EWJ June 2024 web - Journal - Page 93
New Scientific Technique
Helps Catch Wildlife Criminals
DNA tests co-developed by scientists from the University of Leicester and Scotland’s wildlife
forensic lab are helping to catch criminals involved in the illegal sale of protected bird species.
It follows the sentencing of two men on Monday, 12
February after pleading guilty to a series of wildlife
crime related offences involving peregrine falcons in
the south of Scotland.
“In comparison STR profiling is much faster, more
sensitive and can easily be used to compare large
databases of wild and captive birds allowing their true
relationships to be identified.”
Timothy Hall, 48 was given 220 hours, and Lewis
Hall, 23, 150 hours community payback orders at
Selkirk Sheriff Court. Both have been banned from
keeping birds of prey for 5 years.
The investigation spanned two and a half years and
through extensive enquiries Police Scotland was able
to trace the sale of a number of peregrines to UK establishments trading in the birds and confirmed some
had been exported overseas.
They admitted charges relating to 22 peregrine
falcons, including being involved in the illegal sale of
the protected species at Selkirk Sheriff Court on
Monday, 11 December, last year.
Alongside SASA, a range of other partners assisted the
investigation, providing invaluable contributions and
expertise including the Scottish Society for Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), UK National Wildlife
Crime Unit (NWCU), Scottish Raptor Study Group,
and Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service
(COPFS).
The ground breaking investigation led by Police
Scotland was launched in 2021 and during a search of
a property in Lamberton, Berwick-upon-Tweed,
seven chicks were discovered as well as a number of
other birds of prey.
Police Scotland also worked closely with the Animal
and Plant Health Agency (APHA) to improve processes and procedures relating to illegal wildlife trade
to prevent people engaging in this type of criminality.
Detective Chief Inspector Bryan Burns said: “The sale
of peregrine falcons has become an extremely lucrative business which Timothy and Lewis Hall exploited
for their own financial gain.
While it is legal to sell captive-bred peregrines,
possessing or selling wild birds is not.
To confirm the chicks were wild a new innovative
DNA method was introduced which definitively established that they had not been bred in captivity, even
linking some of them to wild adult peregrine falcons
known to nest in the south of Scotland.
The technique uses the equivalent of modern Short
Tandem Repeat (STR) profiling, which is used
throughout the UK national DNA database.
“If their illegal activities had continued unchallenged,
this would have had a massive impact on the population of young birds, and had the potential to wipe out
the entire population of peregrine falcons in the south
of Scotland.
A collection of STRs can provide irrefutable evidence
statistically of a bird’s identity because the likelihood of
two unrelated birds having the same number of repeated sequences in these regions becomes increasingly small as more regions are analysed.
“This case has been a monumental effort by Detective
Constable Steven Irvine who led the investigation and
was determined to bring the perpetrators to justice,
going into meticulous detail to unravel the true extent
of the criminality involved.
Drs Jon Wetton and Celia May, from the University’s
Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, helped
develop the technique and assisted the Science and
Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) forensic team
with validation and testing of the new system so that
cases such as this could be addressed.
“Today’s outcome would not have been possible
without the incredible support from the partner
agencies involved who all played a vital part in the
investigation.”
Assistant Chief Constable for Major Crime, Public
Protection and Local Crime, ACC Bex Smith, added:
“This case not only has huge ramifications locally but
also across the UK and worldwide and shows that Police Scotland is at the forefront of tackling illegal
wildlife trade, working with our partners to use new
and ground breaking forensic techniques.
Dr Wetton said: “The RSPB believes that convictions
in similar cases in the 1990s using our previous generation of DNA fingerprinting tests significantly deterred others from stealing wild birds, but that
technology was too cumbersome and expensive to
compare large numbers of individuals and so fell out
of use.
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
“Wildlife crime remains a key priority for the Service
and we will continue to use all resources at our
disposal to put a stop to this illegal activity.”
91
JUNE 2024