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When Doody calls, California anglers listen

Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 16:41

The sun is setting on a cool late-winter day, casting a golden glow across the California Delta.It's prime time for sturgeon poachers, and for the woman determined to nail them."Most fishermen play by the rules ," Carolyn Doody says, climbing into a hulking California Department of Fish & Game truck equipped with floodlights, binoculars and a spotting scope that allows her to watch people from up to a half-mile away. "But I have a zero tolerance policy for the ones who don't."With a handgun on her hip and a badge on her chest, fish and game warden Doody, 49, has been patrolling wild areas of California for close to two decades. Her charge is to make sure hunters and anglers are properly licensed, and respect the ecosystem and the regulations designed to protect it.For a conservationist like Doody, one of a small number of women in the field, it is a dream job. She spent her childhood exploring the natural world in and around Sacramento, and studied environmental sciences in college. During an internship with Fish & Game, she got hooked on being a warden. She has been prowling for poachers ever since.Through the years, Doody has had her share of scary encounters: armed scofflaws hiding illegal fish or animal parts in coolers, toolboxes and even glove compartments; gang-bangers on the run; methamphetamine manufacturers.Though wardens typically patrol alone in remote locations, often at night and without much backup, Doody is less than intimidated by "the bad guys," as she calls them.""If things go south, I'm gonna shoot," says Doody, eyes scanning the landscape, her blond ponytail bouncing from beneath her baseball cap. She says she has only had to draw her gun a handful of times.Doody has been patrolling the Delta, one of the busiest year-round territories for wardens in the state, since 1992. Her office is her home in the Delta, about 50 miles south and west of Sacramento, and her 4x4 Chevy Silverado truck.This time of year, she's usually monitoring fishermen casting for sturgeon or striped bass, on a shift that begins in the late afternoon and ends in the wee hours of the next morning.From time to time, Doody and other wardens also go on boat patrols, overseeing commercial fishing. They ride all-terrain vehicles into the backcountry to monitor hunters and enforce water-pollution rules. Then there are the oddball tasks, including trapping pet alligators released into the Delta by their owners and herding wayward whales back to their home in San Francisco Bay.The job has become far more demanding than it was when Doody started. According to her agency, about 200 wardens cover more than 220,000 square miles of ocean and 159,000 square miles of land in California, a number that has not changed since the 1960s..In part because wardens are poorly paid compared with other sworn law enforcement officers in the state, the DFG has trouble recruiting and keeping them. As a result, Doody says, poachers and polluters are getting bolder and gaining an advantage.As a woman, Doody was a novelty when she became a warden in 1990, and women remain a minority in the force. Only about 34 of 197 game wardens are female, and only 21 are field officers like Doody."They say you've got to be born with a fly rod in one hand and a shotgun in the other to want this job, and not many women fit that description," says Doody, married and the mother of two.Tonight, it's all about the sturgeon, pound for pound among the most valuable of harvested fish, and a protected species in most places in the nation. In California, anglers may take no more than one sturgeon per day and are limited to three per year."If I find a fish that's even an inch over the limit, I'm going to seize it," she says. If the angler is a repeat violator or "frequent flier," she says, "I'll take his gear, too."As the sun starts to dip below the horizon, Doody steps into her marked truck and maneuvers it along the Delta's banks. Anglers eye her warily. When she parks and walks toward them, flashlight in hand, they scramble for their fishing licenses. Doody disarms them with a smile."Any bites?" she asks. "What are you fishing for tonight?"E-mail Cynthia Hubert at chubert(at)sacbee.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)