Recorded Crime

Recorded crime statistics are a Scottish Government statistical output derived from Police Scotland's recorded crime database. A number of factors will affect the number of crimes recorded, including the number of crimes committed, whether crimes committed were observed and reported and also the impact of operations by Police Scotland and other organisations to target specific types of crime.

There was a 23% decrease in wildlife crime offences in 2022-23 compared with 2021-22.
Figure 1: Breakdown of wildlife crime offences from Police Scotland Recorded Crime statistics, 2018-19 to 2022-23.

Overall recorded wildlife crime offences decreased by 23% from 286 in 2021-22 to 220 in 2022-23, with noticeable decreases in ‘other wildlife offences’ (from 73 to 22 offences), cruelty to wild animals (from 36 to 24 offences) and offences against deer (from 26 to 16 offences). The decrease in ‘Other wildlife offences’ can largely be attributed to an especially high number of ‘Other wildlife offences’ in 2020-21, associated with Operation Tantallon – a police operation relating to the theft and subsequent illegal sale of wild peregrine falcons for the falconry trade. Over half of all recorded wildlife crimes in 2022-23 were categorised as either offences involving birds (31%) or fish poaching (25%).

The data in Figure 1 is provided by Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services (derived from Police Scotland data) and aligns with official statistics on crime across all types. However, this data includes some broad categories (e.g. ‘Other wildlife offences’; and ‘Cruelty to wild animals’) which provide little detail on the type of crime, or the species involved. For this reason, the Wildlife Crime Priority Areas section later in this report provides information on recorded crimes categorised by priority area (badgers; bats; trade in endangered species; freshwater pearl mussels; poaching & coursing; and raptor persecution). There can be slight differences in the data used in the Recorded Crime and Wildlife Crime Priority Areas sections of this report, for example due to differences in when the data has been extracted from the police database, but the underlying datasets are broadly similar (see also Data Sources and Methodology supporting document).

The Highlands and Islands recorded the highest number of offences in 2022-23, with 35 offences.
Figure 2: Number of wildlife crime offences by Police Scotland division, 2022-23.

The highest number of wildlife offences in 2022-23 was recorded in the Highland and Islands police division (35), followed by the Lothians and Scottish Borders (32) and the North East (31). These three divisions also recorded the highest number of wildlife offences in 2021-22. The largest change compared to 2021-22 was for the Lothians and Scottish Borders (from 70 to 32 offences), caused by a reduction in ‘Other wildlife offences’ (from 41 to 1).

Further detail: of the breakdown of recorded wildlife crimes by year, offence type and Police Scotland division is provided in Tables 1 and 2 of the Tables supporting document.