Levelling up the playing field to fight wildlife crime

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the 35th National Wildlife Crime Conference which was hosted by the National Wildlife Crime Unit. The conference brought together police officers, government agencies and partners with an interest in tackling criminality within our natural environment.

Needless to say, the conference agenda was pertinent to the interests of CLA members as we looked at best practice in investigations related to raptor persecution, hare coursing and hunting with hounds.

Many police officers took to the stage to describe how their investigations into different types of wildlife crime had unfolded. There was one consistent thread running through these investigations – the increasing use of technology to gather evidence and bring perpetrators to court.

The use of DNA is not new to crime fighting, but we are now seeing it applied to a wider range of offences. For example, by linking an offender to dead hares that his lurcher had taken, and proving the origin of peregrine falcon chicks stolen from the wild.

Other game changing techniques included the use of drone technology to support a police operation in arresting someone accused of raptor poisoning. Technology available to the public has also proved key, giving officers the chance to secure evidence of hare and deer poaching that had been posted on apps such as Snapchat and TikTok, or to interrogate mobile phones to gather evidence of Hunting Act offences. It feels to a certain extent that the playing field has been levelled up giving officers a whole suite of tools in their bag that can be used to get results.

The other striking aspect is the effect that the new offences and the increased penalties that were introduced by the Police, Sentencing, Crime & Courts Act 2022 are having on tackling hare coursers. As we discussed in a blog earlier this year, the ability to recoup kennelling costs from those convicted of hare coursing, and the option to disqualify offenders from keeping or owning a dog, are having a startling impact on the level of offences recorded.

The forces who have enjoyed the greatest level of success in tackling poaching offences have taken a three pronged approach. This has involved making maximum use of the new offences; implementing a force-wide policy where every hare courser is arrested (unless the custody suite is at capacity) and no longer relying on interviews at the side of the road; and seizing all equipment involved in committing the offences – from the dogs and big ticket items such as vehicles and thermal scopes right through to GPS collars and leads.

Visiting police from the US Department of Homeland Security took us through a joint US/UK investigation into the monkey torture ring. Whilst this may not seem immediately relevant to rural Britain, it illustrated how existing UK law can be inadequate to fight animal offences in the 21st century. UK officers had to fall back on the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, a law that was most famously used to prosecute Penguin books for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover!

If we were to write an end of year report for the officers tasked with tackling some of the most distasteful criminality in rural areas it would probably read “good progress continues to be made and there have been some notable successes”. Yet despite all this progress, it is clear that in other areas of wildlife crime, the legislation has not kept pace with modern developments and there will always be work needed to stay one step ahead of criminals.