Helping the detectives
Last September, Grampian police became the first force in the UK to appoint a wildlife crime education officer. Their new recruit, Andy Turner, explains how the public can best help in the fight against wildlife crime
104,317. No, those aren’t the latest winning lottery numbers, but they do represent the enormous total land area of Scotland in square km.
That number can present a bit of a problem for wildlife crime officers. Divided equally among the 90 or so wildlife crime officers in Scotland, each officer would have a beat of around 1,159 square km! That’s an awful lot of ground to cover and can obviously make it difficult in terms of detection and law enforcement. Wildlife crime continues to blight
Scotland’s outstanding natural heritage. It can affect rare and iconic species, often involves cruelty to animals, can destroy specially protected habitats, and interferes with lawful countryside management and recreation.
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Like other crime, it’s committed by a very small minority of people who either knowingly flaunt the law or commit an offence through lack of awareness. It can often be linked to other rural crime, and for that reason suspects should never be approached by the public. While the police keep records of
each reported wildlife crime, it’s hard to establish the true extent of it in Scotland. This is due mainly to the vast areas of countryside where crime may go undetected or unreported. Here’s another big number: 5,168,500. That number could be part of the answer for wildlife crime officers because it’s the current size of Scotland’s population (2008 figure). The population is generally
becoming more mobile, and access to the countryside is more readily available now for activities such as mountain biking and hill walking. This wider
access presents a great opportunity for the public to help detect incidents in remote areas, making that 1,159 square km beat a bit more manageable! In the Grampian police area alone, the wildlife crime unit can receive over 50 calls per month, ranging from hare coursing near Elgin, to dolphin disturbance at Aberdeen harbour or salmon poaching on Deeside. Among the genuine reports, there are others that can end up being about wildlife killed on the roads, natural deaths or even miniature penguins at Aberdeen beach – which turned out to be young guillemots! However, we don’t want to discourage the public from picking up the phone to call the police – in fact, quite the opposite. But it helps to have all the information at hand to help the police deal with the call in the best possible way.
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Scotland is one of the best places in Europe to watch whales, dolphins and porpoises, but boat users need to bear in mind that it's an offence to recklessly disturb or harass them.
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Hares don't dig burrows underground, unlike their cousin the rabbit. Instead, they create a nest or 'form' in long grass. The lack of a safe bolt hole makes them a target for illegal hare coursing.
8 The Nature of Scotland
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