Concluding a 1992 case named Operation Duck Soup involving a two-year cooperative undercover operation with the Canadian Wildlife Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) agents closed the case this week when a fugitive pled guilty to four misdemeanor violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Joe Sidney Vandenberg, 45, of Canada, has been ordered to pay restitutions in the amount of $50,000 and a criminal fine of $20,000, sentenced to two years probation, and given up his original $50,000 bond for fleeing the country.
Vandenberg, a very successful aviculturist, was first arrested in the summer of 1992 as he was leaving Alaska with a cooler full of 78 exotic eggs packed in egg cartons warmed with hot water bottles. He surrendered his passport and paid a $50,000 cash bond in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. But he then fled the State and has been a fugitive, until his attorneys contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in July of this year.
The two-year investigation targeted aviculturists who obtained government permits to collect wild bird eggs for their private bird collections, but violated the permits by taking more eggs than authorized, operating in closed areas, and/or selling fledglings to exotic bird collectors around the world, particularly to wealthy Europeans.
In 1992 Vandenberg traveled to the North Slope, chartered a helicopter and collected eggs from nests. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents, the 78 eggs they found in Vandenbergs cooler when they arrested him would have netted him more than $100,000 on the black market. Under conditions of his permit, Vandenberg was allowed to collect only a certain number of eggs for his private collection. It is illegal to sell eggs collected from the wild.
Vandenberg had black brandt, oldsquaw, spectacled eider (currently listed as threatened under protection of the Endangered Species Act) and king eider eggs. He was authorized to have no more than 27 eggs. None could be spectacled eider eggs because they were being considered for listing as a threatened species.
According to Service agents, spectacled eiders and old squaw bring as much as $4,000 a pair, a pair of black brants sell for $1,100, and a pair of king eiders sell for $3,000 a pair, particularly in Europe.
In 1992 when Vandenberg was originally arrested in Anchorage, Service agents found themselves surrogate parents to dozens of eggs. Biologists cared for and assisted the hatching ducklings until many of them could be released into the wild.
According to Service agents, there can be big money in selling rare ducks. Agents estimate that there may be hundreds of waterfowl collectors throughout the country. Waterfowl born and raised in captivity by licensed breeders can lawfully be sold, but birds and eggs taken from the wild cannot.
When aviculturists such as Vandenberg obtain permits to collect eggs from the wild, there are restrictions on numbers of eggs, conditions for collecting, locations for collecting, types of eggs that can be taken and use of the collected eggs.
-FWS-
