Defenders Magazine

Wildlife C.S.I.

Scores of imperiled animals are killed illegally every year in America. Scott Bragonier and his collegues aim to bring the killers to justice.

By Paul Tolme

© U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Brogonier patrolling the Sawtooth National
Recreation Area in Idaho on horseback. After
four years of work, Brogonier and his
colleagues managed to bring the killers of two
grizzlies to justice.

The crime scene is located on a densely forested slope of Idaho's Sawtelle Mountain along the Montana border. "Here's where the mother bled to death," says Scott Bragonier, sweating from the 90-minute hike in summer heat. He twists his way uphill through the maze of lodgepole pines and indicates a patch of matted pine needles. "This is where the cub fell." Bragonier is a field agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's law enforcement division. In layman's terms, he's a wildlife cop. When a grizzly or any other federally protected species is illegally killed in eastern Idaho, Bragonier gets the call.

In September 2002, hunters discovered the corpses of the seven-year-old female grizzly and her yearling female cub where Bragonier now stands. The mother bear, known as F346, was the only reproducing female in the area at the time of her death, and the cub was her first successful offspring. Their deaths were a blow to the biologists who track grizzlies. "She was a model citizen and had stayed out of trouble despite living in a populated area," says Mark Haroldson, a biologist with the federal Interagency Grizzly Bear Study team.

The killings illustrate an increasingly common crime: the intentional slaughter of imperiled animals. A record 11 grizzlies died under suspicious circumstances in Montana in 2005, following 10 in 2004. Wolves are dying in even greater numbers. In Idaho, 10 wolves were shot or poisoned in 2005--for a total of 31 since 2002. In the Southwest, at least 21 Mexican wolves have been shot since they were reintroduced in 1998. These figures--which come on top of legal killings of predators by government officials--likely understate the true extent of the problem. "Violent crimes against humans are usually reported, but wildlife cases are a different story," says Craig Tabor, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor. "If nobody finds a body, then we never know about it."

The problem goes beyond bears and wolves. The Colorado Division of Wildlife is investigating the deaths of two radio-collard lynx. In Missouri, authorities are looking into the deaths of at least seven bald eagles in 2005, including one found hanging from a highway sign. Sea otters are common shooting victims along the Pacific Coast.

Most of these crimes go unsolved. Agents such as Bragonier patrol vast regions of rugged backcountry where travel is difficult and witnesses--often carrying guns--are uncooperative. The killers hew to the credo ‘shoot, shovel and shut up.' The Sawtelle Mountain killings differ because Bragonier, based in Idaho Falls, brought the killers to justice after a dogged, four-year investigation. "Those guys thought they had gotten away," Bragonier says. The case offers a rare glimpse into the secretive world of endangered species killers and the wildlife cops who hunt them down.

Scott Bragonier is a husky, short-cropped former ski racer who carries a sidearm. He developed a love of the outdoors as a child in Cody, Wyo., where his father worked as a game warden. After obtaining a degree in criminology, Bragonier followed his father's footsteps and became a Wyoming game warden before joining the federal workforce in 2001.

Fast-forward to September 2002. Bragonier is deep in the Idaho backcountry on patrol when authorities get word of the dead grizzlies in the Targhee National Forest, so U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Dave Griffel responds first. Canvassing the scene, Griffel finds a crucial clue--a bullet hole in a sapling behind the cub.

Bragonier and Tabor arrive two days later to retrieve the corpses. They video and photograph the area, search for shell casings with metal detectors and look for boot tracks. A light snow falls and elk bugle as the men load the corpses into body bags and pack them out on horseback. "It was a race to get the corpses out before they deteriorated more," Bragonier says.

Tabor drives the corpses 13 hours to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. Opened in 1989, the facility is the only one of its kind. Veterinarians, firearms experts, chemists and DNA experts use high-tech equipment to identify poisons and bullets, detect fingerprints and determine cause of death--a CSI lab for wildlife crimes.

"We operate like a human crime lab, except all our victims are federally protected species," says Richard Stroud. A senior veterinary medical examiner, Stroud inspects the bear corpses and finds a bullet lodged in the cub's spine. He determines the bullet entered from the rear, indicating the cub was fleeing. A firearms technician rules the slug came from a high-caliber hunting rifle. Stroud finds organ trauma and nicked bones in the mother and deduces she bled to death from an arrow wound.

Based on Stroud's findings, Bragonier figures the perpetrators are hunters. He and Tabor put out a news release, hoping media coverage will cause someone to talk. The agents deliberately withhold key information, such as the fact the mother's radio collar had been cut off. "We're sometimes vague on details," Bragonier says, "in case a witness corroborates facts we didn't release."

A week later, Bragonier gets his first break. A telephone informant relates overhearing a conversation where a man described killing a bear. Rather than telephone the out-of-state suspects and blow his element of surprise, Bragonier decides to wait. (Tactically, it's important to interview suspects simultaneously to prevent them from collaborating on alibis.) Elk hunters often return to the same area, so Bragonier decides to corner the suspects in the fall of 2003. But another case falls into Bragonier's lap, forcing him to wait another year. Such delays, while frustrating, are common for wildlife cops. "Like all federal agencies, we're pretty lean," Bragonier says.

Bragonier resumes the investigation in September 2004 with a trip to Idaho Falls airport, where out-of-town hunters arrive. A baggage handler mentions delivering luggage for a party fitting the description provided by Bragonier. Agents corner the seven men but none admits knowing about the grizzlies. Bragonier is convinced the hunters are playing coy. The questioning, however, stirs the pot and several days later he gets another phone tip: "Talk to Merrill Hoge."

Hoge is a football commentator for ESPN who owns a hunting lodge in Island Park near Sawtelle Mountain. Contacted, Hoge spills the beans. He had nothing to do with the crime but gives Bragonier four names: Kentucky bow-hunters Dan Walters and Robert Sauer, and Idaho locals Tim Brown and Brad Hoopes. "Now we're on the right track," Bragonier thinks.

The federal agent calls Walters, who admits killing the grizzly mother, claiming he thought it was a black bear. Next call: Sauer. Confronted, Sauer also talks, saying he witnessed Brown shoot the cub. Brown and Hoopes decline to speak without attorneys.

With the testimony of Walters and Sauer, Bragonier forms a picture of what happened on Sept. 23 and 24, 2002: Walters spotted the mother bear and, thinking it was a black bear, fired an arrow. Bragonier believes Walters' story of mistaken identity. "Western grizzlies are a lot smaller than people think." Haroldson estimates the mother weighed 250 to 300 pounds. That night over cocktails at the lodge, Walters brags about the kill. Brown listens to Walters' description and tells him to keep quiet, saying it may have been a grizzly.

The next morning, Walters, Sauer and Brown, accompanied by Brown's friend Hoopes, return to the scene. Brown brings a rifle, saying firepower is handy in grizzly territory. Suddenly, the distraught cub appears. It is matted with blood. "We suspect it had nuzzled and tried to nurse from the mother as she bled to death," Griffel says with a note of sadness.

Hoopes fires an arrow but misses. The men approach where the cub had stood and find the mother's corpse. Not only is it a grizzly, it's wearing a radio collar, which means biologists are tracking it. Killing an endangered species is a misdemeanor punishable by as much as a year in jail and a $100,000 fine. "That's when the conspiracy began," Bragonier says.

Brown tells Walters to remove his arrow from the mother, then gives chase and fells the cub with one shot. "The cub had to be killed, otherwise it would have turned up in someone's backyard and people would start asking questions," Bragonier explains. Brown hands his rifle to Sauer and tells him to shoot the dead cub--an attempt to draw Sauer into the conspiracy. Sauer refuses (and thus escapes prosecution later). At Brown's urging, Walters cuts off the collar, which Brown and Hoopes later smash and throw into a creek.

As the men leave, Brown swears them to silence. "We've all done Idaho sportsmen a big favor today," he tells the group, according to court testimony.

With the mother's death solved, Bragonier turns his attention to Brown and Hoopes. Both claim Hoopes mortally wounded the cub with an arrow in self-defense, and Brown shot it point-blank to end its misery. Killing a protected animal in self-defense is allowable, but Bragonier knows their story is a lie. Stroud's necropsy found no evidence of an arrow wound in the cub. Moreover, it was shot from the rear, indicating it was fleeing.

To disprove the men's story, Bragonier returns to Sawtelle Mountain in the summer of 2005 to reconstruct the crime. A state forensics expert and a U.S. Forest Service surveying crew accompany him, and Bragonier brings a plywood cutout of the cub. His goal is to prove that Brown fired with malice from a distance, rather than point- blank. "These cases are all about bullet trajectories and angles," Bragonier says.

The survey crew attaches a string to the plywood cutout 19 inches from the ground in the exact spot where the bullet entered. They stretch the string through the bullet hole in the sapling and extend it downhill to represent the bullet's path. They determine that Brown, rifle to shoulder, most likely fired from 62 feet away.

Walters pleads guilty in January 2005, is fined $15,000 and loses his hunting privileges for two years. On Oct. 25, Brown and Hoopes plead innocent and a trial date is set.

But the government's evidence is overwhelming, and Brown pleads guilty on Dec. 29, 2005, to killing the cub. Hoopes admits destroying the radio collar. In early 2006, Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the U.S. District Court in Pocatello sentences Brown to three months in jail, suspends his hunting privileges for two years and orders him to pay the interagency grizzly team $19,300--the cost of capturing and collaring another female. Hoopes gets two months behind bars and a $1,000 fine. Case closed.

Outside the Pocatello courthouse, Bragonier and Assistant U.S. Attorney George Breitsameter congratulate each other. "Any time we win prison sentences, we feel that is a big deterrent," the prosecutor says. Adds Haroldson of the interagency grizzly team: "Scott Bragonier deserves a lot of credit."

The case is among Bragonier's proudest achievements. "That cub didn't have to die," he says. "They could have walked off the mountain that day and called authorities and it would have all turned out differently."

Law enforcement satisfies Bragonier's desire to help preserve what remains of wild nature. "We all have an obligation to save what's left. Some people do it through writing, others through activism, others through song. I do it," he says, "through the law."

Colorado journalist Paul Tolme's story about wolverines ran in the winter issue of Defenders.