C.S.I. - Wildlife

By Karen Rudolph, Wildlife Lab Biologist, IDFG - Southwest Region Imagine you're a Conservation Officer investigating a suspected poaching incident. Animals have been illegally killed, but you have no idea what species or quantity have been taken. You have a suspect in mind, but no hard evidence to link the wrapped meat in the suspect's freezer and the trophy mount on the suspect's wall to the evidence left at the kill site. Case closed, right? Maybe in the old days, but no more. With the advent of wildlife forensics, more and more otherwise dead end poaching cases are being solved, and valuable wildlife research questions are being answered. You might be asking yourself just what is the field of wildlife forensics all about? The definition that best describes what we do is the use of science and technology to investigate and establish facts in criminal or civil courts of law. The major difference between human and wildlife forensics is that - in our field - the victim is an animal, and indirectly, the public, to whom that animal belongs. Presently, there are only a handful of laboratories in North America that provide wildlife forensic testing, the most prominent being the National Wildlife Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. Since the 1970s, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game - long a strong supporter of the wildlife forensics program - has operated its own wildlife forensics laboratory. At the Fish and Game laboratory, the job begins after a Conservation Officer investigates a crime scene, collects evidence, and delivers the biological evidence to the lab. When Fish and Game's lab opened, and for years afterward, only one test - wildlife species identification - was available. It may not be immediately obvious why species identification is an essential tool for conservation officers, but imagine yourself standing in a room full of all the game and nongame animals that Idaho has to offer. A blood sample collected at a crime scene might have come from any of those species, or even a household pet or domestic animal. The species identification forensic test positively identifies the species of animal from which the sample came. As DNA technology has advanced, so have the lab's wildlife forensic capabilities. In 1997, the lab was able to provide a second important forensic test; gender (sex) identification. And in 2000, we began our first "matching" tests, that is, the ability to identify individual animals. This test can provide critical proof that a meat or blood sample collected from a kill site matches a meat or blood sample collected from a suspect's residence. The individual identification test can be used to determine if the two samples came from the same game animal, or used to determine the exact number of different individual animals from a series of evidence samples. To introduce youngsters to the world of wildlife forensics, Fish and Game's MK Nature Center recently sponsored the first CSI-Wildlife program to students in the 5th through 8th grades. The program provided a hands-on learning experience, allowing participants to take part in a simulated wildlife crime scene investigation with the help of an Idaho Fish and Game Conservation Officer. After collecting important pieces of "evidence" for their case, the budding investigators packed their samples to a simulated forensics lab for processing with the help of a wildlife forensic scientist. The program was great fun for the kids, and gave them a real education regarding the capabilities of forensic science. To learn more about the program, visit the Fish and Game website (http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/education/mknc/.