Ray Ring

Senior Editor

It’s about human psychology, ultimately. He’s Philip Mark Payton, age 58, and as the Missoulian reports:

Authorities portrayed him as an arrogant, ruthless killer of wildlife, a Texan who came to Montana and left a trail of carnage strewn across the landscape for 15 years, taking the biggest and the best trophy animals and leaving their populations poorer for it.

They said he obsessively chronicled his work in videotape, photos and paperwork, and tried to cover up his crimes by tampering with evidence and witnesses.

Investigators eventually followed that trail of blood and self-incrimination to his doorstep, where his home was packed with mounted heads, horns and hides of illegally taken animals.

(Read on …)

A couple of months ago Grist reported that prosecutions for environmental crimes had declined since Bush took office. Describing a report from the Environmental Integrity Project, Grist said:

The Department of Justice has filed fewer than 16 lawsuits per year against polluters since Bush took office; the last three years under Clinton saw an annual average of 52 lawsuits. Between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, polluters shelled out $81 million per year in civil penalties; between 1996 and 2000, they ponied up $107 million annually. Criminal fines have dropped 38 percent under Bush, and the number of new criminal investigations has declined by 23 percent.

Now it turns out that it’s not just Justice, but the Environmental Protection Agency, that has been slacking in its duty to the public. Forbes reported today that the number of EPA enforcement officers — real-life, gun-toting enviro-cops — is down to 174, despite a Congressional mandate of 200 and a budget that’s increased by 25 percent:

(Assistant EPA administrator) Nakayama said the EPA is reinvigorating criminal enforcement with an emphasis on pursuing high-impact cases, such as the recent felony air pollution convictions against CITGO Petroleum Corp. and convictions and fines worth millions of dollars against pipe and foundry divisions of McWane Inc. of Birmingham, Ala.

The EPA’s overall criminal caseload - investigations that could lead to prosecutions later - is declining, according to the agency’s figures. It has opened fewer investigations every year since 2002, when there were 484 new investigations and 216 agents. Last year, the number of new cases fell to 305.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

What’s 7 feet tall … costs $38,000 … gets greedy gas mileage (14 miles a gallon) … and was attacked by two masked vandals after midnight in our nation’s capital?

Of course I don’t condone it. But the way the Washington Post writes it up, it’s kind of an amusing window into 2007 society.

Last week, a group of retired rangers from every major U.S. public lands agency held a press conference to announce their plans to clean up what they called the nation’s biggest threat to public lands: illegal off-road vehicle use. One by one, they took the microphone to talk about their combined decades of experience with irresponsible ORV users. They described riders driving off designated roads onto fragile lands, being severely injured after ignoring safety rules, becoming increasingly belligerent towards rangers and other public lands users, and destroying signs and fences.

The group, “Rangers for Responsible Recreation,” says it’s not against ORV use per se; what they have a problem with is people who ignore the law. According to Daniel Patterson of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, in 2005 there were more than 5,000 law enforcement incidents involving ORVs on BLM lands alone. (The next biggest category was drugs, which accounted for 900 incidents.)

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

J. Steven Griles, former Interior Deputy Secretary and leading star of the soap operatic scandals in Bush’s Interior Department, lied to Congress during the investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He could be sent to jail for five years and have to pay up to $250,000, but prosecutors agreed to ask for just five months in jail and five months in a halfway house or home detention, just because he pleaded guilty (he doesn’t even have to cooperate with the investigation).

Now, Griles wants an even easier ride: three months home confinement, a $15,000 fine and 500 hours of community service, half of it served with Wonderful Outdoor World (sponsored by Disney and Interior agencies, among others) where he’d raise money and do PR work. Griles had 91 people write letters to the court supporting leniency, including Marc Himmelstein, an energy lobbyist who threw a very suspicious dinner party for top Interior officials back in 2002, and former Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

Not on the list of letter writers: Italia Federici, Griles’ onetime squeeze (who served as a conduit between Abramoff and Griles); nor his wife, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who secretly dated Griles while she was Interior solicitor and counselor to Norton and then a top level official at the Justice Department. Also not on the list is Don Duncan, the ConocoPhillips lobbyist with whom Wooldridge and Griles bought a beach house.

Griles’ sentencing is June 26.

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

Nine years ago, I came face to face with the barrel of an M-16. The finger on the trigger belonged to a babyfaced, crew-cutted Blanding, Utah, cop, probably no older than nineteen. He held the rifle with serious intent, aimed not at the sky, or the ground, or the tires of the pickup in which I was a passenger, but at my head.

It was a rude punctuation mark to what had been a nice, but somewhat bizarre, three day trip down the Dolores River in southwestern Colorado. A few hours after the trip began, it was interrupted by news brought by passing kayakers: There were dangerous, armed fugitives at large in the area, and a manhunt was under way. Over the next two days, helicopters flew overhead frequently, and we joked about the fugitives.

(Read on …)