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The Great Nevada Crayfish Raid by Vin Suprynowicz
Thursday July 17, 2003 - 11:44:44 AM, PDT
An Internet Publication for Real Americans
Last Updated July 17, 2003 at 9:16 Sierra Time
This Article Published 07. 14. 03 at 2:13 Sierra Time
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/07/14/article_vin.htm
The Great Nevada Crayfish Raid
By Vin Suprynowicz - reprinted with permission
On Feb. 28, 2002, I wrote a little 500-word editorial for the Review
Journal, headlined "A free-market solution: Lobster rancher finds hope in
gaps between the regulators."
"Among the sagebrush and baked brown mountains along U.S. Highway 95,
between Tonopah and Hawthorne in west central Nevada, lies the lonely hamlet
of Mina," it began.
"This is mining and cattle country. Had been for a century and half, anyway.
In fact, Bob Eddy and his wife Pam used to ranch cattle.
"But the cattle business is heavily regulated by both state and federal
governments, especially in states such as Nevada, where most of the range is
government-controlled.
"Ranchers are only tolerated on those lands under conditional grazing
permits, the terms of which can and do change at the whim of bureaucrats ...
along with "range management plans" that can actually call for removal of
cattle from the range in springtime -- the only time local rainfall provides
enough new plant growth to fatten a herd.
"In the end, such government regulations must have a predictable effect --
the same effect that was seen at the fall of the Roman Empire, by which time
Roman taxes had grown so high that the farmland lay fallow in most of
central Italy, it being cheaper to move to Spain or simply to go into
another line of work.
"Bob Eddy chose the second course.
"Tired of federal rules and boom-and-bust beef prices, the 59-year-old
rancher went searching for a new career seven years ago. He found he could
sell lobster for $14 a pound. Thus was born the Desert Lobster farm --
marked with those prominent "Lobster Crossing" signs along U.S. 95 -- where
the Eddys now raise half a million blue and red Australian freshwater
lobsters, in tubs full of 80-degree water pumped from nearby hot springs.
"Eddy sells his entire crop -- fresh and ready to boil -- to travelers
driving by on the road from Las Vegas to Reno (4,700 cars a day) ... though
he has plans to eventually open a lobster restaurant in Mina, a town of
about 100 that's been moribund since the mine shut down. 'With the beef,' he
says, 'you might get $1 a pound versus $14 for the lobster. That's the
economics. ... I got rid of the cows.'
"There's hope in Bob Eddy's story, which teaches us that -- so long as there
remains some field of endeavor free of state and federal regulation -- the
entrepreneurial instinct can still find a way."
And then came the final, prophetic paragraph of my 2002 editorial
"Let's just cross our fingers that the state and federal inspectors don't
show up soon, handing him their newly-devised 'Lobster Ranch Permit
Application' forms, insisting he change the temperature of his pots to meet
some newly devised bureaucratic standard, levying their newly dreamed-up
taxes and fees, all to 'protect the children of Mina' ... who in fact are
likely just hoping he will hurry up and open the restaurant so they'll have
someplace to earn some gas money."
As it turned out, It took them a little less than a year and a half.
The Nevada Division of Wildlife boys roared in this Thursday -- 10 armed
game wardens, two of the plainclothes guys in black shoes and black
sunglasses from the "Nevada Division of Investigation," assigned to take
care of any troublesome neighbors, and two state biologists assigned to
kill, seize and destroy all of Bob Eddy's crayfish.
Why?
For violation of his state lobster ranching permit, duh.
THE RAID WAS UNDERWAY
"At this moment we are in fact closing him down," Department of Wildlife
spokesman Chris Healy told me Thursday afternoon. "At this moment we are
down in Mina with some of our law enforcement people and we're going through
the process of destroying the Australian red claw lobsters."
What kind of compensation will the 60-year-old rancher be paid for the stock
that comprised his livelihood -- for a business he built up over eight
years -- I asked.
"I don't think we anticipate paying Mr. Eddy for those. He had originally
agreed to abide by regulations of aquaculture that are established by our
wildlife commission -- he had said he would not sell them live. They are a
prohibited species because they have a propensity for dominating warm water
springs, in some of our sensitive areas where we have warm water spring fish
they could do considerable damage if they were to get into them, alive.
"Mr. Eddy promised not to sell them live, but he refused to obey the orders
of the court so we went down there today and we anticipate by about 4
o'clock today the operation should be completed."
How?
"They were going to pump the water out of the troughs where they were being
raised and then put them into plastic bags so they can be properly disposed
of. Or also under certain conditions if they had to, they were going to cut
off the flow of the warm water and put cold water in. We don't know exactly
what we had to do till we actually got on site."
But doesn't the Fifth Amendment require compensation for such a taking?
"I'm not a constitutional guy," Mr. Healy replied. "I can just tell you what
the Division of Wildlife operates under, and basically Mr. Eddy agreed to
abide by a set of rules when he went into the Australian red claw
lobster-slash-crayfish business, and he chose basically to ignore those."
"So his mistake was to apply for a permit, which put him under your
jurisdiction in the first place?"
"No no no. This is a prohibited species unless we issue people a permit. Now
had he not tried to sell these alive at a roadside stand, if he had sold
them to people who had a permit that would have been OK. But he was selling
them basically to passers-by. That was our concern; someone could take one
or more of those live crayfish, put them into one of those sensitive areas
which are fairly common in that area, and some of the spring fish down there
that are fairly sensitive species, and the crayfish could literally eat them
out of their home."
But even if Eddy had agreed to merely wholesale the crayfish to restaurants,
would a restaurant typically want to go to the trouble of getting themselves
a Division of Wildlife permit, I asked?
"If they want to have a prohibited species they would have to have a permit.
Our job as the Division of Wildlife is to enforce our laws and regulations."
Mr. Healy explained that although there are plenty of wild crayfish in
Nevada. those are coldwater crayfish. "If you were to put a crayfish from
the Truckee River into one of those hot springs it would be dead nearly
instantly. These crayfish come out of Australia and they thrive in warm
water and they would pose a threat ... they're even a concern in Australia,
where they're tightly managed. Cherax quadricarinatus, or whatever."
No additional criminal prosecution is envisioned, unless Mr. Eddy tries to
go back into business, Mr. Healy said.
And was the raid purposely timed for the very day when the Nevada news media
would predictably be tied up covering the state Supreme Court's decision
that the Legislature could ignore the constitutional amendment requiring a
two-thirds majority for tax hikes?
"We were originally going to do it last week, but we had received some
information that caused us to be concerned about the security of the
personnel," Mr. Healy explained. "There were credible enough threats to the
security of the operation to make sure that when we went in there we didn't
underestimate the security concerns."
In other words, the goons were concerned some of Bob Eddy's neighbors might
come to his defense.
"That's why we asked the Nevada Division of Investigations to assist us.
They were familiar with several of the people involved who had come on the
radar screens as possible security risks."
'A POUND OR TWO FOR DINNER'
As it happened, I talked to Bob Eddy the day before the raid.
"I have a license," he told me. "What they did was put a bunch of
restrictions on my license. I told them I couldn't live with it, 'cause one
restriction is I can't sell them live unless whoever buys them goes to Fish
& Game and gets a permit. And the restaurants won't go to Fish & Game to get
a permit because they've had enough of permits. They don't want Fish & Game
coming in to inspect them, they've got enough of that already dealing with
the gaming commission, with the health department. ..."
But are these really "wildlife?" I asked the crayfish rancher. I mean, it's
not like he was selling elk out of some herd that runs wild in the Rubies. I
don't need a Fish & Game permit to buy a live lobster for supper down at the
supermarket, do I?
"As long as I'm selling them by the pound for human consumption I don't
think I should have to deal with them, either, but as of April 23 they got
an order that if I had any left in my possession they could come confiscate
them. I went back to court, and on June 26th they got an order they can turn
off my water to kill my lobsters. Whatever they do is a taking.
"You know they're trying to raise all the taxes in the country, and they
won't let any new businesses get started. ... I can't afford a lawyer. ...
The funny thing about this is they knew I was here in 1996, and they didn't
do anything about it till 2002. They say if somebody would take 'em and turn
'em loose out in their creeks or in their hot springs it might hurt the
environment. But that's all baloney, because I can give you 10 or 12 places
in the United States where they'll ship 'em right to you. Or you can buy 'em
from Australia, they'll ship 'em to you live; they come right through
customs & everything.
"You look in that 'Fisheries of Nevada' book that was published in 1962, and
it says that back in 1909 they planted all the crayfish in the state of
Nevada, even the crawdads we have they planted 'em; they thought it was a
good thing. The little ones are a food source for the bigger fish; you can
use 'em for fish bait. Their regulations on crawdads is you can catch 'em
any time of the year you want, catch as many as you want, the only thing you
can't do is go catch theirs and sell 'em.
"Most of my customers at this time are the people in the spring & fall who
travel in their motor homes. They'll stop and buy a pound or two and cook
'em for dinner. They're usually older people and they usually stop at the
nearest trailer park and eat 'em, they wouldn't know where to plant 'em in
Nevada, anyway.
"They're trying to put me out of business. I can't process them because
there are no processors in the state of Nevada that'll process 'em. I'm
building a restaurant, I've got it partly built; I'm gonna go ahead with
those plans. They're gonna kill my stock because I won't tell 'em that I'm
not gonna sell 'em live. ...
"This isn't something you just do overnight, it takes a long time to learn
how to raise 'em. ... They've issued two court orders that are both illegal.
One's illegal because I can't process 'em, and the second is illegal because
they're going to come out and clean out my tanks, and I've got Railroad
Valley Springs fish in my tanks, and those are protected federally. It's on
the next list down from endangered, they're protected by the federal
government. ... The last time they trapped 'em in that spring they figured
there was only 17 left, but I've got a hell of a lot more than 17 of 'em in
my tanks."
At least he did ... till Thursday.
"There was nothing here where I'm living on this side of the valley. Even
now, not selling 'em, there's still 10 or 12 cars a day stop here just to
look. That story you guys ran, they put that out on the wire and that went
everywhere. ... The pictures they took that were in the paper went all over.
I tell them you can do it anyplace but in Nevada; Nevada don't want any new
business."
And so little Mina goes back to being nothing but a speed trap on the road
to Reno. (It's infamous. The local judge bought the radar detector for the
cops to "enhance court revenues.")
Did I mention the Great Crawfish Raid took place the same day the
bought-and-paid-for Nevada Supreme Court threw out a constitutional
amendment -- passed by 71 percent of Nevada voters -- that required a
two-thirds legislative majority to raise taxes? They said it might restrict
school funding.
Land of the free, home of the brave. Pay up, shut up, know your place, go on
the dole.
And "Make Way for the Officers."
-----------------------------------------------------
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas
Review-Journal and author of the books Send in the Waco Killers and The
Ballad of Carl Drega. For information on his books or his monthly newsletter
call 702-656-3285, or visit Web sites http://www.privacyalert.us or
http://www.LibertyBookShop.us.
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