Survey of Police Wildlife Crime Officers

 Key results - Summary of the main points of the report

Download the Naturewatch Wildlife Crime Report here [471 kB]
Press Release

The Police wildlife officers who responded show a high degree of passion for and commitment to their work, but this survey has revealed that in many forces they are woefully under-resourced. The levels of staffing were a major concern. While some forces have invested significant resources in this area (most notably those in the box on the right), some have officers working on wildlife crime only on a voluntary basis. This has caused considerable frustration. Overall, 82% felt that there were ‘too few’ or ‘far too few’ involved in combating wildlife crime.

Respondents strongly agreed about the connection between wildlife crime and other forms of serious crime. Indeed, 84% agreed and there was no fundamental disagreement: the only dissent was that the connection involved crimes such as poaching and badger baiting but not habitat destruction.

The illegal destruction of habitat was ranked as the most significant crime across the country (which represents a major change from the DEFRA report on wildlife crime in 2001). Furthermore, 87% agreed with the statement that “The fines given to developers convicted of habitat destruction are too small to act as a deterrent”. In the discussion section, we present examples showing the vast gulf between the high level of costs for compliance and the low level of fines for disobedience, both of which make a mockery of the law as it currently stands. Naturewatch recommends that a Parliamentary Select Committee (such as the Environmental Audit Committee) should investigate this issue. [More: "It pays to disobey"]

There was a strong feeling that insufficient priority is being given to wildlife crime. 87% of respondents agreed that “The Home Office needs to take a stronger lead in tackling issues related to wildlife crime”.

A similar proportion also agreed that “Severe wildlife crime, such as badger cruelty or destruction of bat roosts, should be made notifiable to the Home Office so that police forces can give sufficient priority to tackling it”.

At present the National Standards for Incident Recording offer an improved mechanism for understanding what crime is taking place but do not affect police priorities, which are governed more by their performance on notifiable offences. Only if the NSIR system were to be adapted so that it could completely replace the system of making certain offences notifiable could it address the problem of insufficient priority being given to wildlife crime.

Making severe wildlife crime notifiable

Severe wildlife crime, such as badger cruelty and destruction of bat roosts:

(a) should be regarded as seriously as offences like theft, drug possession and indecent exposure;

(b) should be made notifiable to the Home Office so that police forces can give sufficient priority to tackling it.

Each year there are over one million notifiable offences; these include those like theft, drug possession and indecent exposure. There was broad agreement that severe wildlife crime should be treated as seriously (81% agreeing) although a few were reluctant to compare across categories in this way. One officer was horrified at the question because of the implication that a crime like badger baiting, which involves systematic cruelty, could be reduced to a comparison with theft.

There was even stronger support for the statement that wildlife crime should be made notifiable: 89% either agreed or strongly agreed; 40% of the total strongly agreed.

It should be noted that the issue of whether a crime should be made notifiable to the Home Office is significantly different to whether it should be recorded under NSIR (the National Standards for Incident Recording). This new system allows for a uniform and objective set of data to be obtained about what crime is taking place, and where. This is a comprehensive database and because it includes information about incidents irrespective of whether the crime is notifiable, it will include wildlife crime. However, offences which are made notifiable to the Home Office are the ones which are used to produce performance indicators for police forces. This – as we have heard from officers repeatedly – leads to resources being allocated primarily to covering notifiable offences, and not to those like wildlife crime which are outside this category. This is therefore at the root of the problem of insufficient resources, highlighted earlier in the section headed “Staffing Levels”. Thus, the NSIR system can only solve this problem if it were to be modified so that it could completely replace it.

Spreadsheet of results

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