From late 2019 through 2022, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) issued twenty-one whistleblower awards to individuals who provided high-quality information about wildlife crime. The existence of these awards has not been previously made public and details about them were made available to Whistleblower Network News in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry.
Each awarded whistleblower contributed to a successful FWS investigation into wildlife crime, ranging from the poaching of individual animals to international wildlife trafficking operations.
The awards, which range in size from $250 to $125,000 but were mostly for between $2,000 and $5,000, stem from little known amendments passed in the 1980s which allow FWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to pay out monetary awards to whistleblowers who report violations of U.S. wildlife laws, including most notably the Lacey Act and Endangered Species Act.
Over the years, FWS has faced scrutiny for not fully publicizing and utilizing these whistleblower award provisions. While other agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have set-up highly publicized and effective whistleblower award programs which have collected billions of dollars and awarded hundreds of millions of dollars to whistleblowers, FWS has...
by Lowell Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, April 21. Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand i...
