Immigrant Farmer’s Woes Galvanize Conservatives : Environment: Growers, politicians rally in support of man accused of violating Endangered Species Act.

After making a small fortune as an importer in Taiwan, Taung Ming-Lin came to America with the dream of turning the soil into a garden of bamboo and bok choy and Chinese bitter melon.

He took one look at the fields rolling out lush and incandescent in Kern County and plunked down $1.65 million. Problem was, the 723 acres he bought three years ago turned out to be just about the most Godforsaken land in these parts.

He set out to make his desert bloom, pouring in another $200,000 for equipment and a water well. He didn’t know about the salt in the soil that stunted his bamboo. And he certainly didn’t know about any Tipton kangaroo rats or blunt-nosed leopard lizards or San Joaquin kit foxes.

Today, the 51-year-old Lin stands accused by the U.S. government of destroying the habitat of endangered species. His tractor and disc have been seized as murder weapons.

“I wanted to make bamboo and bok choy part of the American diet,” he said through a translator. “But the government showed me this dead rat and then they took my tractor and disc. Now my land is worthless.”

Conservatives from Rush Limbaugh to Michael Huffington have seized upon the plight of the 5-foot-4 immigrant, who speaks no English and carries a lucky jade dragon, as one more example of the federal environmental bureaucracy gone mad.

In this region that gave rise to its own brand of country-Western music and remains home to more than a few John Birchers, the issue is white and black. It’s farmer versus rat; farmer versus feds.

On a recent Saturday, the Kern County Farm Bureau and the Coalition to Protect and Preserve Private Property Rights threw a huge rally in support of Lin and other growers who have run afoul of the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

Hundreds of tractors and big-rig trucks rumbled through the quiet streets of downtown Bakersfield. Crop dusters roared overhead. Lin, looking slightly befuddled in his blue jeans and tennis shoes, rode near the front of the cavalcade on the wheels of a gargantuan tractor.

“Fight or lose your job to the BureaucRATS,” read one sign. “Three Rats and You’re Out,” read another, even though it was five kangaroo rats that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it found on Lin’s property.

At a tri-tip beef barbecue that followed, cotton and tomato farmer Tim Thomson tried to explain the passion.

“What the federal government has done to Mr. Lin is no different than if they found one of these kangaroo rats under your back porch and asked you to move out of your house but continue to pay the mortgage. It just isn’t American.”

Lin’s lawyer would also argue that the case harks back to an older and more sordid tale of California real estate swindles.

“The real estate professionals involved saw this naive foreign investor who didn’t speak the language and they swindled him, pure and simple,” said Daniel Rudnick, Lin’s attorney. He is preparing to sue the seller, Tenneco Inc., to rescind the transaction and the two real estate agents for fraud.

“You can’t give that ground away. It’s got endangered species on it. It’s a liability.”

Tenneco says it wasn’t aware that the land, which sat idle for years, was considered habitat for several endangered species. And it says it did not sell the land as farmland.

“We were approached with an unsolicited offer to buy the land and Mr. Lin had an opportunity to inspect it and get a third-party opinion as to its value,” said Christine LeLaurin, a Tenneco spokeswoman in Houston. “We feel bad for the guy, you bet. But it was no swindle.”

Joe Garone, a longtime Bakersfield farmer and one of the realty agents who represented Lin, chuckled when asked if the land could sustain crops.

“I don’t think I’m guilty of anything, but I don’t see how I have anything to gain by talking to the media,” he said. “It’s the federal government that needs to be reined in.”

Lin came to America in 1990 with his wife and three of four children. He gave up a lucrative career as an importer of U.S.-made refrigerators and air-conditioning units to open a small bookbinding firm in El Monte, which he still runs. He and the family live in El Monte and Lin travels frequently to Bakersfield.

But he kept dreaming about the life of a farmer, he said, remembering his 84-year-old father still tilling eight acres of peanuts and rice on an island west of Taiwan, happy as can be.

“I have never farmed, but it’s in my blood,” Lin said. “My idea was to sell the bookbinding company one day and go back to the soil.”

A now-defunct Monterey Park real estate firm told Lin about the fertile San Joaquin Valley on the other side of the Tehachapis. He made one trip up and then another before deciding in February, 1991, to buy a large parcel 100 miles north of Los Angeles near Interstate 5--past the sleepy farm towns of Pumpkin Center and Panama and Old River.

A more bereft piece of earth--at least from a farmer’s perspective--would be hard to imagine. But Lin looked past the tumbleweeds and snakes and salt-encrusted soil. He looked to the horizon.

“Acres and acres of green. Farmland. Cotton. Alfalfa,” he said. “That’s all I saw.”

He said neither the realty agent in Monterey Park nor Garone in Bakersfield, who split the sales commission, nor Tenneco told him it would take years of irrigation to leach out the deadly salts and turn the 723 acres into marginal cropland at best. And the escrow papers, he said, never mentioned a word about endangered species.

Lin said Tenneco even plowed the land clean before he handed over the $310,000 down payment, removing all signs of virgin desert.

In early February, after Lin sank a $100,000 well, bought a $50,000 tractor, planted five acres of bamboo and watched every third plant wither, a state agent with the Department of Fish and Game knocked on the trailer door of Lin’s farm manager, Robert Sanchez.

Did you know this was critical habitat for three endangered species? Have you obtained the necessary state or federal permit to till the land?

Sanchez answered, “No,” and a few days later, according to the federal complaint, he proceeded to plow under another swath of scrubland. On Feb. 20, more than two dozen state and federal agents, accompanied by helicopters, descended on the farm.

They “arrested” the tractor and disc, according to court papers, and found “five suspected Tipton kangaroo rat carcasses and/or parts thereof.” They charged Lin with three violations of the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits harming about 600 species of imperiled animals and plants and protects their natural surroundings. He faces up to a year in prison and $300,000 in criminal and civil fines.

The show of force rankled people here. The feds say they were just doing their job.

“It’s pretty simple,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Karen Kalmanir. “We’re enforcing the Endangered Species Act. This was an unlawful and knowing take of habitat.”

Kalmanir said Lin continued to destroy the habitat after he had been warned.

Kalmanir is fresh from the prosecution of a Tulare County farmer who destroyed a portion of the habitat of the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, which is found only in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Tule Vista Farms entered a guilty plea, was fined $5,000 and agreed to sell 100 acres and deed 60 acres more to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Arthur Unger, president of the local Sierra Club, supports the federal government action and wonders why Lin, a man who is savvy enough to run a successful import business, would fail to know the law.

“Why should we protect the kangaroo rat?” he asked. “Because it’s part of the web of life and it happens to be one of the principal foods for the foxes, bobcats and coyotes out there. How can we sit here and play God and say ‘This species we’ll let go?’ ”

At a rally and barbecue for Lin and others, E.G. Berchtold told the crowd of 500 that the tractor he sold to Lin had been seized and it remained in federal custody as Exhibit No. 1.

“The United States of America vs. One Ford Tractor,” he laughed. “You can’t believe what we’re going to have to do to get that tractor back.”

“Well, let’s go get it right now,” a burly man shouted.

“Yeah,” the crowd roared. “Let’s go get it.”

“Come see me afterward,” Berchtold smiled.

Lin stood onstage clutching a stuffed mouse someone had given him. His tiny frame was half-covered by the American flag and he looked a little lost amid the Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno jokes. Half his face drooped from a small stroke he blames on his troubles. Politicians running for office kept wanting to shake his hand.

“I am disappointed in American government,” he said. “But my feelings toward the people are very warm.”