, and trapping privileges
for seven years. Nice. OK. He was placed on a
one -year probation. The son a similar sentence
for him. He pled to a misdemeanor Eagle Act violation
as well hundred thousand dollars for him Ten
thousand dollars in fines. He got revoked for
five years Hunting fishing and trapping and a
one -year probation. The reason his was a little
less he wasn't the father was the driving force
behind it right and then the son was just kind
of doing his dad's bidding at his dad's direction
mostly. And that's what they maintained throughout
the prosecution. So they ended up leading to
it. But that whole investigation centered on
the killing of wolves. That's what started it.
OK, so those are good monetary penalties. That's
for sure. Those are huge. So how did this case
inform you kind of moving forward on future wolf
investigations? Well, the mindset of people um,
that don't like wolves and it's no secret there's
pro wolf groups and there's, you know, anti -wolf
groups out there. And the job of the fish and
wildlife service was to try and balance, you
know, the interests of people and wolves. That's
what makes them so controversial. Right. Being
in and around the recordings and the statements
of these people, the interviews, it gives you
a glimpse into the mindset of wolf haters. Yeah.
And so much of it is based in, there was a, I
had a saying in Wisconsin, everybody was a wildlife
management expert within 200 yards of their deer
stand. And some of them stretched it out to 200
miles. I always thought, like, you know, I don't
go into my dentist office and tell them how to
fill my cavity. Why is this guy who's a mechanic
telling me how to manage a wolf herd? You know,
because he wants better deer hunting. It could
be really frustrating. So I got to understand
the wolf mindset and mentality there. Yeah. Because,
well, Aldo Leopold said it best in Thinking Like
a Mountain. If any of your readers want to read
a good essay about wolves, there's a great essay.
You know, He thought in the days of his early
forest service career that killing the wolves
meant more deer and at hunter's mecca. And he
found out that wolves played a bigger role in
the ecosystem than he understood it in those
days. Great lesson there. Yeah, Aldo Leopold
is a great lesson because I think wolf haters
would characterize him as kind of like the prototypical
environmentalist that their knee -jerk reaction
would be crazy. left winger, we don't like him.
But in reality, Aldo Leopold's early life was
spent killing wolves. I mean, that was his job,
and he believed in it. And he changed his opinion
on that, which is kind of something that everybody
should maybe pay attention to because he was
a trained environmentalist biologist who was
a ranger. And there was some, it hurts me to
say this, but I worked with some people. who
felt the same way these farmers felt about wolves.
And they were game wardens and conservationists
or claimed to be. A lot of the hunting public
did not like wolves. And I just, I had a hard
time understanding that as a fellow hunter. I
don't understand the hunting public's attitude
towards not valuing wolves more. That always
reflects me. And I got to see that firsthand
in this poisoning investigation. Tell me about
this next case then that's involved. A little
less verbose on this one. That's okay. I received
a phone call from the Ontario Ministry of Natural
Resources. And where were you then? This is when
you were? I was still in Wisconsin. You're still
in Wisconsin. Okay. Yeah. they had information
that several residents of Wisconsin, um, had
killed several wolves and brought them back to
the U S and killed them in Canada, killed them
in Canada. So the long and short of that one
was, um, these U S citizens were killing wolves
in Canada and they only knew of two at the time
and they wanted me to interview them. One of
them was the son of a guy who took over a lodge
up there, it was called the Andy Meyers Lodge.
And the owners at the time, I can say their names,
these folks were convicted, right? So his father
and son were the Herbecks, Steve and Danny Herbeck.
And Danny had killed a wolf and it looked like,
according to Ontario, a client of his who was
a friend of his named Chris Fetterman had shot
a wolf, posed with it, and then brought them
back to the U .S. And they didn't have any wolf
tags, but they were given their wolves. And then
they got export permits from Canada, import export
permits to bring them across the Canadian -U
.S. border back into the states. And the paperwork
said that they were gifts from Canadian residents.
The logic behind this is, okay, a non -resident
is going to pay upwards of $300 for a wolf tag
and a resident is only going to pay 10 bucks.
So, you know, and chances of seeing a wolf while
you're hunting up there are pretty slim. So shoot
one first and then get a tag afterwards was kind
of what the conservation officer, his name was
Rob Winter. He's a good egg. And he had called
me up and he had this case he wanted help with.
And he asked if I could interview these people.
And so I called the, uh, where these guys live
down by Madison, Wisconsin. I called a state,
uh, Wisconsin officer there, Joe Frost. And Joe
had told me that he had had dealings with this
family and this Chris Fetterman and the Herbacks.
And he said, they ain't going to talk to you.
And he goes, they've been caught before they've
been through the ring or that you're not going
to get anywhere. And I always took look at that
as a challenge, but of course. So before I interviewed,
I tried to do a little background, and I found
out that they go to an All Canada show over in
Green Bay, which was where I was stationed. An
All Canada show is all these hunting and fishing
guides show up by a facility near Lambeau Field
where the Packers play, and they put up these
booths and they advertise hunts. So I thought,
I'll just go in and see if I could talk to one
of these guys as an undercover guy. looking to
go on a hunt. So that was my tactic. And as fate
would have it, I went there and Danny Herbeck,
the son, was there at the booth manning it. And
I came up to the booth. They had a big banner,
Annie Myers Lodge. Long story short, he's talking
to a couple of hunters there and I'm listening
in. He's talking about wolves. And so my end
with him was I wanted to go on a, I was interested
in a hunt fishing trip with him up in Canada.
And I've never done one of those. And I always
wanted to go. I told him, I went on a caribou
hunt in Alaska because I was stationed there.
Right. And I tried to kill a wolf there, but
I never saw one and never came to my caribou
gut pile. I told him, he goes, and I just made
the tip of, because of the Swinski case, the
farmer case, I thought, you know, I'm going to
hate wolves just like everybody else. So I use
that as my persona. Hate them goddamn things.
You know, I tried to kill one in Alaska I'd like
to kill one here in Wisconsin and that opened
the door and the floodgates open with this guy
and he told me Between you and I don't tell anybody
but if you want to come home with us and you
kill the wolf, you know We'll take care of it.
Don't buy a tag until you kill it. He told me
what their MO was I killed a couple wolves balls
up there I go and ask what he did with them.
He brought them back to the state. So I kind
of knew that he had done this. And then he told
me how they do it and how many wolves they're
killing, all the other animals and fishing opportunities.
So I just wrote this up as a report, sent it
to the Canadians, and they're like, Okay, this
is too good to pass up. Do you guys want to help
us with an undercover operation? Nice. So we
set up an agreement between the US and the province
of Ontario and we developed this undercover project.
And I would just go, they asked if I would do
the undercover work. So I and another agent booked
a hunt with Andy Myers to go on a cast and blast.
They didn't want us to go wolf hunting right
away. They want us to build up the rapport. So
we went one year. We hunted waterfowl and we
went fishing and we hunted grouse and we did
nothing legal. That's what you call a cast and
blast where you're fishing and shooting and hunting,
right? Correct. Got it. Got it. OK. Go on a hunting
trip and then go fishing. Eagle Lake up there
in Ontario is where we went. It's a beautiful
rustic lodge. Andy Myers, he started that lodge
way back in the day. It sold chance for hands.
And that's how the Hurbecks ended up with it.
It's a legendary lodge. It was like one of the
first ones in like 1910 or something, if I remember
right. But it's a beautiful place. So you're
up there and nothing legal is happening up in
a. So in other words, they're violating Canadian
hunting laws, right? Yes. We were shooting. One
year there was three of them. There was Danny
Hurbeck. And Fetterman and another guy named
Travis Rundee, they were high school friends
or something from Wisconsin. Fetterman and Purbeck
were guides for the business. And then their
friend came up. So here we booked this undercover
hunt with them, me and the other agent. We're
paying clients, and these guys are guiding, but
they're hunting with us. So we decided on one
of our hunts not to shoot anything, to miss.
And they shot all of our geese. And we didn't
hit a one. And then the next day they let us
shoot a bunch of theirs, you know, like they,
they felt like game hogs, I guess. So we were,
there was just this mixing of limits and we killed
an excess of the limit. And then when we get
back to the lodge, we went out grouse hunting
and we're shooting from vehicles and anything
they said went, they were drinking and driving
and shooting stuff off the road. And this is
like, these are supposed to be professional guides
here. They're just pillaging the resource for
money and breaking the laws while they're doing
it. Yeah, you've got the in now. You've established
that they're willing to break the law in front
of you. And because they're Americans traveling
up there, they're committing Lacey Act violations
if they bring any game back. And then falsifying
documents. And falsifying documents, import violations,
which is smuggling, exactly. Who had her foot
in the door? Yeah, yeah. And that leads you then
to a wolf hunt, huh? Yes, and then it's so they
trusted us. did things wrong with them and everybody
was cool with that. So the next year we went
up on a deer hunt slash wolf hunt. And this is
where things got interesting. So the Canadians
wanted us to shoot a wolf if we saw one. So we
hunted like... three days and didn't hear or
see a wolf. It's pretty hard to do. Yeah, it
is hard to do. To see one in the wild. Some people
say they're everywhere. It's not easy. So they
gave us calls to try and call a wolf in. They
wanted us to kill a wolf just to see what the
herbex would do with it. So by the fourth day,
we had a meeting and I said, because of the farmer
poisoning case, I said, you guys got any throw
down wolves we could use? And they're like, yeah,
we do. We just got one here this year. There's
a mangy female that someone had shot with a 12
gauge shotgun in the neck and blew a big hole
in it. So the Canadian officers had this in their
freezer. They're going to give it to you as a
throw down, which you can put down and then claim
to your targets that you killed it. Correct.
Is that right? OK. And then you're going to see
what their reaction is. OK, got it. That's the
perfect definition of a throw down. Yeah, yeah.
I just make sure my listeners understand what
we're talking about. I got where you were going.
But yeah. And so the other thing is, so listeners,
this is a common law enforcement technique. And
it's not to frame the people for anything related
to that dead wolf you got from Canadian law enforcement
officer's freezer. It's basically to demonstrate
what they do with it after. after you as an undercover
officer claim that you killed it. And this is
something I did during my career. You get a roadkill
animal and you claim you killed it to build credibility
or to just push it along to show the culpability
and what the bad guys are going to do once they
think you've actually violated the law. Right.
And a lot of people would think, oh, that was
like an entrapment. Yeah, it's not entrapment.
In no way, shape, or form were we using that
wolf to Developed charges or raise against the
the suspects or the targets of the investigation
Yeah, it was just to establish like you said
credibility to make it look like we killed one
exactly just to see where it went so we were
running out of time to do the wolf killing so
we got this throwdown wolf and Rob winter carry
this thing in like two miles in a backpack He
dumps it on the ground by my dear Stan and it
looked terrible But he was a clever game warden,
and he found a roadkill that morning, a deer.
And he collected some fresh blood from that in
a Coca -Cola bottle. So we could create, like,
to make this wolf look like it was freshly killed.
Because it had been frozen, and they had thawed
it out the night before. And it was mangy, and
the hole was like... The size of a softball from
a 12 gauge slug, they said, and I'm shooting
a small rifle. I got to make this look good.
So I broke the tips off my bullets to say they
were hollow points that were blowing up when
they hit something. A hollow point bullet expands.
That's the only thing I did. That was the longest
day of my career. Cause he dumped that off about
eight 30 in the morning. And Danny Herbeck was
my guide and he was coming back around five o
'clock in the evening when it got dark to pick
me up. My eye just sat on that tree stand. I
didn't see another deer once the wolf was dumped
on the ground. The deer stopped coming around
because they could smell the wolf. And I was
just, you know, I was starting to get inside
my own head. is this going to work? Right. The
last thing Rob Winter said to me, he goes, are
you okay with doing this? You sure you want to
do this? I'm like, let's give it a try. I go,
if it doesn't work and something happens to me,
just tell my wife in case I love them. You know,
don't say that. Don't say that, Steve. But then
I thought about that the rest of the day. Like,
do I really want to do this? And so I could hear
Danny coming at five o 'clock. I could hear the
ATV coming down the, through the woods and my
heart's pounding. Like, So which actually worked
to my advantage because I acted like a nervous
hunter. And something I should emphasize when
we got to that camp that year, they said you
see a wolf, you kill it. We'll take care of it.
We want all the wolves dead. We hate them here.
They're wrecking our deer hunting. They emphasize
that to the nth degree. So if you see one, shoot
one. And everybody in camp, there are other hunters
in camp. Every one of us got the same. briefing
before we went out to your hunting. If you see
a wolf kill it, we don't want him around. Okay.
If you want it, you can get a tag later or we'll
get you one. We'll take care of it. So we had
the directive from the guides to tell us how
to poach a wolf. Right. So we just thought we'd
play along and show them we got a wolf and see
where it went. Well, Danny shows up to pick me
up. He goes, how'd it go today? I go, Ah, pretty
bad. He goes, you see any big deer? I hardly
saw any deer. I saw a wolf, though. He goes,
did you kill that son of a bitch? And I'm like,
I'm afraid to tell you. He's like, don't be.
And so I tell him, I go, I'm afraid I'm going
to get in trouble. He's like. He goes, did you
kill it? I'm like, yeah. He goes, God damn good.
Where's it at? I go, I hid it in the bushes over
there. You know, we created a drag trade. So
he goes over, there's dim light. He sees it.
All right. That's the second wolf that got killed
today. I'm in the fold now because I'm a wolf
killer with my throw down wolf and I'm into the
fold. Anyhow. to speed this along. Some guys
hunting from New York, one of them had shot a
wolf that same day. Then I was introduced to
him and him and I were kindred souls now because
and we were like getting pats on the back from
all the other hunters in camp and you guys killed
the wolf. And then I was starting to hear all
the stories that we needed to hear about of who
killed a wolf, who got a tag for so and so. They
were telling us everything because we were the
trusted group of wolf killers. Fast forward,
this New York guy, his friend. owned a bar and
he wanted to keep the wolf and get it back to
the U .S. So we had to go buy tags after the
fact. My wolf was so beat up that they didn't
say, don't waste your time with it. We'll give
you a better hide when you get back to the States.
We're just gonna throw your wolf in a ditch.
So they did. The New York guy killed a really
nice big wolf and he was gonna get it. Then his
friend, when he started to see how much it was
costing for the permits and all that, he didn't
want it. And the guy who shot it was really upset
with Steve her back that the dad because he was
telling everybody shoot a wolf and I've got a
tag I'll give it to you and now he didn't want
to give him his tag and now he's getting kind
of annoyed because you told me to shoot a wolf
I shoot one now you're telling me got a pay to
go buy these permits and I got a lie that this
Government about these forms and it was a it
was a mess and he was really upset and by the
time he went through the process You know in
hearing about the process. He didn't want to
do it. So the next day Um, he was supposed to
go into the natural resource office to fill out
the paperwork, to get a tag. So I quick got a
deer that next morning, came back and I asked
him if he wanted company. And he said, Oh, I'd
love it. So I went with this guy from New York.
We went into this, the office. I watched him
lie about everything, fill out all the forms.
And we're in Canada, in Canada, you can't record
anybody. So you have to like watch and see it
and then write it all down. Got it. We he's gonna
go back and go tag his wolf and bring it back
to the lodge. So I went with them and He was
starting to get cold feet about taking it back
now He's starting to get nervous even though
he had a tag and he asked me if I'd be interested
in it I said, yeah if you don't want if your
friend doesn't want to let me know so I was able
to get hidden with the wolf and a picture of
him closing with the wolf. So I had, I didn't
know where this was going to go. Long story short,
the whole thing blew up between the New York
guys and the Herbex and they didn't want the
wolf anymore. And they asked me if I wanted it.
So I paid the guy back for his licenses and then
he went with me to the office the next morning
to get an export permit and the state then the
wardens, they're just videotaped. It's like a
drug deal in the parking lot. Right. getting
the paperwork, getting the wolf, and then we
went our separate ways. And the Hurbecks gave
us all this direction on how to beat the system
at the border and all that. We had the paperwork
in order and they said they'd been doing it for
years. So we had the case. Now let's take downtime.
So the Herbecks are in Wisconsin. They got their
lodge in Canada. The Canadians handled search
warrants up in Canada, Wisconsin, and the Fish
and Wildlife Service. We got federal warrants
there and we did a raid down there, interviewed
dozens of clients that hunted wolves, killed
animals, and it was a big raid. The unique part
about all of that was the number of wolves that
we ended up with. I think there was like seven
or eight wolves that were able to track down
that they had killed illegally in Canada. And
they were US hunters, and every one of them had
the same attitude. The best wolf is a dead wolf.
And they'd like to have the trophy of it. One
unique aspect of that case is Steve Herbeck never
got an attorney. So he was calling clients, and
I was one of them. And he knew that I was central
to this wolf killing and so he was calling me
and I was sitting there you know how raid days
go and for your listeners that don't know on
raid day like if you're the undercover guy you
sit in the command post and just help pass out
information and listen right and the searches
are going on and if questions come up me and
the other agent it would answer them the best
we could to help interviewers or searchers or
whatever and I'm sitting in a command post and
I've got my undercover phone and Steve Herbeck's
calling He's like, they're going to come for
you. Watch out. And then, of course, it's all
being recorded, him telling me how to lie to
the game wardens when they come and how we're
going to cover this up. Don't say this. You need
to protect me and my kid. And he called me like
four or five times after the raid to discuss
defense strategies. That's the best. They said,
record him until he lawyers up. And I kept asking
him, do you have attorney? Because I'm thinking
about getting one. This is getting scary. And
he said, no, I don't have one. So until he finally
said he had a lawyer, I had to stop taking his
calls. But by the time it all came down, they
were so caught. We didn't charge them with anything
federally. They agreed to pay. all of the fines
and restitution that Canada wanted to get out
of Ontario. And then Wisconsin had a bunch of
violations. So they got rung up pretty hard in
that case. And what they ended up with was Ontario
charged the lodge 50 counts. Wow. They charged
the business for all the different violations
we had documented. They paid 33 ,000 U .S. in
fines, and then there's like a victim surcharge
fee. I don't know what that amounted to. I didn't
understand that in their system. And they ended
up pleading to 15 ,000 and then they paid 23
,000 in additional fines. Steve heard that, got
charged with 24 charges. He pled to seven counts,
paid $7 ,500 and then paid that victim surcharge.
And then he got 10 year revocation. His son got
27 charges. He pled to Looks like Seven or eight
of those he paid seven thousand and then he got
a four -year revocation He forfeited the wolves
that he had killed and then Federman got pretty
much the same thing and then they got charged
in Wisconsin with some other stuff there so probably
the best outcome of that is that It was so traumatic
for them that they ended up selling the business
right after the take down. So we basically put
them out of business in Andy Meyers Lodge because
it's so legendary. Some new owners came in. And
in my last conversation with the Ontario officers,
they, on the straight and narrow, they're trying
to rebuild the reputation of the Andy Meyers
Lodge. And it's, they said they're really good
people to work with the people that have it now,
but we took the Herbex out of the game. They
cleaned it up. So yeah, and it was all about
killing wolves to protect The deer herd. Yeah,
that's a recurring recurring kind of theme built
on a myth that wolves, you know, decimate deer
herds. And so you have to eliminate wolves, which
is so kind of I don't I don't understand how
people get to that logic, because if you just
look at the biology of it. That has not ever
been proven to be true. You know what I mean?
The deer populations were decimated in the early
20th century by humans, not by predators who
had been there for thousands of years alongside
deer. You and I talked about this before, and
I never really got to say it as an agent. And
I want to say it now, and I hope your listeners
take it with the appreciation that I hope that
it has. In our country, the U .S., hunters and
fishermen flipped the dime for a lot of conservation
movements that happened in this country, bringing
animals back, recovering deer and turkeys and
things that hunters like to hunt. And they paid
their way. The one thing that always bothered
me is that in a part of that, wolves were recovered
because of hunting and fishing dollars that funded,
you know, Pittman Robertson funds that excise
taxes and hunters helped recover wolves maybe
unwittingly and maybe some a lot of hunters would
say well this is stupid why the government kill
them only to try and bring them back well we
did that with a lot of wildlife yeah exactly
and these wolves were protected as endangered
and they recovered and hunters should have been
waving the banner of success of another recovered
species and we should have treated that animal
the way that recovered animals are. We use them
wisely. We don't need to exterminate them. We
don't need to put poison on the landscape. We
don't need to put baited fishing hooks hanging
from a tree hoping a wolf will jump on and catch
it. We don't have to shoot everyone. If we manage
them wisely and we treat them as for the rarity
that they are, the value and appreciation for
them will go up. That is not what the ranching
community or the livestock or the hunter groups
were saying they wanted these wolves gone. Like
Elder Leopold said, no wolves meant to hunt a
deer hunter's mecca. No wolves meant no losses
to livestock. And that mentality of wolves are
killing everything just still permeates our society
today. And hunters should be saying, we helped
recover these things and we're proud of it and
wave it as a banner of another success that hunters
brought about on the landscape. It's just something
I wish people understood a little more. And I
just never heard that in my whole career. This
is a good thing. So I know the people who love
wolves for non -hunting reasons, they're wonderful
people that support this. But then we have these
diametric opposing forces. But there's a middle
road there somewhere. And I wish we could have
struck it, especially in Wyoming. Yeah. And I'm
glad you said Wyoming, because I want to jump
to Wyoming now. You having been there. I think
one of the most perplexing things to me is when
I heard, as a Fish and Wildlife Special Agent,
who was accustomed to these concepts you're talking
about, when I heard that wolf populations were
recovering in Wyoming and were doing so well
that they were going to be delisted there, my
first thought was, well, this is great. Now,
in the past, hunters have not been able to hunt
wolves in Wyoming because they were endangered
and threatened. Now, delisted, they will be able
to hunt them. But in my mind, I'm thinking reasonably
hunt them under a properly managed game management
system like they do trophy animals. And by allowing
a healthy wolf population to exist, you're going
to end up getting some pretty monster big wolves
that survive into adulthood. Seven, eight -year
-old male wolf is going to be a big wolf. perfect
trophy animal for a hunter to take pride in harvesting.
I'm not a hunter, but I understand that that
is an interest and that's fine. But what boggles
my mind is the Wyoming approach has been, let's
take it down to the bare minimum that is allowed
under federal law, you know, and with no concept
of proper balance for wolves in the environment.
It's more along the lines of A good wolf is a
dead wolf, and we don't want them here. I don't
get that. It's hard to understand. And to take
an animal like the wolf, where so much effort
went to recover them in the greater Yellowstone
area, Yellowstone Teton, and they're spreading
out from there, much to the dismay of some people.
This is a species that's still fairly rare. Yeah.
It's kind of like a bighorn sheep. You know,
to get a bighorn sheep in, you know, Wyoming,
you have to apply and accumulate points, a point
a year. A minimum of 20 points are needed to
draw this tag. In my mind, I thought that's probably
going to happen with wolves. That is not what
happened. When Wyoming got control of wolves,
they said, OK, we'll treat the wolves around
the national parks like a trophy animal. We'll
issue some permits there like we normally do.
You can draw one. And that's how we're going
to hunt those wolves there. But if they are outside
of this little northwest corner of the state,
it's wide open season. No season, no states,
no methods. Everything goes. The only thing people
had to, they were like coyotes. They went from
threatened and endangered to coyote status. And
for your listeners who don't know what coyote
status means is you don't even need a hunting
license to kill a wolf. Yeah, exactly. You don't
need to register it. You don't, there's nothing
required. You can kill a coyote any time of the
year. And that's how coyotes are valued in our
society. Wolves. they were one step above a coyote
because Wyoming decided, well, we'll just have
people who kill wolves report them and that's
it. If you kill one, just let us know so we can
keep track of what wolves are being killed. That's
the bare minimum of wildlife management that
the state chose to use once they got under control.
My biggest fear is they would do that with grizzly
bears. I don't know what their plan is if they
get control of grizzlies, but that's how they
wanted to treat wolves. Most people that hate
wolves would have applaud that management strategy,
but those who care and want wolves on the landscape,
you know, this is an abomination of wildlife
management. Yeah, it's not management. Back to
the numbers thing. I mean, we got 360 million
people in the United States and we got 6 ,000
wolves. And you mean to tell me we can't make
room for them? Yeah, exactly. Share the landscape
with them because they might eat an elk that
some hunter might shoot or I mean, The livestock
losses are pretty minimal. Yes. Or and they get
and there's a compensation program in place for
if a wolf does do damage. Right. And offending
wolves get removed. So once they got to list
it, it was it was really disappointing. Yeah.
And it's I have to say this. It was disturbing
to me that I have to tell you this one quick
episode. Sure. I get a call from a state game
warden. He and another warden had gone out hunting.
for these two wolves that were found around this
town called Cameroon, Wyoming, which is in southwest
Wyoming. So these wolves had moved from the Yellowstone
Valley moving south. And two wardens called and
said, hey, we're out hunting. We're going to
try and hunt these wolves. And we were sneaking
up on them. And an airplane flew over, circled,
and we heard gunshots. And then we looked over
the hill and there was these two dead wolves
on the ground and the airplane flew off. So we
didn't get to hunt them. So it turns out that
another warden who wasn't with these guys, the
guy who was the warden in that area, had heard
these two wolves had come around town there,
and he didn't want the wolves near, he didn't
want the wolves in his district. And he used
this excuse, he said, I'm worried about the safety
of the people in my community, and we need to
kill these wolves. So he called Wildlife Services,
a federal arm of the government, to fly out there
and kill them. And he shot the federal government.
Here we recovered them. We got the government
going back out there to fly over them to shoot
them and then he shoots them out from two game
boards who are trying to like legitimately hunt.
These are all government employees catching these
two wolves. I'm like, wow, did we do a 180 on
this? Unbelievable. It was really hard to watch
after all the hard work and not just me, but
all the other agents that predated my work here
in Wyoming. offensive, is the way I would put
it, and a disgrace to wildlife conservation to
treat wolves in that manner after we had recovered
them. Instead of using it to generate revenue
to build the program and support for wolves,
they didn't want that happening in this state.
That's Steve Stowinski's opinion. People criticized
me for it, but I can take it. I mean, I had a
bullseye on my back my whole career because of
wolves. And it was nice. I need to thank you,
Ed. Thank you for letting me get that off my
chest because I had to carry that around in my
head for 25 years. No, I hear you. People thought
that way. So thank you. No, totally. You're welcome.
I hear you 100%. And that's my big beef is I
just want the approach to wolves to be science
-based, pragmatic, rationally based on what we
know about wolf biology and their interaction
with deer and not based on what somebody told
you over a beer at the local bar about wolves.
So much of the information about wolves and how
they interact with deer and elk and their historic
impact and their historic sizes and behaviors
is based on what two people said over probably
five beers at a local bar. And they completely
ignore the many studies that have been done by
state wildlife biologists who have looked at
wolf behavior and habitat and biology and history.
They just ignore that in favor of what their
pal Jimmy said at the bar over a beer. And that
to me is like, And as a conservation law enforcement
professional myself, it's annoying. It's annoying.
It just bothers me. And I want to take just a
few more minutes, maybe like 10 more minutes.
Toward the end of your career, you were involved
in a case where wolves from Wyoming had moved
down into Colorado naturally. This is before
Colorado had voted to reintroduce them. And there
was an incident where The wolves were intentionally
lured out of Colorado back into Wyoming, where
these extremely liberal lax rules about killing
wolves applied, and those wolves were basically
just wiped out. Can you just briefly, we have
about 10 minutes, can you describe that case
and that situation? Yeah, so as I'm describing
the last episode with the wolves and getting
shot. Wolves were moving their way south in Wyoming
before delisting. And the loners head out. Well,
I'm not really sure how this happened, but there's
a drainage coming out of the Wyoming range and
the Wind River Mountains that run through north
and south in Wyoming. The wolves took one of
those corridors or drainages down and they ended
up in southern Wyoming and then eventually into
Colorado is the best theory. Uh, spread out from
there. So, um, best guess, uh, best estimates
or best sightings. I don't remember if there
were six wolves that had made their way to Colorado
right on the border. We called it the three corners
area between Utah, uh, Wyoming and Colorado.
Right. And, uh, by Brown's park national wild
effort, if you just north of that, and these
six wolves had been seen or I can't remember
how they were observed there. But this is a monumental
episode for Colorado because that's like 150
years. It's the first time they knew wolves had
set foot there. So everybody's pretty excited
about. So a lot of media around it. The excitement
of wolves being back, but then a lot of dread
that, oh, God, we got wolves, we got rid of them,
now we're stuck with them. So, yeah, opposing
things. So. But since there was no wolf population
in Colorado, Colorado hadn't had any laws on
the books to protect wolves. So they're behind
the curve on this now. So the only law that protects
them, even though wolves were delisted, they
were delisted in specific states, Idaho, Montana,
Wyoming, Colorado, New Game, they're listed as
threatening in danger because they just showed
up. Right. I mean, wolves were in 48 of the states.
Now they're only in like a half a dozen. Right.
So they make it to state number seven, and woo
-hoo. But everybody else, wow, this is terrible.
But it is interesting, because the minute they
crossed the border from Wyoming to Colorado,
they went from totally huntable, not protected,
to threatened and endangered, covered under the
Endangered Species Act. Yeah. So then these wolves
started dying and they weren't being seen anymore.
And being a hunter and knowing how the hunting
mind works, I'm thinking, well, if I was in Colorado,
and I used to be an agent there in Grand Junction
on the West side, I thought, well, I know the
mentality of the Western Colorado and who likes
to hunt big game or is a rancher. was going to
poach a wolf in Colorado, I'd shoot one there
and bring it to Wyoming and say, I killed it
there. That was just me thinking like, um, someone
who might want to kill a wolf and get away with
it. Right. So, um, why, one thing I didn't tell
you, Wyoming passed as part of the law. If you
killed a wolf and you read it and reported it,
those records of your reporting were protected
by state law. The state could not release that
except for law enforcement purposes. Right. I
was so I was able our biologist is a fishing
wildlife biologist in lander He was responsible
for those six wolves on the federal side and
he said they're getting killed He says I need
your help. So I said, okay, so Wyoming was able
to share the records and three or four four wolves
that were killed and they were Two were from
coloradans and One was from a Wyoming guy. One
Colorado killed two wolves. In Wyoming, allegedly.
That's what the report said. So two wolves were
killed in Wyoming, and his father killed a wolf
in Wyoming, and then a guy from Wyoming killed
a wolf in Wyoming in that southern, in that three
corners area. So I thought, well, I'm just, not
much I can, I have to prove this, so the best
I can do is go talk to them. So I interviewed
them. And these guys were guiding outfitters.
And they wanted to protect their hunting interests.
They didn't want them killing elk. And they had
feverish nightmares of what these wolves were
going to do. So they went out there and they've
got recordings and calls and went out. I mean,
they literally crossed over, drove their car
up to the state line between Colorado, Wyoming.
walked into Wyoming with their calls and tried
to call these wolves. There's a small mountain
there where the wolves had been seen. And according
to them, they lured these wolves into Wyoming
from Colorado and shot them. And I'm thinking,
holy crap, one guy killed two wolves. And most
of the people in Colorado haven't even seen them
yet. Exactly. This guy's already killed two.
And it just, that just seems. ridiculous to me
because Wyoming doesn't protect them. So, long
story short, this investigation went on. We got
other leads and tips about other wolves that
had been killed that didn't really lead us to
anything that we could charge anybody with. They
did it legally. The closest I got on one of the
wolves was the guy initially said he stood on
the Colorado side, saw the wolf on the Wyoming
side, shot from Colorado into Wyoming. splitting
hairs. Splitting hairs. That's the best I could
do as far as, you know, some bad act, but we
didn't have enough to build a case. So what was
frustrating about that case is that when we were
done with it, it should have been closed. Right.
And that I was the case agent on it. We were
really short people. And that was right before
I retired. So I started as the case agent of
that. They gave it to the We usually have four
agents in Colorado. We only have one. And that's
why I was helping. I was covering Western Colorado,
Utah and Southern Wyoming in the last two years
of my career. Wow. Okay. And this Wolf case ended
up going back to the Colorado based agent. He
took it up to finish it up and I helped him as
much as he needed. And we weren't able to put
a Wolf case together. But the case was due to
be closed. And you know, from working there,
every 90 days, update it or close it. And it
should have been closed. We had no other leads
to follow. We had no case to bring forward. And
you had done what's called a recommended foreclosure,
right? So you've actually put on paper that you
recommend this case be closed. Again, I wasn't
the agent at that point. But we were done. And
the agent who had it was responsible for closing
it. orders from higher up than us said we're
not closing that when I had the conversation
with this individual and I said well why aren't
we closing that and the reason I was given was
that the wolf there's a wolf initiative on the
ballot in Colorado put to the voters do we want
to recover wolves or do we not and this individual
didn't seem to have a lot of interest in seeing
wolves recover he had told me and he left it
open so you know and I know that we're not allowed
to release information about open cases. He wanted
to keep it open so no information about this
Wolfenget investigation or these six brand new
wolves to Colorado would get out to the public
because he thought it might sway public opinion
about wolves mainly in favor of bringing wolves
back because people would have been outraged
at hearing about this case and the initiative
would have gained more momentum. And that's not
what this person decided. It was my impression
from our conversation. That's what I took away
from it. So the case stayed open. So it never
got publicly released until after the ballot
initiative was voted. It passed anyways. But
it was kept quiet so it wouldn't garner more
support than it probably deserved. Yeah. You
know, when you told me this story, it really
infuriated me because The person we're talking
about, we're not going to name him, but he was
a special agent in charge for a region. He was
actually a classmate of mine at the Academy.
And even as early as 20 years earlier at the
Academy, he had expressed anti -predator sentiments
to me. And I remember arguing with him at the
dining hall about it, because so many of his
opinions about predators were based on just like
fairy tales, grim fairy tales about the evils
of predators. So when you told me this, I was
like, gosh, this guy didn't learn anything in
20 years of being a special agent for US Fish
and Wildlife Service. And more importantly, he's
manipulating public documents to fit his narrative
of how things should come out in a state ballot
initiative. Just very disappointing. And I think
it's important for listeners to be aware that
even among the ranks of people who are supposed
to protect wildlife, sometimes you're You're
fighting opinions within your own agencies that
don't match the science that your agency is producing.
Yeah, and I didn't expect that in my career.
No, me neither. I remember one other quick little
anecdote there. I picked up some eagles from
a state warden, and that warden's daughter was
writing a report on wolves at that time. And
I was at their house and visiting with them.
And the warden said, oh, you need to talk to
him. He knows all about wolves. So I asked the
daughter, I said, so what position are you taking
on wolves? She goes that we should never allow
wolves to be in Wyoming. And I said, why do you
feel that way? She says, oh, because they're
terrible for wildlife. They're terrible for livestock.
We just don't need wolves. And that's the position
I'm taking. And this is a young high school student.
Have you ever seen a wolf in the wild or heard
one call?" And her response was, no, I never
want to either. And I thought, wow, the dynamic
was the father was a guide, the mother was a
game organ. And what influences were they having
on this child? And I thought, they're prerogative.
But I'm like, so conversely, my kids love to
see wolves or hear about wolves because we valued
them differently as a conservation success story.
That's disturbing when people within our own
ranks aren't even showing the support that they're
charged with the responsibility of doing. And
I don't mean to pick on them, but I have to live
with that haunting of the officers I know. And
there's more other, there's other stories of
that lack of support for wolves even within our
own ranks. And that was a, as I said, I felt
like I had a bullseye on my back. Like, you know,
when I go interview people, I'm like, yep, I'm
the wolf guy and I go take your best shot. So
yeah, predators are a tough thing to defend,
but you know, I was the oldest. other in my family,
and I stuck up for my siblings, and I felt the
same calling for wolves. That's just the way
it was. Yep. Yep, Steve, I totally agree with
you. This has been an amazing conversation, and
it's one that we're going to continue to have
throughout the rest of this season on Nature's
Secret Service with other guests. I will say,
you and I have talked about this before, but
the first time I heard a wolf in the wild, the
first time I saw one and heard one howl, was
2002, no, 2003. And it was in Yellowstone National
Park. And yeah, it kind of changed my life, really,
because I really had been in the woods and outdoors
a lot prior to that, and had seen coyotes and
different predators. But there's something very
moving about a wolf howl as the sun sets and
you're out on a trail on foot. It kind of re
-centers you, I think, as a human being. At least
it did for me. And anybody who has an opportunity
to do that should do it. I could agree with you
more. For every wolf that I saw dead, I was so
thankful for the few that I got to see alive.
Yep, exactly. Unfortunately, the dead ones outnumbered
the live ones. But my family was elated with
any wolf we ever saw in the wild. We still talk
about it as if it was one of those things we
checked off of our life list of things we were
privileged enough to see alive. And that's pretty
cool. Same here. But thank you very much for
the work that you did in the Rocky Mountain states
and the Great Lakes area on wolves. I never had
a chance to work wolf cases myself. So I always
appreciated that we had good agents out there
standing up for our conservation efforts at the
Fish and Wildlife Service. Thank you for doing
that and thank you very much for being on another
episode of the podcast. Well, thanks for having
me and thanks for doing this and letting these
stories come out through this program. I wish
we could have done more of this when we were
working just to let the public know what we were
doing for their wildlife. Not about us, it was
about the resource that we were trying to protect
and we should have told more stories. And also
I want to thank all the agents who came before
me who shored up the whole wolf conservation
movement before I... came into their positions
behind them. I hope I did them proud because
they did good work. So thanks for having me in.
Absolutely, Steve. Anytime. You're welcome. Anytime.
All right, everybody. Thank you very much for
tuning in to another episode of Nature's Secret
Service. 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.