'It's certainly not the policy of the service to go encouraging employees to shoot endangered species, but that's a very complicated area,' said Phil Million, spokesman for Fish and Wildlife. The Smithsonian says it never set out to collect any threatened species and denies knowledge that any was killed.Īs the government inquiry continues, Mitchell remains on the job at Fish and Wildlife, part of the Interior Department. But Chinese authorities seized the animal. In 1988, for example, he took sport hunter Jim Conklin to China, where Conklin killed a Tibetan antelope, a species accorded the highest degree of protection by international treaty because it is in danger of extinction.Ĭonklin, who got his place on the trip by contributing $35,000 to fund Mitchell's research, said he believed that the animal would be allowed into the United States as a scientific specimen for display at the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian opposes the killing of animals known or thought to be endangered, but on at least two occasions while Mitchell was working at the Smithsonian, he participated in expeditions in which animals that were imperiled or whose status is unclear were killed. 'I'm not satisfied with where we come out on this,' Secretary Robert McCormick Adams said this week. The Smithsonian's association with Mitchell has raised difficult issues for the institution. In regard to the Nepalese animals, Simon said the Nepalese government wanted them downgraded, and Mitchell merely offered to perform a survey required to achieve that goal. His attorney, Justin Simon, said Mitchell's activities were undertaken for scientific reasons to protect wildlife and that he violated no laws in carrying them out. Mitchell declined to be interviewed for this story. government to downgrade the leopard and two other species from endangered status in Nepal with the goal of positioning himself to profit from sport hunting in that country. In another instance, the same sources said, prosecutors believe Mitchell worked to get the U.S. On at least one trip, these sources said, Mitchell had been sent overseas on government business but some of the same expenses also were covered by hunters. In some instances, according to knowledgeable sources, government prosecutors believe the carcasses were brought into the country in violation of U.S. Under the aegis of a nonprofit organization that he operated from his Arlington home, Mitchell accompanied hunters as they stalked their quarry and helped them bring their kills into the United States. The federal investigation centers on services that Mitchell performed for hunters while employed by the government. With another legal bill for $60,000 pending, the Smithsonian now says it has hired outside counsel to assess its obligations to Mitchell.

Throughout the inquiry, the Smithsonian has paid his legal bills: to date, more than $280,000 in congressionally appropriated funds.

When the investigation started in 1988, Mitchell was on temporary assignment to the Smithsonian to develop research projects with the Chinese. Mitchell's activities also are being probed by Fish and Wildlife's enforcement division as well as the inspectors general of the Interior Department and the Smithsonian Institution. Fish and Wildlife Service for his own benefit. The Justice Department is trying to determine whether Mitchell brought animal carcasses into the country illegally and whether he used his position at the U.S. Now, hunters who traveled with Mitchell are being questioned by federal prosecutors in Detroit, Milwaukee and Dallas-Fort Worth. To the government, Richard Mitchell was a staff scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Service hired to identify endangered species and set up programs to protect them.īut to big-game hunters, Mitchell was a man who could lead them to remote reaches of China and Pakistan and give them the chance to hunt rare and even endangered species.

Big game hunter assignment