600 miles away. And he did it again with his new book the falcon thief. To have the adventurous working for newsweek over two decades in the late eighties within a few years he was off to cover the rest of the world to be based in nairobi and when a serious and cape town and back in the us in los angeles. Over the past decade and ae half continuing to report to win the National Magazine award but and to tell the story of those who left on had the effort to control the ebola outbreak. And rich and three other previous works with the younger brother who is a religious fundamentalist. Another with the sieger of the church of nativity in bethlehem. So it was said of josh that he reports like a journalist and writes like a novelist. That is certainly the case. The book describes the jexploits and then to travel the world stealing highly valued birds of prey to sell them to enthusiast in the uae where falcons and raptors are used for sport. But the other central character is the detective for the Wildlife Crime unit to specialize in ornithological crime and was determined. The book is a thrilling fastpaced chronicle. It is more than just a detective story in a world of characters because of the status symbol on the planet or nature is increasingly imperiled. Please join me to welcome joshua hammer. [applause] what a great detailed introduction. Thank you. This will always be my favorite bookstore and then you. Thanks for coming out tonight. And over the course of doing this particular talk three or four times is to present a narrative without giving away the entire book that you have not seen the book. And how i stumbled into this. But the bad ass librarians came out in 2016. That is a story i had followed for many years. And made a couple trips to molly and bali and timbuktu and over the years i continued to visit and i got some assignments to write about the manuscripts. And the capturing of the entire two thirds of the country. And it made a certain amount of sense to have about come out of it but it is completely differentis. This is like an act of desperation. Was looking for another project. Just throwingt out terrible ideas. Then one day in 2017 and to pick up the london times and was just sitting in a cafe a short article on page 12 about this character headlined to be on the wing again. And all it said was the notorious the known for helicopter ring and repelling down cliffs but to disappear and the conservation world. And that he might be going back to. And enough to ignite my interest. And to be obsessed with the way that he was about his ex. And to plunge deeper into ther subject. And with that introduction i will tell you about the story as it unfolds with some wherence without giving too much away. This story begins in a shower room with a in the uk and then he disappears and he goes in the shower room with all of his bags the janitors waiting. With hundreds of Close Caption tvs and the shopping also he was trained to observe. After 20 minutes and then the generous cities that nothing has been touched completely dry shower and use, towels still folded, the sink in the bath in the toilet, nothing. He is immediatelylv suspicious after five or ten minutes looking through the ceiling rntiles he sees a diaper been with a single red painted egg like an easter egg that she figures is left about a guy that was in there and completely mystified what could a this mean and to make a long story short and to take him away and stripsearched himm with a tshirt with hospital gauze wrapped tightly one tightly around his body and there are woolen socks. But they are not trained at all to understand what they areth in july cap the passport to establish his identity. What are these . And why youre carrying rod duck eggs when they are attached to the body. He explains his chiropractor has toldpr him and then to wrap around the body because it prevents him fromnt stooping and to then make a phone call to Andy Mcwilliams. If anybody has seen the reviews . There are a few good ones. They tend to give short shrift to Andy Mcwilliams i want to emphasize from the very beginning, a bad guy good guy with the hero and antihero. And to be called those famous wildlife policeman of the crime. So he shares a story and then realizes hes carrying the eggs is it hiding them but to keep them warm so now he instantly knows that the egg is the paragraph in falcon. There is a better image of one. A highly protected bird are raptor the fastest part of the planet with speeds up to 180 miles per hour. And now those wealthy shakes of the united arab emirates. But the rumors of the market. To bring these protected raptors into the emirates. And with that very description that counterterrorism. So when he drives down from liverpool. This is a portrait and 2010. That picture is extemporaneous. Letting him know hes not being d and idiot and then gets them to admit but the eggs were dead and then he was only bringing them down to south africa for the private collection. And pretty sure he was lying. The greatest contributions of peregrine falcons of the uk. With the amazing landscape and alleges that are sheltered from the wind and then for coal mining places. And with those rocky ledges with peregrine lay there but then you have to imagine so then handling 14 of the eggs. And and then to have a background scratch. And then working as a merchant marine. Bed then barely finished school and came up a liverpool cop. And tired of drug busting addicts and pushers and suicides and murders. And he was also very talented pfierce rugby player. With a series of injuries to become a birdwatcher. And the birdwatching that he letin into the hidden subterranean world, for traders. And those that kill falcons and they are the mortal enemy of the pigeon. And in those two plastic tubes with the 24 hour horrific cuny on journeys the middle one the middle age men spending their time to go off to the remote corners of the uk in northern scotland and protected birds blowing out the embryo. And those that pursuing these guys. And then to be wellversed so this is the market and to present a concrete image. So falconry has been around for at least 3000 years. Starting in the arab world and in the desert. And helping the bedouins to put food on their table even before the arrival of islam. And the falcon we developed and it became more of a sport and a recreational thing. Elf but essentially it was the sort of interaction almost mystical interaction between man and bird was train a bird, maybe some of you ever that book, so you probably know a bit about this but this became even though it spread around the world, it did kind of guy out in the uk and europe in the states. It never really expanded have a Certain Group of people. Falconry remained intensely embedded in the culture. In a dubai desert training ground, the kind of passion the wealthiest who tend to be members of the royal family have, the Veterinary Center to shake up the crown prince of dubai, the crown prince, the sun of mohammed, the ruler of dubai who built this megalopolis. Might not be a stateoftheart hospital with a staff of veterinarians from all over the world, this, the last 20 years as the desert has gotten smaller and the national prey of the birds has disappeared in the persian gulf and the new phenomenon where the wealthy take their birds and even though their natural tendency is to drop up to 160 miles an hour they are trained using everything from many airplanes and drones to go horizontally and they gather in these racetracks, falcon racetracks and place bets, but they go all over the world to find the greatest birds to participate in these races, and up session for these guys. Three years since the 70s, you cant trade almost every rafter in the world has fallen under severe restrictions as far as the only kind of trading of these birds, only a handful are allowed every year, proving your interest is scientific. If you are not part of the scientific work you work for been from touching the birds. To feed this hunger for birds there is a captive breeding industry where they take birds and breed them in artificial environment and incubate the eggs, a huge trade worth millions of dollars. There is a Certain Group as, mostly the wealthy sheiks who believe these birds cant be compared to the wild ones because Natural Selection has bred these birds over millennia in these wilderness environment and these are the birds they want and they will go to any lengths to hire people who will provide these birds and take great risks. They only inhabit the most remote difficult to reach places in the world. One of them was jeffrey landrum. I became very curious as it Andy Mcwilliams. Mcwilliams figured quickly that he had a global smuggler on his hand and if he let him go he would escape and do this again. Mcwilliams began fixating for 36 hours to persuade a prosecutor to hold landrum for carrying bird eggs on his body, they had no clue about these arcane wildlife laws. It was down to the wire to persuade these people, and egg smuggler to hold without bail was a difficult sell but mcwilliams was able to keep him without bail while he began digging into his story as i did when i found my way, how does one become an egg smuggler . What led him to the arab world . It does raise the question of what the background would have created, this commerce he engaged in. He grew up in the second city of rhodesia. His father was a thirdgeneration white african, parents and come originally from ireland. Legend grew up within shouting distance of this National Park in Southern Rhodesia which was a magnificent geological phenomenon that has amazing rock structures which rise thousands of feet and thick vegetation that makes them perfect for rafters. This part has the greatest concentration of eagles, hawks and falcons on the planet and this was landrums backyard. He became involved with his father who was born in 61. In the 70s he became involved in a survey on ornithological survey of the black eagle which is one of the strongest eagles in the world which is found in huge concentrations, nowhere else in the world so this became landrum and his father went out to the field and surveyed and spent months, this is where landrum learned to climb trees and rappel down cliffs. This is the scene of people, the black eagle survey continues, even 50 years later, people looking at this area, they lay their eggs like the falcons do, high up, 80, 200 feet off the ground, difficult to spot their nests but this is our landrum grew up, steeped in this stuff. This is the formation you see, perfect sort of perfect terrain for these creatures to thrive. Another bird, ground eagle, one of the rarest raptors in the world and for these having giant talons but sweep small children off the ground and make off with them. On two occasions in zimbabwe that i know of. This was landrums world. At some point to sum up that story, landrum was on on of logical surveys with his father learning to climb, learning everything about birds and at the same time his father led him while he was there conducting this ontological survey learning the location of every nest in the park they were secretly taking eggs, even as a teenager come putting them in their own private collection, possibly, never verified, selling them abroad. Even as a 17 and 18yearold his father was leading him down an ethically challenging path. He and his father ended up being arrested for illegal possession of eggs, it is only interested birders, but the consequence was landrum was disgraced, had to flee the country, ended up in south africa and bit by bit was led into this global enterprise, back at the very beginning in the 90s when the sheiks were gearing up to get their hands on the most Beautiful Oil money was flowing, falconry was thriving, the races were about to begin. There was a real hunger to get their hands on the most beautiful birds in the world so landrum, it is kind of hard to chronicle exactly what he did on his missions because so many of them, police believe, never came to light. I managed to find an accomplice of his who told me, not only told me about one of these missions they went on together but actually had the video to prove it. This particular mission was to the arctic, to quebec to pursue this bird, this falcon, pure white, not always pure white but the ones that are most sought after are pure white specimens, the biggest outcomes in the world, there is love them because they are difficult to keep alive. The challenge is to keep them alive in a desert environment when they are used to places like greenland and the subarctic, siberia so there was this growing desire for falcons among crooked arab sheiks and hard to find even commercial breeders. The only way to get your hands on one is to send somebody like landrum to the far north to embark on a crazed expedition to get these things off the cliffs. How do you do that . The accomplice told me the whole story a little bit i will give you, this is the video of jeff landrum in his prime in 2001. His partner, a Rhodesian Army crony of his, they stayed in touch over the years, began work for the Sheriffs Department in a Northern California county. He was a law man landrum enlisted to join him on this illegal egg raid in the north. These guys never imagined one day the video would end up in the hands of the national Wildlife Crime unit. These guys, by a sheik in the middle east, im not going to give the whole story away how the connection was made but suffice it to say other acquaintances led him to the arab market and he was dispatched, a total selfstarter he came up with going after the jurors and a village way up north near hudson bay and this is the helicopter perched near a cliff, they would spot a falcon nest above the ground or over the frozen lakes, landrum would fasten a harness and rope around himself, and the pilot would ascend to 1000 feet near the use cliffs and would reach out and grab the eggs so just plundering this environment, places no one else had ever been. My chronicle her of all this, plane tickets and the sound and everything to prove it, to get to that, that was a close relationship, there was a huge fight a couple years after this that involved mullens girlfriend and complicated relationship, they had a huge following out and was waiting for the opportunity to get even with landrum, karma is a bit, he told mcwilliams about this, he became this incredible source of stories for me, stuff that had never come too late including missing credible expedition. This is one of the sites that he took a picture of, those had just been hatched. You need to time it, when the eggs are viable, they are not during the first three weeks, they have to be kept at absolutely the same temperature or slight variation will kill them, turning the eggs can kill them. Have to wait until they are somewhat viable but not weight too long so you dont run the risk of the egg hatching as you sneak it through security. Landrum is not the only one doing this. It happened in the 1990s, four birds tweeting in underwear. He was busted that way. It is an art form. Not only do you have to find these birds but they are territorial. Not like there are nests everywhere. The deer falcon, all of this was new to me but i got more caught up in the weirdness of it. These birds established their territory 5 or 10 miles. You have to sweep along the cliffs until you spot something, to rappel down, lead a helicopter on top of the cliff and rappel down, whether it was so steep, descending from a rope, they spent ten days doing this, captured 30 eggs which is a significant part of the environmental bounty of this part of the world, pretty bad stuff, wasnt going to make the falcon stink but nasty business. He was consumed by guilt but did it anyway. He did the next year too. To make a long story short, to condense this i dont want to give too much of it away, landrum continues on this incredible course, getting more reckless, taking more chances, eventually it leads to this Birmingham Airport incident where Andy Mcwilliams busted him and because mcwilliams kept him without bail he is able to dig up a lot of history and prove that this is no ordinary bird egg collector but someone with global reach has been doing it for years who is a professional making money, plundering the environment probably with cronies in the middle east, there is a trial, highly covered trial because the british media cant resist these elements of x Rhodesian Army guy, helicopter rappelling falcon eggs, landrum ends of getting, forgive me for not knowing the details of my own book, i think 2 and a half Year Prison Sentence which is the first time he has been doing this for 20 years and been caught a couple times but always managed to sneak out and get through with a fine. It happened in zimbabwe and quebec and always managed to skate both in ice and survive by keeping his name out of the papers. Thanks to mcwilliams he is all over the British Press. Video of him dangling a dvd in his carryon luggage, mcwilliams grabs that. It is on youtube, landrum is in prison. Mcwilliam is hoping the guy has time, he learned his lesson, jail and exposure, Media Exposure will make it difficult for him to continue along the lines of the life he has led for 25 years. So landrum does get out of jail, and they are ready to help him, returns to south africa, keeps a low profile, he just cant stop. It is in his nature. He is arrested in brazil. He has been stealing albino falcon eggs in chile and patagonia, i followed his trail. A harsh volcanic landscape, protected environment at a haven for raptors. Landrum somehow or other discovered a part of story, how he found these volcanoes in the middle of nowhere and assessed with these albino falcons, the problem, he is more and more reckless, suspicion what he is up to like letting hotel clerks see his incubators. The hotel clerks googles his name and the first thing he sees is the picture of landrum dangling from a rope in northern quebec reading page after page of stories of an International Wildlife thief, called by andymac williams a master thief on a global scale. What have we got here . Captured in brazil, he is sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison in a brazilian jail, doesnt speak a word of portuguese, facing a difficult time. At that point he escapes through the jungle. And up with him. In late 2017. He ducked me for many years. He was intent on finding him and asking him, what is the middle ea