Pennsylvania Game Commission - Wildlife Conservation Officers

Wildlife Conservation Officers

The main workforce of the Pennsylvania Game Commission are Wildlife Conservation Officers, also known as WCOs. These men and women are trained at the Ross Leffler School of Conservation in Harrisburg. New recruiting classes are formed when positions open up, which is normally every 2nd or 3rd year. Classes are usually kept below 30 students.
Training is a 11-month training program in Law Enforcement, Natural Resource Management, Wildlife Management, and other subjects. Students are paid $1,150.40 on a bi-weekly basis and are required to live in provided housing.
WCO's are the police for wildlife. They are there to enforce the hunting and trapping laws as well as many other laws. They patrol the Pennsylvania State Game Lands.
They teach hunter-trapper education courses as well as providing many other educational opportunities for the Pennsylvania public.

Read more about this topic:  Pennsylvania Game Commission

Famous quotes containing the words wildlife, conservation and/or officers:

    Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

    A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.
    Aristide Briand (1862–1932)

    You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don’t know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God’s curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wifes and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.
    Anthony Henley (d. 1745)