3 Arrested In Arctic-Bird, Egg Trading Probe

ANCHORAGE - Three men, including a Kirkland resident, have been arrested as part of "Operation Duck Soup" - an undercover investigation into the trade of exotic arctic sea ducks and their eggs.

The eggs are worth $4,000 a pair on the international black market, authorities said.

The joint U.S.-Canadian investigation was conducted over two years. It focused on Joe Vandenberg, 50, of Camrose, Alberta, who also holds Dutch citizenship.

He was arrested at the Anchorage International Airport in June 1992 with a cooler containing 78 exotic eggs packed in egg cartons warmed with hot-water bottles.

He surrendered his passport, posted a $50,000 cash bond, then fled the state. He's listed now as a fugitive.

Also arrested was Robert Earl Dawson, 35, of Kirkland, and Jonathan Van Nest, 36, of Moravia, N.Y.

Dawson, described as an associate of Vandenberg's, was arrested last summer and charged with illegal sale of wildlife and taking and possessing eggs of spectacled eiders, a threatened species. According to a letter written by Fish and Wildlife officials, Dawson has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 10. The details of that plea agreement were sealed.

Van Nest also was arrested over the summer and charged with two counts of illegally transporting, taking and possessing sea duck and swan eggs. He pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and was sentenced in September to six

months' probation and a $3,500 fine.

Another half-dozen suspects from Minnesota, Michigan and Canada remain under investigation and may face charges, according to Mary Jane Lavin, a Seattle-based U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent.

In telephone interviews, Vandenberg and Van Nest said they were set up.

The investigation targeted aviculturists who obtain $25 government permits to collect wild bird eggs, but then violate the permits.

Government agents suspected that some collectors were taking more eggs than authorized, were operating in closed areas, were taking eggs from endangered or threatened species, and were illegally selling fledglings to exotic bird collectors around the world, particularly to wealthy Europeans.

As news of the sting operation spread across Alaska's North Slope this fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came under fire for allowing any egg-collecting at all and for failing to publicize the arrests.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they prepared a statement for reporters, but were asked by federal prosecutors to sit on it until Van Nest and Dawson are sentenced.

The investigation got under way after some aviculturists complained about Vandenberg, according to agent Lavin. Investigators also scanned advertisements in two magazines written for exotic bird collectors, looking for frequent advertisers who promised exotic arctic birds.

In summer 1992, like the summers before, Vandenberg traveled to the North Slope. He chartered a helicopter, but this time while he was collecting eggs, Canadian officials were executing a search warrant at his Alberta home.

"What they found confirmed all the suspicions we had," Lavin said. His mail and records showed he was shipping birds directly to a business partner in Holland.

Vandenberg was charged in Canada with five misdemeanor game violations. He pleaded guilty and paid the maximum fines - $300 for each violation.

After the Canadians shared the evidence with their American counterparts, U.S. officials went to a federal grand jury and got an indictment of Vandenberg.

Investigators believe that Vandenberg planned to sell fledglings from the eggs in Europe. The 78 eggs they found in Vandenberg's cooler would have netted him more than $100,000, according to calculations based on the records found in his house.

Egg-collecting permits specify that none of the eggs or birds may be sold or transferred to other individuals. Offspring from the birds that hatch from those eggs, however, may be sold, said Tim Eicher, a Fish and Wildlife agent in Fairbanks.

But there is no record of spectacled eiders, king eiders and oldsquaws ever reproducing in captivity, Eicher said. That's because the relative sterility and cold temperatures of the arctic environment are difficult to re-create, Eicher said.

That is why the arctic sea ducks command such a smart price, he said.

The eggs taken from Vandenberg were turned over to an aviculturist on the Colville Delta on the North Slope, who successfully reared some of them, then released them back into the wild, Eicher said.

Dawson became a suspect because of his affiliation with Vandenberg. And Van Nest was targeted after he got a permit and showed up with Dawson to go collecting, Lavin said, adding:

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."