Reporting Wildlife Violations

Idaho Conservation Officer patrol districts average over a thousand square miles. Within each patrol district, officers have a wide variety of duties to perform. Many hours are spent performing fisheries and wildlife management work, teaching hunter education, helping landowners and homeowners with wildlife problems, giving classroom and civic group presentations, attending training meetings, and dealing with unexpected fish and wildlife matters that arise in their assigned district. With all the things a Conservation Officer has to deal with, it can be a challenge for the public to contact them. If everything happened between 8am and 5pm Monday through Friday, it would be easy. The regional office on Kathleen Ave in Coeur d'Alene is open during these regular business hours (excluding holidays) and people can walk in or call IDFG at 769-1414. But that only covers a third of the hours in a day and not every day of the week. Many people, including IDFG officers, have cancelled their home phones and now only have cell phones. But with cell numbers not being in the phone book, what does a person do to contact fish and game when the regional office is closed? For emergencies or to report violations in progress, the first option is to call the local Sheriff's office or the Idaho State Police. Conservation Officers have radio contact with these agencies and they communicate frequently by radio. The problem with calling an officer's cell phone number if you have it, is that many places in Idaho are outside of cell phone range. If you call and leave a message on a cell phone about a violation in progress, the call has reached a temporary dead end. The officer will not hear your message until returning to cell phone range and it may be too late to address a need. Another option for a wildlife law violation is to call the Citizens Against Poaching (CAP) hotline at 1-800-632-5999. Instead of leaving a voicemail while the officer is out of cell coverage, you can talk to a live person as the line is manned 24/7 during hunting seasons and a few weeks either side of hunting seasons. At other times of the year, there is a recording that accepts messages. A dispatcher, either through the local Sheriff's Department, the state police, or the CAP line has the ability to reach multiple officers at once on the radio. These dispatchers are true professionals at routing calls quickly and efficiently to the appropriate officers in the field. Callers can remain anonymous when calling the CAP line or a dispatch center, but we encourage you to leave a call back number so officers can get additional information if needed. Callers can also receive a reward for information that leads to a conviction.