Weapons Transfer a Federal - State Success
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West Virginia Dept. of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officers transfer rifles from Service vehicle.
Photo Credit:
USFWS/Todd Harless
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In the first transfer of weapons between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's refuge system and a state agency, 262 Ruger mini-14 rifles were consigned to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources on February 9 from a temporary arsenal at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown.
The surplus weapons, gathered from Federal refuges throughout the United States, were themselves former U.S. Border Patrol property before they came to the Interior Department agency. Their transfer now to West Virginia will permit its conservation agency to standardize its inventory of weapons among conservation officers throughout the state. A smaller number of the rifles are destined for conservation agencies in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and South Carolina.
"This is part of a national effort to clean up our inventories in the field, collecting guns that aren't used or that can be serviced and used by state agencies," said David Nicely, zone law enforcement officer based at Pennsylvania's Erie National Wildlife Refuge, one of three Service employees who supervised the transfer. The rifles remain Federal property, however, and must return to the General Service Administration whenever they become unserviceable and ultimately are slated for destruction. The Fish and Wildlife Service has transferred weapons to other Interior Department agencies in the past, but not to a state.
"The rifles are part of a three-phase national weapons 'turn in and reduction' process that has been an ongoing event since 2003," Nicely said. "West Virginia has a great need for these weapons and plans on putting them to use immediately. It's a 'win-win' for both agencies – the Service can reduce its numbers of surplus firearms, while at the same time transferring them free-of-charge to a sister conservation agency that desperately needs them."
Service Law Enforcement Officer John Starcher, of nearby Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, said the idea for the Federal-State transfer stemmed from his conversations with West Virginia Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer Troy Weber. The two have been involved in cases ranging from narcotics investigations to illegal trapping of a golden eagle. Because they are stationed in a rural county, Starcher said, he and Weber have come to depend on each other for back up, training and investigative assistance.
"During a firearms training day we were discussing the need for a patrol rifle by the WV DNR," Starcher said. "That is when we began the efforts of transferring the firearms."
After a year of review and approvals of West Virginia's acceptance of this first-of-its-kind transfer, the rifles, bearing tags from their former Federal homes like "Alligator River" and "Cabeza Prieta," were inventoried and sorted at NCTC and then distributed across the Mountain State to individual conservation districts that same day in early February.
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