>> we are standing on the bridge here one of the main attractions during thousands of visitors every year. continue our coverage on ratings literary culture we speak with author steve callan about his time in the state of california. >> i grew up as the son of a game warden. so the first for my teenage years i spent a lot of time writing on patrol with my dad. so had all of these great adventures working with him as well. so that's where the name of the book came. and then later on i became a game warden myself.and i continued writing stories about my generation. so the book is called the game warden's son. being in those years of my dad when he was a game warden, it was like having storybook childhood i did things most kids were dream.

when he started out he was on what you call marine patrol and his duty was patrolling the california channel islands. there fantastic. from 26 miles across the city like this or clear out way in the ocean. so i got to go on these excursions or these patrols out into the, out into the channel islands and see things that most kids would only dream of. there was one particular chapter i wrote about in the book." the trip to the islands. we went out and we took these national park scientists from washington d.c. up to santa barbara islands. and it is declared by roosevelt as a national monument years before it was a job to turn the island back to its natural state. because be during the previous century all of these people have come in and brought in all of these exotic animals and they brought in cats and goats

and pigs and literally they were destroying the island. so anyway, while we drop the scientists off on the island, we went on the adventure of our own. my dad made this great lobster coaching case while we were there. that was just the beginning. here i am picking up out of the galley watching this whole thing takes place and he is you guys yelling and screaming. you know the lobster poachers. it was quite an experience. then later on, there was a case where i was with my dad when i was a teenager on a night patrol with subcultures down in the willows area reduce south of, there were a lot of rice fields and that type of thinking ahead market hunters that were clawed -- they would go out at night. they would kill hundreds of ducks and geese at the same time. one night we were working that.

i ended up, there were three or four wardens working in the same place. and so they all go in different directions. when the old timer warden said why don't you ride with me is that if your dad? so ended up with him and we went down the road and he parks is gets out of the car and i get out of the car like i'm going with him. he said no, you're not going with me. you stay here and watch my car. and i was thinking man, i don't want to do that! i wanted to go out. so - about halfway through this night, while he is out there i thought both the heck with this. i'm going to walk back to my dad's car. it is just about a mile away. so walk up to the road and as they walked back down toward where my father's patrol car is, i hear these voices and coming across the field and inhibits people slopping through the mud and here comes these two duck poachers. out of the field.

so i am hiding behind tulips find these guys come slopping through the mud and then they disappeared. they ended up hiding all of these getting saxophone with illegal ducks they had killed in a covert. so i ended up making the case later and show my dad and these two wardens that he was working with what these guys did and next day they caught them and self, it was quite an adventure for me. that is just two examples that all kinds of them. the book is full of those kind of investigations. marching my dad, learning the little tricks to being a good wildlife officer. don't slam the door and get on the car, that kind of thing. because they hear you and bennett is over. all of these little things. so i cannot wait when i got old enough. i graduated from college, i wanted to be a fish and game warden myself. so i had a head start where

love is wardens when they start the job, they have to go through a process. a learning process but i had already gone through that on-the-job training for the last 10 years of my life. writing around with my dad so. being a fish and game warden it is like any other civil service job, you have to take a test. he passed the written they take an oral. then you are on the list and if you are lucky and you do well enough, your name will come up on the list and they will do an investigation and a background check and everything else. if all of that goes well then you will get a call and say hey, we decided to hire you and your first position will be, in my case, the first position was down in the colorado river. which is one of the hottest places in the world in the summertime. but i did not care.

i could not believe it. that is how it all started for me.at the same time, working down in southern california was a great learning experience and i had a lot of fun down there. i learned a whole lot. later on my career i was, the fact, i was there for three and half years and then i got promoted to lieutenant and went to the san bernardino riverside area and worked all kinds of interesting investigations they are related to the exotic animals and reptile collectors and a lot of things you never do up here. i worked a case for over a year involving a - there was a bald eagle which is an endangered species.it was shot and left at the front gate of a fish and game officer in redding. so one day i show up at work

and it told me about this everyone thought we would throw it in the freezer because there's not much to do. and there was a note attached to the leg of the eagle threatening to kill someone. so rather than just give up i started doing a lot of research investigation and asking around. i started to get little tips here and there. i came up with to suspect and ended up giving these guys a handwriting exam. i tested that and then i sent the handwriting to the fbi. and the fbi confirmed that my suspects were the ones that wrote the note. i ended up sending the feathers of this bird to the smithsonian institute. we did a search warrant on both of the houses and came up with

a lot of different feathers and everything. we ended up spending them to the smithsonian institute in washington d.c.. they pinpointed which species these were and another example is some of them went to that forensics unit for homicide. you guys are only investigating murders but they are thinking this is great! i am tired, i get to work and eagle case? bandits on the exact position the eagle was in when it was shot and you know the angle that the bullet came into the eagle and where there was a female or a male. so anyway, after all that was done i narrowed it down to these two guys. one ended up going to prison and the other was spent about six months in jail. but the greatest is habitat loss. if we're going to have wildlife were going to have habitats for wildlife to live. water cover and space. and more of that space is being covered with houses and

shopping centers and buildings and highways. the longer we go, the more of it is being covered and that is a huge issue. for what little wildlife we have left, you have to have somebody to enforce the laws to keep people from going out and killing it illegally. the biggest problem is money. if there is a way to make money, people will kill it to make money. the ocean is a huge problem. there is 1100 miles of coastline in california where, along the coast there is all of this, a b in the commercial fishing going on and there was only just a few officers to go around and enforce the laws. to keep it so we will always have fish and wildlife. it is a long service there sitting up marine protected areas where they have certain activities to allow this fish

to come back and then there is a huge issue on a federal level with, an example of what's going on right in washington d.c., a lot agencies are being defunded. environmental agencies are being defunded. you cannot have your cake and eat it too. we do not fund the agencies, do not count on there being much wildlife left in a few years. you cannot take that away and then expect to have wildlife. california is fortunate because california has always been a state that values its resources. so the prophecies have remained good. one of the issues that has always been the fact of not being enough officers to go around. i'm not sure there is almost 40 million people in california and the fields, the number of wildlife officers in the field is probably around 400. so that gives you a little

example but working with the legislature, california officers have done fairly well. they are pretty well supported. >> i wrote both books for three reasons. the first reason i had all of these great stories to tell. and i want people to enjoy these great stories and understand and the second reason was for people to understand that the game warden's job is a lot more than checking fishing licenses and writing fishing the third reason was i wanted to include a resource, a conservation message and everything i write. so that is what i wanted to take away from it. each one of the stories has a message. about how valuable the resources are and what it takes to keep them there. so people, future generations can enjoy them. and that is what i would say. and if that has, hundreds of

people tell us how much they enjoy this book. his noxious hundreds of fishermen. we have people to say they do not hunt or fish and they love the book because their great stories and they understand the message. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. it is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> hello and welcome to the regulator bookshop.thank you for coming out tonight.i was speaking this meeting and associate professor of history at the university of north