Word: parkes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...forces arrayed against this threat are minuscule. There are an estimated 7,200 state and federal wildlife agents, 200 of which are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agents, sprinkled over approximately 750,000 sq. mi. of parks. At Yellowstone National Park, 60 full-time rangers patrol a tract larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Says chief ranger Dan Sholly: "For every poacher we catch, there are 30 to 50 incidents that we don't even see." Adds Grosz: "Some days I figure I have Custer's odds." He has only 24 agents to juggle law enforcement with other...
...Snake Bust. Snake poaching is a multimillion- dollar industry, in which poachers sell skins and live specimens to pet shops and private collectors through shady mail-order houses. So bad is the problem that scientists studying a recent plague of rats in some communities surrounding Texas' Big Bend National Park came to a startling conclusion: the problem resulted from the absence of their scaly natural predators, which had been nearly poached...
There was jubilation in conservation circles last month when a newly formed U.S. Park Service antipoaching unit pulled off a classic sting operation, arresting 27 citizens from Texas to Florida in the biggest poaching bust in Park Service history. The feds posed as amateur herpetologists and would-be buyers; the crime ring's alleged kingpin, who regularly carried a semiautomatic pistol, gave up without a fight. The Park Service carried out the operation for only...
Shortly after the snake bust, Bill Tanner, the Park Service group's leader, got an ominous phone message at his Santa Fe headquarters. The caller wanted to assure him that if he sent another agent into the area, "you're gonna find him floating in the river." Tanner smiles. "That only means you're getting to these guys," he says. "You're doing your job." For poacher-hunting agents like Tanner, the big game is thick on the landscape...
...rain arrived in a rush, sweeping out of the hills and across the wooden outfield fence at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, obscuring the sign that proudly proclaims the Berkshire Medical Center the OFFICIAL HOSPITAL OF THE PITTSFIELD METS. The grounds crew, so to speak, sprang into action. There was nothing big league about it. The soot-gray tarp, patched in several places, did not cooperate with the motley squad of Mets employees in baggy shorts who gamely attempted to pin it to the ground like frenzied wrestlers...