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MoJo's June Hellraiser

By Leora Broydo

May/June 1997 Issue

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Name: Roy van de Hoek
What He Does: Goes out on a limb
Claim To Fame: Prairie watchdog

The Carrizo Plain, a vast, desolate prairie in central California, is home to a host of endangered species, including the giant kangaroo rat and the blunt-nosed leopard lizard. But for other forms of life, the 250,000 acres of public land can be an unforgiving place. Just ask Roy van de Hoek.

On the evening of December 8, 1996, van de Hoek lay handcuffed and facedown in the dirt after being arrested by a Bureau of Land Management ranger on 12 misdemeanor charges, including vandalism and trespassing. For the previous 14 months someone had been sneaking around the plain at night, pruning and chopping down trees and tearing down fences. The BLM, which oversees most of the Carrizo, thought it had its man.

Van de Hoek was no ordinary suspect. He worked for the BLM from 1988 to 1993 as a Carrizo wildlife biologist and was outspoken against BLM policies that allow tree planting and fence building. Such measures, says van de Hoek (and other biologists familiar with the area), disrupt the delicate ecology of the plain and threaten native species that thrive in treeless conditions. "If you've made this a natural area," he explains, "then you have to live up to what that means."

But is van de Hoek, who now works as a naturalist on Catalina Island, the limb reaper of the Carrizo Plain? The BLM has prepared a 100-plus-page case file against him that includes a crime lab's analysis of his wire cutters and a special agent's photographs of his tire tracks. "It just doesn't seem fair that one person should try to take the law into their own hands and impose their own beliefs on everyone else," says BLM supervisor Steve Larson, van de Hoek's former boss.

Van de Hoek says only that he is motivated by a love for the land, not a hatred of trees. "What I dream about is that 500 people all show up on the Carrizo with wire cutters and we all cut fences."

Know of any people who are raising a bit of hell? E-mail hellraiser@motherjones.com

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Some of the fences have been coming down on the Carrizo Plain. The agency that arrested me is finally removing them. The Sierra Club is helping to remove some of these fences each year. I assisted in some removal of fences one year. I have noticed that the Pronghorn Antelope are already benefitting from the removal of the fences. As for the trees, unfortunately, no trees have been removed as yet by the government or Sierra Club. One very negative action by the federal government and state government is the continued hunting by the public each year for Pronghorn Antelope, Mourning Dove, California Quail, Coyote, Badger, Jackrabbit, and Ground Squirrel. In addition, there is poaching of cranes, shorebirds, and waterfowl each year on Carrizo each year. There are even some hunters that shoot the Golden Eagles and hawks and falcons on Carrizo. There is only one solution, which is to make the Carrizo Plain a NATIONAL PARK because the National Park Services does not allow hunting on areas it manages, such as Yosemite, Sequoia, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and other National Parks. If Carrizo were to become a National Park, or even a state park, because State Parks also do not allow hunting on their land, the wildlife would flourish and come into a new abundance which would awe the visitors and nature lovers to new heights. Sincerely, Roy van de Hoek

Posted by:Roy van de HoekAugust 27, 2007 8:58:25 PMRespond ^


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