It’s a little after 1 a.m. We’re racing down a dirt road in a truck, with only the dim glow of sneak lights illuminating the way for 10 feet or so in front of us.
The plane overhead radios in: “They’ve stopped now. One of them is moving around to the back of the vehicle.”
Jamie Dostal, behind the wheel, clicks his mic twice in acknowledgement. Then he hits the gas.
Dostal is a veteran California Department of Fish and Game warden. The Nipomo resident has been with the department for 16 years. Tonight, we’re hunting poachers on the Carrizo Plain.
Fish and Game wardens are sworn peace officers. They carry guns, have full law enforcement capabilities, and are federally deputized to boot. They’re also involved in everything from cleaning toxic spills to drug interdiction to search and rescue operations.
Low in numbers
As Dostal picks me up for the night’s patrol, he tells me that wardens are also responsible for maintaining their own trucks, and that trying to get something as simple as a tire replaced is a bit of an ordeal: He had a flat a few weeks back and is still waiting on the paperwork for a new tire.
So what happens if we get a flat tire tonight?
“Well, we’ve got a radio at least,” he chuckles.
Did I mention his check engine light is on as well?
California Fish and Game wardens play an important role in safeguarding the state’s game populations against poaching and protecting the environment—they respond when, for example, an oil spill gets into a waterway.
By protecting game populations, wardens like Dostal ultimately protect the rights of hunters who do the responsible thing by paying for hunting licenses and deer and boar tags.
The wardens typically handle patrols by themselves, using night vision, thermal imaging, or the old-fashioned Mark 1 eyeball to spot suspicious activity.
Tonight, we’ve got help: A Fish and Game airplane patrols an area from east of Paso Robles to just north of Highway 166, searching for “spotlighters”—hunters using high-powered lights to stun their prey—out on the plain.
But first, it’s Guadalupe beach at sunset to check for any fishermen. Santa Barbara County is a big place, and Dostal and his fellow wardens (both of them) cover it all.
Three wardens—four if you count Lt. George Gross, their supervisor based in Santa Barbara— are responsible for Santa Barbara County’s 2,700 square miles. But Gross, by his own admission, spends a good chunk of his time doing paperwork rather than patrolling.
“We really are the thin green line,” he noted.
That green line isn’t just on land, either. Fish and Game wardens are also responsible for patrolling the oceans off the coast. There’s a 58-foot-boat based out of Channel Islands Harbor that covers the waters off Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
Three wardens. And don’t forget to take into account days off, as well as times—like the recent start of dove hunting season—when wardens are sent to other districts.
Dostal and the new guy, ex-Marine Jorge Paz, who finished his field training in December, were sent down to El Centro in Imperial County for the season opener. The third warden, Dave Brown, had the day off. That left Gross to deal with the county by himself.
Then there are the furlough days. Like most other state employees, wardens are required to take time off.
“Three days a month,” Gross said.
A tough sell
There are no fishermen at Guadalupe, but that doesn’t stop one visitor from asking for surf tips and which beaches allow fires. As the sun sets, we’re back in the truck and headed east.
The Department of Fish and Game is having a hard time recruiting new wardens. According to a department study, the number of wardens in the state has fallen to 1950s staffing levels.
“It’s an absolute crisis,” said Todd Tognazzini of Paso Robles, president of the California Fish and Game Wardens Association. “[The state] is continuing to provide additional workload while our staffing is at all-time lows.
“The state budget crisis has placed us in a situation where—because of furloughs—we had the equivalent of 175 game wardens in the field.”
New wardens coming in find a starting pay of $41,304, versus $52,302 for California Highway Patrol officers. Wardens are required to earn 60 units of college credit. The CHP only requires a high school diploma.
The combination of higher requirements and lower pay is making recruitment difficult, said Lt. Gross.
“Sure, we graduated 18 this year,” he said, “but we’re going to be losing 40 to 50 over the next few years [due to retirement].”
Those numbers apply to Fish and Game as a whole across the state, but wardens in Santa Barbara County face additional challenges. For one, there’s Santa Barbara County’s high cost of living. The only reason Gross and his wife are able to live in Santa Barbara is because they bought their house in 1981.
Then there’s the fact that there are just not as many game animals in Santa Barbara County as elsewhere. Fewer game animals means fewer incidents of poaching—and less revenue coming in from citations.
To make matters worse, there’s the lack of commercial fishing revenue, said Tom Martinez of the county’s Fish and Game Commission, an advisory board appointed by the Board of Supervisors to handle revenues from citations issued by wardens earmarked for the county and advise the board on issues pertaining to wildlife.
“Most coastal counties have a larger commercial fishing base. Here, however, most commercial fishing is out near the Channel Islands, which means they’re coming up from Ventura or L.A. counties,” he said.
“Then, if someone is fishing off Point Arguello, they either go north to Morro Bay or south to Santa Barbara, so our portion of that revenue is cut in half.”
As if these issues didn’t create enough of a challenge, there are also times when a third of the patrolling wardens (that would be Dostal) is tied up in “non-revenue-generating situations.” Problems at Greka Oil are one example.
In the last two years, Dostal has been the Fish and Game point man for Greka Oil spills.
Any time a spill enters a waterway, Fish and Game gets involved. Dostal said it’s too depressing to calculate how much of his time over the last two years has been spent dealing with Greka.
“A lot,” he summed up with a pained look.
While he’s dealing with those spills, he’s not patrolling, which means he’s not issuing citations. In an area already struggling with financial difficulties, losing what’s in effect a third of its revenue-generating capacities for stretches of time takes its toll.
Judge not …
It’s quiet out on the hillside where we’re parked. The vast expanse of the Carrizo Plain stretches off in the moonlight. Dostal passes me the night-vision scope. As the valley leaps into green relief, he points out what seem to be headlights about 20 miles off.
They’re the only lights, apart from a few homes farther up the valley. As we take turns checking through the scope, I start to get a sense of just how lonely it can be out here.
The spotters in the plane have been quiet for a while now (they’re farther north at the moment), so Dostal decides to check the lights out. We drive down onto the plain, keeping the lights in sight.
Even if wardens issue a citation, it won’t necessarily be an effective deterrent.
“It’s frustrating,” noted Martinez of the Fish and Game Commission. “We had an incident several years ago: An individual shot an elk. A witness saw and called it in. DNA testing was done on the carcass, and then done on packages of meat taken from the person’s freezer [proving] it was the animal in question.
“The judge ended up giving him a $100 fine.”
That fine, added Martinez, was less than the cost of the DNA tests, let alone the time spent on the investigation.
“You slap a guy with a $100 violation, and the general public says, ‘My gosh, what have I got to lose?’”
A similar violation in an area like Fort Hunter-Liggett in Monterey County, noted Tognazzini, would result in a $2,500 fine and suspension of the individual’s hunting license for three to five years.
It’s just a matter of differing priorities, he said.
“I think it’s a matter of differing perspectives between here and there,” Tognazzini reasoned. “There are bigger issues here [in Santa Barbara County]. The District Attorney’s office is not that large of a department. We’re not deluding ourselves—we’re small fish in a big pond.”
But that doesn’t make the situation any less frustrating, he added.
You can’t do that out here
Suddenly, the lights we’ve been driving toward disappear behind a hill. Dostal flips off the sneak lights and turns the high-beams back on. Now we’re doing 60 down the dirt road. As we come up the rise, there they are: a Jeep and a Lexus SUV.
A guy is going around the back of the Lexus.
“Driver, let me see your hands,” Dostal commands over the loudspeaker.
The driver, apparently startled by the appearance of flashing red and blue lights from out of nowhere (you really do feel like you’re the only people around out here) takes his time about it.
“Let me see your hands!” Dostal is quite forceful about it this time.
The driver obliges.
Dostal has the two guys in the Lexus plus a third in the Jeep hang out while he gets their licenses and checks the cars for weapons.
The trio is down from San Mateo and is hunting jackrabbits. Turns out the Carrizo Plain has a reputation up north as a good hunting spot. Problem is, these guys don’t realize you can’t hunt after dark.
Dostal’s search for weapons turns up a shotgun—still smelling of powder—and a .45 pistol sitting in the Jeep.
“Have to be a pretty good shot to bring down a jackrabbit with a .45,” Dostal notes. “Not much left of it, either.”
He has them wait at their cars while he brings back the shotgun. Then we get company.
Warden Teri Borg from San Luis Obispo County shows up with one of the recent graduates from the warden academy. Since it was a slow night for the two new arrivals, Borg and Dostal put the trainee to work.
Michelle Budish is on her second day of field training. The former Fish and Game biologist doesn’t have much time to talk—she’s put to work calling in the drivers’ licenses and writing up all the citations.
She does have time for a quick grin, however, when asked how she likes the job so far: “I love it.”
While Budish checks with Jamie on a matter of the Fish and Game code, Borg asks one of the guys what they’re doing out there.
“Hunting jackrabbits,” he replies.
“You eat those?” Borg asks dubiously.
“They’re very delicious if you cook them right,” the man says. “My father is from Russia—he knows how to cook them right.”
I learn something new every day.
As we finish up, Dostal hands the Russian back his shotgun.
“Jackrabbits? With a Weatherby, eh?”
The man just grins.
The cheapest type of over-under shotgun Weatherby makes runs about $1,600. It’s not unlike going to the grocery store for milk in a Ferrari.
Take this job and love it
To be sure, all the wardens I spoke with enjoyed their jobs (one would have to in order to keep doing it at the rate they’re paid), and they still have a great time with it.
Take the deer decoy, for example. As we’re driving out Highway 166, Dostal tells me about a stakeout where they set up a decoy deer near the side of the road and wait for people to take shots at it from their vehicles. (That’s a no-no, by the way.)
“One guy felt that bullets were too good an end for the mannequin,” Dostal said. “Before we knew it, he had gotten out of his truck, and with an ‘Aww, yea!’ kicked it over.”
As we head home, Dostal says even with the long hours and lower pay, he wouldn’t trade this job for anything: “I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
Contact Staff Writer Nicholas Walter at nwalter@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 10-17, 2009.