Making a killing.

Sometimes the stars in the night sky seem so close you could reach out and touch them. But these heavenly bodies are actually millions of miles away, and the universe they occupy is awfully vast - maybe too big for you to even think about measuring. This photo essay is designed to give you an idea of just how enormous it is, and where we fit in.

It's a chilly night in southwest Texas. Undercover agent Chris Scott is out stealing and kidnapping with the bad guys. His mission: Break up a notorious crime ring. But Scott's not trailing gun runners, drug dealers, or hit men. The criminals he's after kidnap and sometimes kill animals and plants in our National Parks - areas where species are supposed to be safe.

What motivates these poachers? Money. "There are [poachers] out there making 3 or 4 million dollars a year," Scott says. Some can earn up to $25,000 for bringing in a "trophy" grizzly bear or $10,000 for a Big Horn sheep. Some poachers have even established businesses as guides to take buyers on illegal forages through our nation's protected lands. They charge up to $10,000 a trip.

In 1993, the National Park Service reported some 5,000 poaching violations in half of the 367 National Park areas. But "for every poacher we catch, there are 30 to 50 incidents we don't even see," says Dan Sholly, chief ranger at Yellowstone National Park.

Park rangers aren't just out to lock up the bad guys and stop their flow of funds. The rangers are more concerned with protecting the species threatened by poaching.

ENDANGERED ECOSYSTEMS

"National Parks are the last places you can find some of these species," says Bill Tanner, Scott's boss at the National Park Service Resource Protection Unit. "Without better protection, ultimately we're going to lose [species]."

And lost species can lead to lost ecosystems, unique communities in which plants and animals interact and maintain a delicate balance with one another and their environment. For instance, poaching threatens the desert and juniper-covered mountains of Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas - snake habitat. Last year, at the height of the poaching season, poachers stole as many as 200 snakes from the park every night. Some petshop owners will pay $1,500 for a gray-banded king snake. The problem: With no snake predators slithering around, the rodents and other prey the snakes would normally eat are free to multiply.

To keep the poachers in check - and to help reestablish the balance of nature - agent Scott and his partners went undercover in Operation Rockcut. "I lived outside the park in Lajitas [Texas] and posed as a reptile poacher," says Scott. It was dicey. "Most of these [poachers] are armed, and often are involved in other [crimes]," he says.

Fortunately, Scott had one thing the poachers didn't - a tape recorder strapped to his body. He secretly collected evidence by recording the poachers' conversations as they captured and sold the park's reptiles. Now, 28 suspects face criminal charges for poaching from six park areas, making Operation Rockcut the biggest poaching bust in National Park Service history.

UN-BEARABLE

Unfortunately, the Park Service can't set up sting operations in every park. Poachers, it seems, far outnumber the specially trained rangers needed to stop them in their tracks. That situation spells D-A-N-G-E-R for wildlife already on the decline.

Populations of some of the plants, birds, reptiles, and "big-game" mammals poachers swipe are already dwindling due to habitat loss and other causes. So poachers are harming more than just a few specimens (see "Poachers' picks," p. 9). Their actions may threaten these species with extinction.

"Ninety percent of bear habitat is gone" in the southeastern United States, says Bob Miller at Great Smokey Mountains National Park, one of the last remaining refuges for black bears. Now rangers estimate that poachers kill about 3,000 American black bears each year.

Why shoot a bear? Bear bones, blood, paws, brains, and spinal cords are all listed as medicines in traditional Chinese-medicine journals. The biggest prize: a bear's gallbladder, which is considered a cure-all like aspirin. One bear gallbladder may sell for tens of thousands of dollars in Asia.

Another dwindling species: American ginseng root, a herbal medicine apparently used to treat inflammation, infection, and "lack of energy." It's worth about $300 per pound. "I used to think bear poaching was [our biggest threat in the park]," says John Garrison, supervisory ranger in the Smokey Mountains. "But I think ginseng is potentially higher. The plants can't run and hide."

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Will park rangers catch up with the criminals before it's too late? It won't be easy. The rangers are busy. In addition to tracking down poachers, they must deal with the illegal campfires, trash, and the traffic of millions of visitors each year. They ask for your help in closing in on poachers. "Reports from visitors and neighbors are one way we normally make cases or arrests," says Miller at the Smokey Mountains.

But many people feel that even if poachers are caught, their penalties (e.g., fines and probation) are too weak to deter them and others from returning to the killing fields.

There's one thing you can do for sure: When you visit a National Park, avoid "casual poaching," says Harold Smith at Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Many people don't realize that digging up a pretty park plant for your garden at home is poaching too, he says.

If the present trend of large-scale poaching continues, says the Park Service's Tanner, "the only type of natural resource managers you'll need in the parks will be geologists-because the only thing left will be rocks."