Police Wildlife Liaison Officers
(WLOs)
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James
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Police Wildlife Liaison Officers are officers who have a professional interest in
the prevention and detection of wildlife crime.
Generally, they work in close association with other organisations
such as the RSPCA, RSPB, WWF, English Nature, Environment Agency, Local
Wildlife Trusts and many Badger
Groups, in the investigation and prosecution of offenders.
In the early days of WLOs, officers tended to concentrate solely on
wildlife crime, but more experience has shown that this is often too
short-term a view.
One WLO has publicly stated that, in his region, every single suspect for badger
baiting, also has a criminal record for violent crime, or other serious
offences. Accordingly, WLOs are increasingly finding that keeping tags
on suspected badger baiters; gives other highly beneficial results, such
as reductions in crimes of violence (including domestic violence),
drugs, burglary, theft and money laundering.
They are also increasingly aware of and using modern high-tech
evidence gathering techniques like DNA analysis. Now, for example, it is
possible to prove that a single badger-hair in a suspects vehicle or on
their clothing came from a particular individual badger. In terms of the
scientific rigour of this, this is as damning as a fingerprint.
An Adobe Acrobat PDF file which lists most of the UKs WLOS is
available to download below:
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