Critter CSI—U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab solving crimes against wildlife—Ashland, OR

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Websleuths is full of animal lovers, so these stories about the only wildlife forensics lab in the world, founded in 1988, are definitely smile-worthy.

This unusual federal facility, the world's only full-service forensics lab for wildlife crimes, analyzes thousands of creatures that each year cross its threshold in the form of carcasses, parts and products. Its mission is to use science to find how the animal died - and often, to figure out what kind of animal it was.

"In police work, you know what your victim is -- it's sapiens," said Ken Goddard, a former crime scene investigator who now directs this place, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory. "Our first job is to figure out what a victim is."

When the victim is an animal, Ashland crime lab is on the case

 

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“Much like any other police crime laboratory, we do two basic things: We identify evidence,” Goddard says. “In a triangular fashion, we attempt to link suspect, victim and crime scene together with that evidence.”

It’s something that wildlife enforcement officers tried to get the FBI to do for them after the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. But Goddard says the FBI didn’t have the techniques to identify animals, and that the bureau made it known cases involving human victims would take priority.

This lab is like CSI ... for endangered wildlife

Ken Goddard is also an author of crime novels.
Home

 

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Video at link

Great Big Story : How a Forensics Lab in Oregon Solves Crimes Against Animals

 

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Who nailed a protected spotted owl to a park sign? Are ivory tusks from modern elephants or Ice Age mammoths? Are fish eggs sold as caviar actually from a sturgeon, or are they really from a paddlefish? Did a dried penis sold as an aphrodisiac come from a tiger or from some other animal? These are just some of the mysteries that end up at a very unusual laboratory in Ashland.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab

 

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Can chemistry help save bears from an inhumane, unthinkable lifetime of torture, or from gruesome and wasteful poaching? Let’s hope so, but for now, bears are the victims of lucrative trade in the bile that their gall bladders produce. Bear bile has been widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for generations. It is harvested at farms in Asia where living bears are kept caged for years, while each day their gall bladders are tapped by a catheter to extract the bile.

Enter the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. It’s the only lab of its kind in the United States, and it has been called the “Scotland Yard for Crimes against Wildlife.” Forensic scientists from the lab recently brought samples of bear bile (and with it the plight of the unfortunate bears) to JEOL’s attention when they attended an AccuTOF-DART training course in our Peabody headquarters, learning to integrate Direct Analysis in Real Time mass spectrometry into the lab’s already rigorous testing procedures for the number of unidentifiable samples they receive each day.

More at link:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensic Lab

 

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Goddard and his team are in the process of developing forensics-training programs to enable agents around the world to curtail animal trafficking. The training programs will be implemented in a number of countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and possibly Malaysia and Indonesia.

Notes Goddard, “each program will be built from scratch and has to be custom tailored to the specific needs and animal populations of the local geographies.”

More at link:
Ashland forensics lab leads way in halting global wildlife crime

 

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Fascinating discussion of the science used in the investigations.

C&EN profiles the U.S. Fish & Wildlife forensics lab, the nation’s CSI: Wildlife team | May 23, 2016 Issue - Vol. 94 Issue 21 | Chemical & Engineering News