A History of Smuggling in Florida by Stan Zimmerman

Author:Stan Zimmerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Six

NIGHTMARE ON NOAH’S ARK

Smugglers have yet another acronym to fear: the “Effen W”—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the 1990s, this organization launched a series of ingenious undercover operations to halt the illegal trade in endangered plants and animals. If you are hungry for jaguar fangs, staghorn coral or Australian cockatoos, these are the people to watch out for.

The F&W history begins in 1885, with the creation of the Division of Economic Ornithology in the Department of Agriculture. Among other tasks, it studied the flight paths of migratory birds and their impact on agriculture. The division expanded and in 1905 was renamed the Bureau of Biological Survey.

In 1900 Iowa Congressman John Lacey introduced and passed an act of Congress aimed at preserving game and wild birds. The Lacey Act prevented hunting them (or collecting their eggs) in one state and selling them in another. Since then the law has been amended significantly to expand not only its penalties, but also the variety of plants and animals protected. Its reach is now global. But defiance of the rules is still a Lacey Act violation.

In 1934 the Biological Survey received a new chief when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Jay “Ding” Darling to run the operation. Today the appointment would be highly controversial because Darling was a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist with a very pro-environment attitude. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice (1924 and 1942) for his drawings. Darling ran the Biological Survey for two years before returning to Iowa and his drawing board. It was a short tenure with long implications. He vastly increased the acreage in the National Wildlife Refuge system; he implemented the National Duck Stamp program, required by all duck hunters; and he designed the wildlife refuge logo still in use.

In 1934 the Duck Stamp Act was passed and Darling designed the first stamp himself. The stamp is a federal license to hunt waterfowl and to date has generated $670 million, of which 98 percent has been spent acquiring waterfowl habitat for inclusion into the National Wildlife Refuge program. Darling left the Biological Survey in 1935. Residents of Sanibel Island are familiar with the name Jay “Ding” Darling; the large wildlife preserve on that island is named after him.

The Fish and Wildlife Service—the “Effen W”—was created in 1939 by combining the Biological Survey with the Bureau of Fisheries. In 1973 Congress passed the Endangered Species Act with F&W as the enforcement arm.

The same year, also in Washington, representatives of 80 nations gathered to sign another document—the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The acronym is CITES (pronounced site-eze). It entered into force in 1975. Today 169 nations are members.

The CITES secretariat reports to the United Nations Environmental Program. It is also party to a number of memorandums of understanding with Interpol, the World Customs Organization, country-specific organizations (such as U.S. Fish and Wildlife) and the nongovernmental organization TRAFFIC, which monitors trade in endangered species for the World Wildlife Fund.

The CITES document has three appendixes.

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