Land of Make Believe indeed.
From Article: "We think it's irresponsible to persecute a volunteer acting in good faith to protect the environment," Campbell said.
The operative questions is whether or not this person was acting in good faith. The land-owner (sorry, I forgot the "evil" prefix) demonstrated to the satisfaction of the DEP that the turtles were not there. Do you know how difficult and costly it probably was to determine that? You have against that the word of a single environmental (dare I say activist?) who says otherwise. Does anybody really believe that the turtle actually was there? Or do the environmentalists think that protecting a wetland is a good thing and a little white lie never hurt anyone?
In order to take this person's word at face value, you would have to believe that he saw the turtle, recognized it at a distance, confirmed that it was endangered and reported it, all without being aware of the controversy. Given that he has two daughters who work at the park, this strains credulity, to say the least. I'm sure he brought up his daughters to be good little enviro-troopers, and they let him know what was going on.
People who maliciously use the mechanisms of the state to persecute land-owners should be treated very harshly by the law. The only thing to determine is whether or not that happened in this case. The state should be investigating this activity, not defending it.
I'm sure it was immensively expensive to prove a negative!
As you point out, the poor landowner had already proved to the state DEP's satisfaction that no such endangered turtles lived there -- then shazzam, one appears out of the blue! And how convenient, right next to the parking lot!
I wonder if objective investigators could determine whether this miraculous turtle actually came from Mr. Maier's land, e.g., through soil analysis.
"The Land of Make Believe," btw, is not a plastic-y, evironmentally obnoxious amusement park. It's very low key and fits seamlessly into the surrounding area.