Joel Scrafford Oral History Transcript

Joel was born in Alice, Texas in 1940 and spent summers as a young boy on his grandfather’s 7,500-acre ranch in Boerne. He recounts, in later years, spending five summers working on the Climbing Arrow Ranch in Montana. In 1965, he graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in Zoology. He began working for the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1969 as a Game Management Officer in Nebraska. He discusses how he felt about going from being a Game Management Officer to a Special Agent.

He recounts his time in Billings, describing the efforts made in elevating grizzly bear violations from state court to federal court. Violators were being fined $50 in state court for mistaken identity killing of a bear. Because of his collaboration with several federal judges, he was able to file cases under the Endangered Species Act, where those fines were increased to $10,000 - $15,000 fines and revocation of all hunting and fishing privileges. He also worked with and provided training to many Indian Nations in Montana, increasing their ability to enforce state laws on the reservation. As a result, he was part of four documentaries produced by National Geographic.

Joel became an integral part of Operation Trophy Kill and a separate take-down of a commercial poaching operation in Yellowstone National Park. Tom Brokaw and NBC would later do a documentary on the take-down, dubbing the operation as “the largest commercial operation in the history of the United States.”

After retiring in 1994, Joel discusses the opportunity he had to work (volunteer) for the National Park Service. He and his wife, Patty, spent 11 summers working in the backcountry in Yellowstone, living in patrol cabins and doing enforcement.