GROSZ, Terry

PERSONAL: Last name rhymes with "rose"; married; wife's name, Donna (a teacher). Education: Graduated from Humboldt State University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Evergreen, CO. Agent—Johnson Books, 1880 S. 57th Ct., Boulder, CO 80301.

CAREER: California Department of Fish and Game, state game warden, 1966-70; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Denver, CO, special agent and assistant regional director for law enforcement, 1970-98.

AWARDS, HONORS: Guy Bradley Award, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation; National Outdoor Book Award, nature and environment book category, 2000, for Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden.

WRITINGS:

Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 1999.

For Love of Wilderness: The Journal of a U.S. GameManagement Agent, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2000.

Defending Our Wildlife Heritage: The Life and Times of a Special Agent, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2001.

A Sword for Mother Nature: The Further Adventures of a Fish and Game Warden, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2002.

No Safe Refuge: Man as Predator in the World ofWildlife, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2003.

The Thin Green Line: Outwitting Poachers, Smugglers, and Market Hunters, Johnson Books (Boulder, CO), 2004.

ADAPTATIONS: Wildlife Wars, a documentary based on Grosz's career, was broadcast on Animal Planet, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Terry Grosz spent more than thirty years as a California fish and game warden and a federal special agent. As an assistant regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the top assignments in his field, Grosz was responsible for law enforcement in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, and North and South Dakota. Grosz chronicles his adventures in such works as Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden and Defending Our Wildlife Heritage: The Life and Times of a Special Agent.

Wildlife Wars contains a number of stories from the author's years as a conservation officer in California. Charlie Meyers, reviewing the work in the Denver Post, stated that Grosz "paints a stirring picture of the constant struggle to protect our outdoor resources from a constant assault from lawbreakers. The book gives a brisk, sometimes swashbuckling account of Grosz's running duels with a variety of miscreants from market hunters to garden-variety poachers." In one episode, Grosz spends the night in a rice field to protect thousands of mallard ducks from commercial hunters; in another, he describes how an angry hunter unloaded some two hundred shotgun pellets in Grosz's back, legs, and neck. In Wildlife Wars Grosz "relates his exploits in adventures full of slam-bang action and bravado tempered by a coolheaded sense of humor," remarked a critic in Publishers Weekly. Grosz's "collection of tales needs to be told, for it helps combat an enormous problem concerning our country's natural wildlife," observed Booklist contributors Fred Egloff and Gilbert Taylor.

In Defending Our Wildlife Heritage Grosz relates additional tales of his work in California, and he tells of his work as a special agent. "Throughout the breezy, entertaining book, Grosz's intellectual and emotional commitment to the cause shines through," wrote Booklist reviewer Nancy Bent.

The job of a game warden is extremely dangerous, Grosz admits; a game warden is far more likely to be killed on the job than any other law enforcement official. "While their counterparts at the FBI bask in the sexy glamour of dark suits and sunglasses, these guys and gals wade through swamps and slink through forests, sometimes within the gunsights of thieves who slaughter wildlife for profit or a perverse sense of revenge," remarked Gayle Worland in the Denver Westword. "In undercover operations, they might hang out in the backwoods with illicit hunting 'guides' who demand $10,000 'membership fees' to their exclusive clubs . . . or set up phony taxidermy shops that cater to a seedy clientele." Greed fuels the thriving illicit trade in animal products, Grosz told Worland. "It's absolutely amazing," Grosz stated. "There is so much money in the sale of wildlife today, be it fur, feathers, claws, meat, ivory, teeth, bones, blood, hides—it's absolutely unreal. There's less and less wildlife, there's more and more people, there's more and more money. Mix money with a critter, and the critter always loses."

Since retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1998, Grosz has become something of a national spokesperson for conservation efforts. "The only voice wildlife has is ours," Grosz told Denver Post contributor Theo Stein. "If we're not squalling like a scratched cat, we're no better than the poachers." Grosz's career was the subject of Wildlife Wars, a movie that aired on Animal Planet in 2004.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1999, Fred Egloff and Gilbert Taylor, review of Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden, p. 311; November 15, 2001, Nancy Bent, review of Defending Our Wildlife Heritage: The Life and Times of a Special Agent, p. 527.

Denver Post, March 29, 1989, "Enforcement Awards," p. E8; January 9, 2000, Charlie Meyers, review of Wildlife Wars, p. CC9; January 1, 2004, Theo Stein, "Book, Movie Capture Spirit of Wildlife Agent," p. B4; February 24, 2004, Charlie Meyers, review of No Safe Refuge: Man as Predator in the World of Wildlife, p. D2.

Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1999, review of Wildlife Wars, p. 90.

ONLINE

Westword.com,http://www.westword.com/ (May 20, 1999), Gayle Worland, "The Wild Life: Special Agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fight Battles Outdoors and in the Office."*