MAN GETS 24 YEARS FOR FIRE THAT KILLED CONDORS
A man who authorities said started a wildfire in Central California two years ago that killed 12 endangered condors has been sentenced to 24 years in state prison.
Ivan Gomez, 31, was found guilty in a California court last month of 16 felony counts related to the Dolan fire in Big Sur, including arson and cruelty to animals. His sentence was announced Thursday by Jeannine M. Pacioni, district attorney for Monterey County.
The California condor is the largest land bird in North America. As of late 2019, there were 518 of them worldwide, including 337 in the wild, according to the National Park Service.
The Dolan fire in Big Sur was one of many disastrous wildfires to hit the West in 2020. It began Aug. 18 near a scenic coastal stretch of state Highway 1 and was one of 405 new fires reported around the country that day, according to a report by the U.S. Forest Service.
The Dolan fire eventually consumed nearly 125,000 acres and was not contained until New Year’s Eve. But it did not take the California authorities very long to find the fire’s architect.
Around the same time that park rangers first saw the Dolan fire cresting a ridgeline in the Los Padres National Forest on Aug. 18, police officers found Gomez throwing rocks at vehicles on Highway 1, the Monterey County district attorney’s office said. He told the officers that he had started the fire at an illegal marijuana farm.
Fire investigators would later confirm the fire origin site Gomez had described, according to the district attorney’s office.
In addition to killing 12 California condors, the Dolan fire injured several firefighters and condors. It also destroyed 10 homes, a condor sanctuary and a fire station in a national park. Authorities estimated the cost of fighting the fire to be nearly $63 million.