A crime lab for animals - National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, Ashaland, Oregon - Special Issue: Environmental Restoration

Over one hundred nations have now signed the Convention on Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). As one of the signators, the United States pledges that no material made from or including parts of endangered animal species will be allowed to cross our borders or be sold within them.

The first National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory for enforcement of the Endagered Species Act and the CITES Treaty opened its doors in June 1989, in the quiet town of Ashland, Oregon. It is first crime lab for animal species in the world.

Forensic scientist Ken Goddard, the lab's director, has been working since 1979 to make the lab a reality. Goddard was hired for the job because of his previous experience as director of a police crime lab. For the Fish and Wildlife Service to be secure about winning its battles in court, it needed a forencies lab to provide full evindentiary data to back up arrests and seizures.

Goddard writes mystery novels on the side. His sense of humor is a good thing, because the challenges of this work are enormous. As he points out, species of plants and animals are classified by certain groups of characteristics. For example, the differences between an endangered red wolf (now found only in remnant populations in Texas and Louisiana) and a legal coyote are usually based on the coyote's smaller size and lesser weight, its narrower snout and face, its less doglike appearance, smaller, less rounded ears, smaller feet, and black-tipped tail that droops low behind the hind legs. But, as Goddard says, "What if you only have a paw? Some teeth? Or worse, just spattered blood on a coat or shirt? What if the animal is indeed an endagered red wolf? Is it full-blooded or hybrid? It's legal to kill and sell hybrid wolves,"

So the first challenges facing the forencies lab is developing a database of a whole new group of "species-defining characteristics," over and above what taxonomists use, that can be proven t be invariably indicative of a certain species of animal. Goddard describes the work that lab employee Dr. Ed Espinosa is doing on ivory, which is often seized as a carvd art piece, resembling its original form only in color, texture and hardness. "The first and easiest job is to prove that the material is real ivory, and not a synthetic look-alike. Beyond that, ivory from a (legal) warthog has to be differentiated from ivory from a hippo, walrus, sperm whale, or elephant. All of this scientists can already do, through visual, microscopic, and instrumental analysis techniques.

"Now comes the real challege - proving that the ivory is from, say, an African or Asian elephant, which is illegal to kill, and not from a long-extinct mammonth or mastodon, which can be sold and worked without any penalty." With the help of an infrared spectrometer, Espinoza is able to make these identifications. The spectrometer is an non-destructive analytical tool (which allows the carving eventually to be donated to a museum); Espinoza is also working on identifying chemical structures in the crosshatching of ivory, a kind of species fingerprint.

Goddard showed me around the serology and morphology sections of the lab, where the challenges are just as high. In serology - identification through analysis of blood and tissue - a study of immunology may show that blood came from a member of the cat family. Protein electrophoresis could tell that the blood came from a snow leopard. But the lab also hopes to start using DNA analysis, which would actually prove that a blood sample came from a particular animal found in the back of a hunter's truck, mounted on a wall, or as dressed meat in freezer.

The forensics lab is also amassing information from the only places that regularly deal with wild species of animals - zoos. In order to say that a particular fur or blood type comes from an endangered snow leopard, a sample from a snow leopard is needed for comparison. "I'm not about to go grabbing a handful of fur through the cage bars, or trying to poke the creature with a needle," Goddard jokes. Zoos regularly anesthetize live animals for medical reasons, and can then take documented blood, fur, or other samples which are preserved and catalogued for future use. Oliver Ryder of the San Diego Zoo has been saving first-sized pieces of numerous animals in a cryogenic collection he hopes one day to use to recreate vanished species, and since he only needs thump-size pieces, there has been discussion of donating some of his stock to the lab. Goddard is contracting many more zoos for help in obtaining data samples.

In other departments, carefully computerized inventory techniques are being developed to prove the chain of custody after a piece of evidence arrives at the lab. Human involvement with killings is proved by test-firing confiscated guns and analyzing human blood and fingerprints (after all, the animal may have died naturally, and have been found dead by the human in question). A scanning electron microscope analyzes gunshot residue, or pollen which might identify what part of the world a sample comes from. A mass spectrograph can discern one part sea turtle oil in 1,000 parts lanolin. In the warehouse, 50,000 to 60,000 items may be stored at any one time. "That number is kind of a wild guess," says Goddard. "New York or New Jersey could double our inventory in one afternoon simply by seizing a cargo ship."

Disposition of the evidence after cases are resolved will eventually become a problem. Goddard would like to hear from public or private agencies that could use seized evidence for educational displays about the dangers and problems of species destruction, such as the one at Denver's Stapleton Airport.

The new lab is currently budgeted for eighteen scientists in a total staff of thirty. That's adequate for the initial standard-setting work, but will soon be grossly inadequate when scientists begin to start spending their time flying all over the world to testify at trials. Goddard estimates that the lab may eventually need a staff of 100 to keep up with the anticipated workload. "We're pioneers here. There are only eight states in the U.S. with their own wildlife crime labs, typically with only one or two people on staff. It each state could establish a crime lab adequate to cover its own cases, using the techniques we're developing, that would help a lot. If they could do just the one-hunter/one-animal cases, and leave us the complex cases. that would be a good first step. We'll he happy to share information."

Judith Goldsmith is a writer and graphic artist who does volunteer work with the Sierra Club on creek restoration projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her last article in these pages was "H.O.M.E." in the Summer 1982 issue if CoEvolution Quarterly.

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