The author, a special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, discusses his activities investigating the smuggling of wildlife, illegal commercialization of wildlife, illegal take of wildlife, and illegal commercialization of the parts and products of wildlife.

A heartfelt, sometimes gut-wrenching but always exciting journey into the never-ending war on poachers, smugglers, and market hunters.

Award-winning author Terry Grosz, whose career in conservation is matched by his skill as a storyteller, revisits his rookie years as a fish and game warden for the State of California, where his on-the-job training got him into some awful scrapes (but the bad guys he chased almost always got into worse ones). As a law enforcement agent, he learned to sniff out trouble, defuse tense situations, and stay alive; and as a human being, he learned to temper justice with mercy and to treat everyone fairly. Grosz's stories are action-packed and driven by his passion to preserve our country's wildlife, whether he was working under the wing of a mentor, fighting out from underfoot of the bureaucrats, or stepping on the toes of corrupt and hypocritical politicians.

The centerpiece story takes place in Colorado's San Luis Valley, describing one of the largest sting operations to catch a ring of pachers in his career.

An engrossing, adventure-filled account of the rush to discover and save Vietnam's most extraordinary animals Deep in the jungle where the borders of Vietnam meet those of Laos and Cambodia is a region known as "the lost world." Large mammals never seen before by Western science have popped up frequently in these mountains in the last decade, including a half-goat/half-ox, a deer that barks, and a close relative of the nearly extinct Javan rhino. In an age when scientists are excited by discovering a new kind of tube worm, the thought of finding and naming a new large terrestrial mammal is astonishing, and wildlife biologists from all over the world are flocking to this dangerous region. The result is a race between preservation and destruction. Containing research gathered from famous biologists, conservationists, indigenous peoples, former POWs, ex-Viet Cong, and the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam since the war's end, Gold Rush in the Jungle goes deep into the valleys, hills, and hollows of Vietnam to explore the research, the international trade in endangered species, the lingering effects of Agent Orange, and the effort of a handful of biologists to save the world's rarest animals.

First published as the author's primal scream, "Letters to Aaron" is an autobiographical and factual story of treachery - treachery typical of the United States. Nations, tribes, and people like Hungary, the Rhade, Montagnard, and Hmong (Meo), of Vietnam and Laos, to say nothing of most of the nations in Latin America, will recognize and know it well. Nearly countless individuals, including statesmen, soldiers, and covert operatives sacrificed on the altar of corrupt capitalism would, too - were they not dead as the result. Recruited at sixteen years of age by the CIA and trained in Iceland and Germany with the Tenth Special Forces Group, Hal Luebbert did missions in East Germany, Hungary, and Finland (i.e., the Soviet Union) before being sent to Cuba with orders to kill Fidel Castro. Disillusioned by the obvious propagandist fabrications of his superiors once having reached the island nation, Hal rejected his orders, returning on his own to the U.S., and writing a warning letter to Castro. The rest, it is said, is history. Stymied finally in its efforts to punish the renegade, the U.S. played its Ace in the Hole the Internal Revenue Service. In 1978, the US government in its IRS avatar destroyed his business and family. In 1985, when he had recovered and remarried, they did it all again, this time driving a teenage son to three attempts at suicide. A war ensued, and when von Luebbert counterattacked federal murder attempts with electronic and personal surveillance proving massive governmental crime, a US District Court protected their federal employers by ruling his records exempted under the Freedom of Information Act by the national secrets exemption. US Senators and national media forwarded proof of federal crime like mayhem, murder, rape, and extortion to commit rape protected their masters by concealment of the evidence and personal silence. ' Remember,' 2nd President John Adams said, 'democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.' Hal von Luebbert's war has proved the fact of the one certainty for survival exists in a rapidly decaying democracy. That is to "get something" - preferably a great deal - on people high in government. If there is a mitigating factor, it is only that in a government like ours, there is always much to find. Protected still by evidence of federal crime, together with the fact of large numbers of remaining witnesses available for subpoena, von Luebbert lives mostly in the wild in Texas and states where concealed handgun laws make it possible for him to defend himself with lethal force. He is also a sixth degree black belt and three time national judo champion. It helps when government reverts to its true character and methods.

In No Safe Refuge, Terry Grosz continues the chronicle of his remarkable career defending America's wild creatures from those hunters, poachers, and commercial market hunters who just didn't know when to stop. Since his first days as a game warden in 1966, Terry Grosz has been fighting against the business of extinction.

The foremost experts on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation come together to discuss its role in the rescue, recovery, and future of our wildlife resources. At the end of the nineteenth century, North America suffered a catastrophic loss of wildlife driven by unbridled resource extraction, market hunting, and unrelenting subsistence killing. This crisis led powerful political forces in the United States and Canada to collaborate in the hopes of reversing the process, not merely halting the extinctions but returning wildlife to abundance. While there was great understanding of how to manage wildlife in Europe, where wildlife management was an old, mature profession, Continental methods depended on social values often unacceptable to North Americans. Even Canada, a loyal colony of England, abandoned wildlife management as practiced in the mother country and joined forces with like-minded Americans to develop a revolutionary system of wildlife conservation. In time, and surviving the close scrutiny and hard ongoing debate of open, democratic societies, this series of conservation practices became known as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. In this book, editors Shane P. Mahoney and Valerius Geist, both leading authorities on the North American Model, bring together their expert colleagues to provide a comprehensive overview of the origins, achievements, and shortcomings of this highly successful conservation approach. This volume • reviews the emergence of conservation in late nineteenth–early twentieth century North America • provides detailed explorations of the Model's institutions, principles, laws, and policies • places the Model within ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts • describes the many economic, social, and cultural benefits of wildlife restoration and management • addresses the Model's challenges and limitations while pointing to emerging opportunities for increasing inclusivity and optimizing implementation Studying the North American experience offers insight into how institutionalizing policies and laws while incentivizing citizen engagement can result in a resilient framework for conservation. Written for wildlife professionals, researchers, and students, this book explores the factors that helped fashion an enduring conservation system, one that has not only rescued, recovered, and sustainably utilized wildlife for over a century, but that has also advanced a significant economic driver and a greater scientific understanding of wildlife ecology. Contributors: Leonard A. Brennan, Rosie Cooney, James L. Cummins, Kathryn Frens, Valerius Geist, James R. Heffelfinger, David G. Hewitt, Paul R. Krausman, Shane P. Mahoney, John F. Organ, James Peek, William Porter, John Sandlos, James A. Schaefer