Ok, the last two days have been quite busy with family and such.
In the area of recreation law enforcement I did not mention regulations specific to wilderness management. Permits are required to stay overnight in wilderness areas in most California locations. All of the wilderness areas in the Sierra have this requirement. In the Mt. Whitney travel corridor, day use is limited to 50 people per day. Party size in terms of people and horses exist. There are many regulations specific to individual wilderness areas such as the distance one must camp from water, food storage in bear proof containers, areas closed to overnight occupancy and areas closed to horses. Most of these regulations are enforced by wilderness rangers that are forest protection officers (FPOs), but when very belligerent, uncooperative and non-compliant people are involved an LEO becomes involved.
Another area is stay limits. These have to do with how long people can camp or otherwise occupy national forest land. Some attempt to build and improve structures to do so, typically starting with uncovered porches for trailers, permanent fire pits and chimneys to leaving a travel trailer year long and all the way up to building cabins. The latter usually occurs more on the larger and more remote National Forests in the west outside of California where remote, out of the way enclaves where this type of activity is difficult to detect or is infrequently patrolled. A lot can happen in a period of weeks beyond the stay limit, which varies depending on the amount of use a National Forest may have. Some (most?) have 28 day stay limits for the entire forest for a year (7 and 14 days in anyone campground and 16 days outside campgrounds where legal) or a shorter period along with requirements to move a certain distance away from the last occupancy.
Some people use the 1872 Mining Act to justify all sorts of occupancy improvements and assert that they are mining and need to occupy the land on a permanent basis or for periods longer than the stay limit. A large portion of these situations are merely false justification of the occupancy. Geologists can quickly determine if the so called mining and prospecting is legitimate and approved operating plans are required to disturb soil and vegetation, place facilities and occupy the land longer than stay limits. There is a lot of abuse of the 1872 act and law enforcement is frequently involved due to the type of "characters" in involved. Strict and consistent recreational stay limit enforcement is needed to avert occupancy issues.
Illegal road building, most often involving mining, occurs. Again an approved plan of operations is required before building roads to access mines by vehicle. People attempt to build roads for other reasons as well. Some are very surprising to say the least. People sometimes try to build trails as well, most of them in designated wilderness areas, but in non-wilderness inventoried and protected roadless areas and smaller roadless areas as well.
Timber management law enforcement involves individuals stealing trees large enough to produce lumber, cutting large numbers of small trees to sell as Christmas trees, cutting burls off trees for woodworking projects, often commercially.
Stealing all types of vegetative material occurs as well. Some types of plants can bring in large amounts of money and illegal harvesters are threatening the very existence of many species. Ginseng root in the eastern U.S. is one such plant. Taking large quantities of pine cones, leaves and pine needles for both personal and commercial use is an issue for a number of different reasons. Stealing large quantities of river rock and other types of rocks for personal and commercial use is another issue. Taking topsoil is another illegal activity.
Persons illegally using National Forest land to graze horses, goats, sheep, llamas and cattle is another issue. Building watering facilities for this activity is often involved. The illegal diversion of water is another activity that has some rather serious consequences is another area of law enforcement.
Protection of archaeological and historic sites and objects is another area of law enforcement. Pot hunting and arrowhead gathering fit into this issue. Some people start tearing historical structures down to use the lumber of exterior and interior for wall paneling.
Normally violations of the terms of special use permits are handled administratively, however the nature of the violations (timing, repeated and potential/actual damages) and the people involved, including the permittee and those working for the permittee, may result in criminal action. Special use permits include among a few hundred others: roads, electronic sites, resorts, lodging, restaurants, gas stations, signs, scientific research work and facilities, fences, military training, outfitting and guiding, gas stations, RV rental, campgrounds, schools, churches, large gatherings of people, car rallies, foot races, horse endurance events; power, water, gas, phone and sewer lines; sewer treatment plants, dams, recreation residences (summer homes), airports, landing strips, pastures and agricultural fields (farming). There are many uses where suitable private land is not available for providing various visitor services and community services. Many communities are within the boundaries of National Forests and don't have land for things such as sewer plants, water treatment facilities, water sources and the like. Some people will intentionally ignore the requirement of a permit and some permittees take issue with agency decisions to not authorize a use. Insurance policies may not be obtained or insufficient policies may be provided as required. In my experience resort, lodging, restaurants, RV rentals, outfitting/guiding and military training had the most flagrant violations that required criminal prosecution.
Criminal law actions can also be taken with timber sale purchasers and grazing permittees. Timber sale operators may cut trees outside their sale area, cut unmarked trees or fail to bring logs into scaling facilities (used to calculate wood volume), build roads not in the permit, build illegal water crossings, ignore labor law requirements, etc. Grazing permittees may place more animals on their allotments than authorized, graze types of animals not authorized by their permit (e.g. horses or cows instead of sheep), graze areas scheduled for rest that year, graze more days than permitted, place salting stations in unauthorized locations and build facilities such as fences, water gathering/distribution, corrals, and roads. Fees may not be paid by the required date. Other work such as fence and road maintenance, required by the permit, may not be completed.
Sometimes the attitude, repeat violations, degree of damage and other behavior presented by a timber, grazing or special use permittee will result in criminal, rather than administrative action alone. Sometimes measures such as rounding up all the animals up off a grazing allotment and impounding them is necessary. Lumber mills or hauling operations may be shut down to identify the source of all the logs and/or their volume may occur. Equipment can be seized and impounded. In almost all cases resource employees with or without FPO authorization are involved and LEO presence is needed to make sure the employees are able to carry out their duties or the peace needs to be maintained.
Marijuana plantations and drug production facilities such as meth labs are a danger to visitors and to the land itself. This activity always involves potential and/or actual threats to officer safety. A fisheries biologist on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest was fired on by drug suspects about 20-25 years ago using high powered rifles with armor piercing ammunition and she barely made it out with her life. She laid down on the floor boards and managed to use the radio before the rooftop antenna was shot off. The suspects did not attempt to move up to the vehicle to kill her. She transferred to the Inyo soon after the incident where she related the incident to me.
A lot of what I've mentioned can be handled by forest protection officers depending on the experience and capabilities of those officers. I had a large law enforcement component in my job as the frontcountry recreation supervisor on the Mammoth Ranger District. The Mammoth Ranger District has the most developed recreation site use for any one ranger district in the Forest Service and was slightly above the #2 National Forest in this type of use as the Inyo usually had more than twice the #2 National Forest with Mammoth having a little bit more than half of the Inyo's use. The Mammoth RD also has what, at one time, was one of the only two locations on federal public land where a shuttle bus was required to access a large area of public land. This requirement caused a huge number of negative public contacts, almost all of which were handled by non FPO seasonal employees in entrance stations. Those that could not be handled by them filtered up to the entrance station supervisor and often to me. The district also has an area of geothermal activity in and adjacent to a large creek where swimming used to occur. Some areas were sufficiently hazardous that entering them was prohibited. In addition I often became involved in wilderness violations while hiking/backpacking on my days off or to contact violators when they arrived at trailheads. I would either write the citation or written warning for the violation, or detain the violator at the trailhead and wait for the wilderness ranger to arrive.
I believed that the law needs to be enforced to protect the land and other visitors. I didn't let violations occur without some type of action. Citations are actually called "Notice of Violation" in the federal government with the NPS, BLM, USFWS and USFS using the same form with a different letter prefix of the case number for each agency. There is also a two part written warning form that is used in the Forest Service. The top copy is for handing a violator a written warning. The underlying copy records the warning or can be used alone to record verbal warnings or to record an incident where the violator is unknown. All of the above factors led to me having the highest number of citations, warnings and incident reports for any one officer, including the LEOs on the Inyo for five or more years of my ten years on the Inyo. That count precipitates magistrate court appearances that usually took up most of a day each month in addition to time spent to prepare for them. My individual cases were more minor than the average cases of the LEOs so my count was not equal to their workload. Of course my law enforcement workload was in addition to a high stress, high demand, sufficiently complex position to make the law enforcement workload stressful. The geothermal area and shuttle bus issues were two among the three most difficult on the forest, with the Mt. Whitney travel corridor being the third. The Mammoth Ranger District has a year long field season and I supervised the Forest Service Nordic trail system and administered two cross country ski area special use permits, complete with conflicts between snowmobile/motorized uses with cross country ski/non motorized uses, mixed up with dogs endangering cross country skiers on groomed trails, and walkers and snowshoe users damaging groomed surfaces at the cross country ski resorts. I was also a personnel misconduct investigator, a claims investigator and had 5 positions on my incident command qualification card. I could be called at any hour of the day, any day of the year to accomplish my duties. Personal injury and property damage claims resulted in giving depositions, investigation and court appearances, one of which was a two week long trial before a federal district court judge in Reno. I wrote replies to several "congressional inquiries," letters from members of Congress, most on behalf of letters from constituent's letters and sometimes resulting from those made of an agency from the Congress or administration then filtered down internally to the field level. These had tight time frames and specific protocol It was like having a tiger by the tail and I didn't manage to handle it all or come out unscathed all the time.
Most law enforcement officers have similar workloads as far as time demands and some individual tasks. Court appearances, investigations, report writing, budget requests and administration, periodic qualification refreshers and tests, continued training and obtaining new qualifications in specialties (such as archaeology site protection or mining law enforcement) needed due to the demands of a particular work location are part of the workload. Add to that special details for work on other forests (large investigations, working undercover, providing intense officer presence, guarding people and facilities threatened by various groups); special events such as the Rainbow Family gathering, Burning Man, large events at National Parks (ribbon cuttings and the like); and mucky-muck, politicos visits including being part of presidential security details; assisting state and local agencies with large events and special occasions such as 4th of July and New Year's eve; and finally mutual aid requests. The latter has included epic events such as the L.A. riots in 1992 that a number of Forest Service LEOs, along with NPS Protection Rangers, BLM Rangers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuge (now Wildlife) Officers responded to. The LEO's I worked with carried their heavy armor and riot gear in their SUV's all the time.
That covers everything I can remember off hand. There is more that I probably don't recall now and speaking directly to a LEO will no doubt produce even more.
