Wildlife crime in Scotland: annual report 2021

6. Police Scotland

The Wildlife Crime Investigators Course returned to full capacity seeing 18 officers from all divisions undertake a week long course within the Police College. The course is designed to equip officers with the requisite skills and knowledge to effectively conduct these types of enquiries, which are often complex and multi-faceted. It is aimed to enhance officers professional knowledge of key issues involved in wildlife crime incidents and to develop appropriate investigative strategies. The course includes inputs from partner agencies as well as inputs from a variety of Police Departments and is held twice a year fully equipping 36 officers to deal with all manner of wildlife crime.

In addition to the Wildlife Crime Investigators Course, the Wildlife Crime Guide for First Responders was launched this month on the Police Scotland online training platform, which is primarily aimed at first responders to Wildlife Crimes to facilitate prompt and effective responses. It is relevant to all police officers in providing a basic knowledge and general understanding of the different facets of Wildlife Crime that may be reported to Police Scotland.

For officers wishing to become a recognised Wildlife Crime Officer (WCO), the Wildlife Crime Introduction Course was designed and is being delivered over two days and is aimed at new WCO's or existing WCO's who have a knowledge gap providing a sound basic understanding of wildlife crime, how to deal with it and protocol.

A training diary has been implemented to provide Continual Personal Development opportunities to WCO's, with sessions each month, delivered live or via Microsoft Teams focusing on wildlife priority crime and involving all relevant partner agencies, such as RSPB, SASA and the Scottish Badgers Association.

Further to the above, Scottish inshore waters are internationally important for many cetaceans with at least 23 species of whales, dolphins and porpoise occurring in this area. It was recognised that an increasing number of disturbances were being reported, primarily caused by Marine wildlife spotting day trip boats, photographers and holiday makers. Police Scotland has carried out operations utilising our Marine Unit and Air Support Unit to combat this growing problem under the UK wide Operation Seabird, which originated from Humberside Police in 2020, and now regularly engages in Operation Seabird meetings to discuss ongoing trends and issues with all UK forces.