Wildlife Crime in Scotland 2023

Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – Special Investigation Unit

The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Scottish SPCA) and their Special Investigations Unit (SIU) can lead or support certain wildlife crime investigations in Scotland. Powers are granted to suitably trained staff by Scottish Ministers under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006.

Scottish SPCA inspectors deal with routine domestic and wildlife welfare cases, however the SIU has a slightly different remit dealing with cases which are linked to illegal activities often involving serious and organised crime groups. The SIU deals with both wildlife incidents and incidents involving domestic animals such as dogfighting and the puppy trade. Some of the SIU’s work involves incidents where there is both a domestic animal and wildlife element such as badger baiting. The SIU consists of five inspectors, one intelligence manager and an administrative assistant.

The SIU receives information (and complaints) from two main sources – the Scottish SPCA animal helpline will alert the SIU to any information that may be of interest, and some information is fed directly to the unit from intelligence sources and other agencies through intelligence logs and reports.

The Scottish SPCA’s animal helpline received over 257,000 calls between April 2022 and March 2023, - a decrease of 2% in calls from the public compared to the previous fiscal year, and the first reduction seen since sharp increases during 2020-21 and 2021-22, years impacted by COVID restrictions.

The SIU estimate that between April 2022 and March 2023 they received:

• 282 pieces of information for consideration from the Scottish SPCA helpline
• 307 pieces of information from other sources.

Upon investigation, some pieces of information were identified as not criminal, not involving wildlife, or duplicates relating to the same incident.

The SIU investigated 73 wildlife crime incidents in 2022-23, 45 of which related to wildlife crime priority areas (35 badger persecution; 9 raptor persecution and 1 poaching and coursing). Of the other 28 incidents, the majority (25) related to trapping and snaring. In addition, the SIU assisted in 28 investigations led by Police Scotland, as shown in Figure 12 below.

The Scottish SPCA SIU was involved in 101 wildlife crime investigations in 2022-23
Figure 12: Number of wildlife crime investigations according to Scotish SPCA SIU involvement, 2018-19 to 2022-23.

There were 5 cases reported to COPFS in 2022-23, representing 7% of all cases investigated solely by the SIU (5 out of 73 cases).

Further detail: on wildlife crime investigations dealt with by SIU in recent years is provided in Tables 29 and 30 of the Tables supporting document.