Fowl Play

So “the thin green line,” as wildlife advocates call this small but ultra-elite force, employs resourceful strategies to make its presence known. In particular it depends on the media to high-profile the tiny percentage of criminal cases it can bring to the Justice Department. Good press discourages wildlife crime, though always temporarily.

In 2003 Newcomer investigated a complaint from a man who had found a dead Cooper’s hawk and a wounded redtail in his yard in North Hills (just north of Los Angeles). When Newcomer arrived on the scene he learned that one of the neighbors was a “bird lover,” too. How so? Well, because he “raised racing pigeons.” Newcomer had a suspect, and he collected enough evidence to get the pigeon racer convicted on two MBTA violations.

It occurred to Newcomer that this behavior was probably widespread, but racing-pigeon clubs are tough to work undercover because there’s little interaction between members; the birds are just released at some distant location and their return times punched in. Rollers, on the other hand, orbit the member’s property, and competitions progress from house to house, with much socializing at each.

Newcomer’s workload prevented him from infiltrating the roller community until 2006, but when he did he went full throttle, surfing the Web, contacting club members, seeking advice, attending roller shows. Everyone wanted to be his mentor (and sell him birds at prices a beginner was unlikely to recognize as inflated).

“Within five minutes I heard people talking about killing hawks,” he told me. “One of the first things every person I spoke with said was how much he hated hawks and falcons and all the ways he killed them. In half an hour I realized this was going to be a huge case. There are about 250 roller club members in Los Angeles alone. It’s a worldwide hobby. I realized that if everyone I talked to is killing hawks, then the majority of roller pigeon club members in the U.S. are killing hawks.”

In the next 14 months Newcomer infiltrated three clubs in the Los Angeles area and made contact with about 60 members, all of whom also belonged to the NBRC. In all that time he encountered only one member who said he didn’t kill raptors. The lowest claim was 10 kills a year; the highest, 52—this by the NBRC’s national president, Juan Navarro of Los Angeles.

“If we conservatively say that 50 percent of the 250 roller members in L.A. are killing 10 hawks a year, you’re talking 1,250 hawks in L.A. alone,” declares Newcomer. “That’s a huge impact as they migrate along the Pacific Flyway.”

Independently, Special Agent Dirk Hoy had started working roller clubs in Oregon, and the two coordinated their investigations. Quickly they learned that mass raptor executions by roller flyers weren’t confined to their states but were going down everywhere they looked—Washington, Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Montana, and New York, for example. “One guy was bragging to me that a partner of his had killed 30 hawks in 45 days,” says Hoy. “When you start doing the math on that, the numbers are just enormous.”

So far five club members have been charged in Oregon, seven in California, and two in Texas. At this writing only two have not pled guilty. Other investigations are ongoing.

Some of the fines will go to raptor restitution. For example, of those collected so far in California, $29,500 will be deposited in an account set up by the Los Angeles Audubon Society to protect, restore, and rehabilitate raptors. “We’ll distribute the money in consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service,” says the group’s director, Garry George, who is still steaming about the violations and methods of execution. “These criminals killed peregrines, redtails, Cooper’s hawks, even kestrels. Kestrels don’t eat pigeons, but they didn’t know that.”