Date of Award:

8-2024

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Arts (MA)

Department:

History

Committee Chair(s)

Lawrence Culver

Committee

Lawrence Culver

Committee

Seth Archer

Committee

Clayton White

Abstract

Operation Falcon (OpFalco) was a seven-year sting that upended the falconry community as numerous cases exposed falcon poaching amidst the sport. At the beginning of OpFalco, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recruited falconer Jeffrey McPartlin as an undercover agent. With McPartlin’s assistance, the FWS compiled hundreds of case files against falconers. By the operation’s culmination in 1984, the FWS had seized hundreds of illegal falcons and indicted 79 people for crimes against wildlife. The federal government ultimately convicted 68 of them, six were acquitted, and seven remain at large to this day after going into hiding.

Although a close, objective investigation of the convictions confirms that crimes against wildlife were committed, the North American Falconers’ Association (NAFA) successfully covered up the sting and created a narrative that framed the government’s actions as an illegitimate attack on falconers. Despite the many convictions, historians have not written about the criminal acts discovered by OpFalco. The written record of OpFalco is one of a bitter battle between the FWS and falconers. Tales of conspiracies fill the pages of pro-falconer writings about OpFalco, while the crimes against the precious falcon resource are erased. OpFalco illuminates the significant impact of the rigorous wildlife management reforms stemming from environmental laws enacted in the 1970s. It provides a critical perspective for analyzing how legislation, conservation efforts, and hunting practices collided and influenced one another. OpFalco, both the operation and its legacy, reflects an era when the FWS chose to test new wildlife laws and dove into a sting, the magnitude of which the agency has never attempted since. The reaction of those targeted by the operation is an exceptional look into the mindset of hunters accustomed to an unregulated continent of bounty as they faced tightening hunting regulations in America during the last quarter of the twentieth century

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