Techno wardens
Making life tougher on game and fish law violators
24Dec2008 - Houston Chronicle - by Shannon Tompkins
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/outdoors/tompkins/6181333.html
The socially interactive digital world has opened new investigative doors for Texas game wardens.
Internet chat rooms and message boards, remote-sensing cameras, and even text messaging are helping wardens make cases against violators of game and fish laws.
“It’s definitely been a tool for us,” Lt. William Skeen, a Houston-based warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s law enforcement division, said of the increasingly common use of interactive communication and monitoring technology.
“We use it regularly and make quite a few cases — everything from poaching to illegal sale of wildlife.”
Forwarded e-mails and threads on Internet message boards tipped Skeen and other wardens to the mid-November incident of a heavy-antlered buck killed in a vehicle collision near Northgate Country Club just outside Houston’s northwest boundary, and they helped Skeen recover the antlers of the unique animal.
“Our wardens actively monitor the Internet for wildlife violations,” Skeen said. “Most of our folks are big sportsmen and enjoy hunting and fishing, so we check those sites even when we’re not ‘working.’ ”
If wardens come across potential game law violations — photos of illegal acts or message board threads describing illegal acts — officers are duty-bound to check them out.
“If we see something that looks like a clear violation, we have to follow it up,” Skeen said. “It’s surprising what some people admit to and post on the Internet.”
And it’s not just the Internet that gets violators in trouble; other digital technology leads to their downfall.
“We make a lot of trespassing cases off photos taken by game (remote-sensing) cameras,” Skeen said.
TPWD wardens recently made cases on a suspect who advertised on the Internet that he was selling deer meat and on suspects who bought the illegal venison.
Another warden cited a suspected poacher based in Liberty County based on photos taken by the suspect’s own game camera. The digital photos in the camera’s memory provided evidence that the person had taken a deer after legal shooting time.
Recently, wardens checking a deer camp in Marion County used text messaging to get a suspect to admit to several violations.
The incident resulted in wardens filing 20 cases against three people involving the illegal taking of six deer, two of which had been illegally transported across state lines.
Making life tougher on game and fish law violators
24Dec2008 - Houston Chronicle - by Shannon Tompkins
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/outdoors/tompkins/6181333.html
The socially interactive digital world has opened new investigative doors for Texas game wardens.
Internet chat rooms and message boards, remote-sensing cameras, and even text messaging are helping wardens make cases against violators of game and fish laws.
“It’s definitely been a tool for us,” Lt. William Skeen, a Houston-based warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s law enforcement division, said of the increasingly common use of interactive communication and monitoring technology.
“We use it regularly and make quite a few cases — everything from poaching to illegal sale of wildlife.”
Forwarded e-mails and threads on Internet message boards tipped Skeen and other wardens to the mid-November incident of a heavy-antlered buck killed in a vehicle collision near Northgate Country Club just outside Houston’s northwest boundary, and they helped Skeen recover the antlers of the unique animal.
“Our wardens actively monitor the Internet for wildlife violations,” Skeen said. “Most of our folks are big sportsmen and enjoy hunting and fishing, so we check those sites even when we’re not ‘working.’ ”
If wardens come across potential game law violations — photos of illegal acts or message board threads describing illegal acts — officers are duty-bound to check them out.
“If we see something that looks like a clear violation, we have to follow it up,” Skeen said. “It’s surprising what some people admit to and post on the Internet.”
And it’s not just the Internet that gets violators in trouble; other digital technology leads to their downfall.
“We make a lot of trespassing cases off photos taken by game (remote-sensing) cameras,” Skeen said.
TPWD wardens recently made cases on a suspect who advertised on the Internet that he was selling deer meat and on suspects who bought the illegal venison.
Another warden cited a suspected poacher based in Liberty County based on photos taken by the suspect’s own game camera. The digital photos in the camera’s memory provided evidence that the person had taken a deer after legal shooting time.
Recently, wardens checking a deer camp in Marion County used text messaging to get a suspect to admit to several violations.
The incident resulted in wardens filing 20 cases against three people involving the illegal taking of six deer, two of which had been illegally transported across state lines.
