DI Mark Harrison manages and supervises five Investigation Support Officers (ISOs) and two Detective Constables (DCs) within the nineteen-strong team that makes up the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU), covering the whole of the UK.
The NWCU’s role is vital in tackling wildlife crime, and they work closely with front line police officers across the UK, often within rural crime teams. Their work is a mix of training, supporting and advising wildlife crime officers on the ground and identifying current and emerging threats to UK wildlife. The unit also comprises an indexer, two intelligence officers, three analysts and two training officers, along with the five ISOs and two DCs in Mark’s team.
Mark has been with the NWCU for over two years now, joining from a role in the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit. He sits on various international wildlife crime groups, coaches mixed martial arts and is a qualified drone pilot.
We caught up with Mark recently to find out more about how he and his colleagues are tackling wildlife crime, and the innovative techniques they are deploying on the front line.
HHA: Tell us a bit about the NWCU and your role, Mark.
The NWCU is a small policing unit of 19 staff that supports front line police officers dealing with wildlife crime, and we cover the whole of the UK. Our role is varied and split across training, supporting, and advising wildlife crime officers on the ground through to identifying current and emerging threats to wildlife.
There are very few full-time Wildlife Crime Officers (WCOs). The vast majority are front line police officers with a personal passion for wildlife who volunteer for the training and do the role on top of their normal day job. Most of these officers work within rural crime teams.
Historically we focused on threats to certain species or from a particular crime type such as raptor persecution or poaching, and these threats were prioritised to help us focus resources and be more efficient and effective. Each of these priorities has a Priority Delivery Group (PDG) which is made up from relevant stakeholders and their job is to develop and implement a 4 P plan for delivering results – Pursue, Prepare, Protect and Prevent.
More recently, we have started to identify organised crime groups (OCGs) who participate in wildlife crime and other key nominals of interest. We develop intelligence, map and score these OCGs, recording them on the National Crime Agency system. It means we are identifying the biggest risks and targeting them whilst raising the profile of wildlife crime at a national level.
My role within all of this is to manage and supervise my team in their daily workload and to focus on the greatest risks. I want my ISOs and DCs to be the elite team in UK wildlife crime. Not only do they have specialist skills and knowledge relating to wildlife crime, but they are also trained in aspects of surveillance, covert tactics, financial crime, intelligence development and drone operation.
In practice this means that we may be helping a police officer with a disturbed badger set one day and the next day we could be identifying an OCG, developing intelligence using various overt and covert tactics and collaborating with partners and the local police to target, disrupt and dismantle that OCG.
HHA: Can you tell us a bit about your working day, Mark?
It can vary a lot. Just like all other police officers I don`t know what is going to come in from day to day and we have to adapt and respond, but my sole focus is wildlife crime. I love driving our operations and projects forward.
I am involved in national and international criminal investigations and projects, and I am regularly traveling in support of those, doing everything from requesting support and assistance and delivering presentations through to operational deployments. We`re a small team and I try to play my part operationally both to keep my hand in but also to help the team and share the load.
HHA: The NWCU hit the headlines recently for breaking an international criminal network of egg thieves. What other NWCU successes gave you most satisfaction in 2024?
The whole team has done some amazing work this year. Personally, the launch of the Hen Harrier Task Force last year, targeting hotspots for suspected crimes involving Hen Harriers, has been both a challenge and given me great satisfaction.
I can`t talk about some of our work because of the sensitive nature of ongoing investigations, but one of the highlights of the year that for me was the successful outcomes from Operation Tantallon, a multi-agency investigation into the theft and laundering of wild peregrines in Scotland and Northern England that led to numerous prosecutions and proceeds of crime results.
I am also excited about the development of wildlife crime detection dogs, working in partnership with Conservation K9 Consultancy. A recent study showed that dogs can locate bird carcasses over 90% more effectively than a human, a huge advantage on remote locations.
And I am encouraged by how some of our relationships with partners here in the UK and internationally have developed with regard to more covert policing tactics.
HHA: What prompted the launch of the Hen Harrier Task Force initiative last year, and what progress has been made so far?
When I joined the NWCU I was tasked with looking at Raptor Persecution, or Bird of Prey Crime as it is now called. Initially I took the time to review what the general issues were and then to assess what could be done about it.
I have several areas that I would like to tackle, but I saw an opportunity with satellite tagged birds and Hen Harriers in particular.
Hen Harriers are beautiful, rare, iconic birds of prey, and a lot of them are satellite tagged. Plus, there are a vast number of academic papers, reports, books, articles, and media which clearly identify what the issues are and why the crime is taking place. This is a human-wildlife conflict issue. It`s not the mainstream conflict that most people think of, such as elephants destroying crops, but it is 100% human-wildlife conflict. I believed from the outset that we could resolve this, and I still do.
Looking at the data from satellite tagged Hen Harriers through a law enforcement lens and cross-referencing this with police data, land registry data and other information, it was clear that we needed to do a number of things:
- Map suspected crimes involving Hen Harriers using police data and identify hotspots with the greatest threat, harm, and risks.
- Take positive proactive steps to address those risks, prevent crime and protect the birds.
- Increase the consequences for those committing crimes involving Hen Harriers.
- Quickly find out when a suspected crime had occurred.
- Improve the police response and make sure that the police had primacy in the investigation.
- Increase our chances of gathering best evidence.
- Ensure the best evidence is available to the court if required.
- Work with all stakeholders to find, agree on, and implement long term solutions so that they can coexist with Hen Harriers.
"Stop the crime before it happens as opposed to chasing it afterwards"
At the time I was inspired by an ex-colleague I knew from Merseyside Police. Now retired, DCS Mark Baker had been the SIO into the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, and as part of that investigation he had used a model called Clear, Hold, Build. This model is essentially a three-step plan which sees the criminals cleared from an area through relentless pursuit activity. The area is then held and stabilised through high visibility, assistance from partners and the community. Then with the support from key stakeholders, communities can build in long term solutions that are crime-free and they can police themselves.
I believed that this model could be followed for the HTF. Stop the crime, then hold whilst we build together for the future. Wildlife crime is unique, and for bird of prey crime in particular, it is hard to gather enough evidence to reach a successful prosecution. So, the best way to stop the crime was to focus on the greatest threats and be proactive there. Stop the crime before it happens as opposed to chasing it afterwards.
HHA: So what did you do?
We created new practices, standard operating procedures and standardised reporting methods to ensure consistent reporting and response. We established a mutual aid agreement with the relevant police forces so that there was always a police officer available to attend a suspected crime.
To help the local police the NWCU is now on call to do the initial analysis of any tag data and relevant intelligence for any missing Hen Harriers. This means we can quickly identify any suspicious circumstances and launch the appropriate response. We are very critical when analysing the data. We know that we must maintain credibility and unfortunately a lot of young Hen Harriers do die of natural causes in their first year. We take everything into consideration so that we have confidence our assessment.
We developed new techniques for analysing tag data and mapped the hotspots – repeat locations for suspected crimes involving Hen Harriers. Then we identified who owned that land and, if there were no current live investigations, my team, the local police, and I went to visit them. I wanted the landowner to know what was occurring on their land and what the risks are. We presented them with the information and data we had and shared our working hypotheses.
Either someone who has legal access to this land who is committing these crimes or it is a trespasser coming onto their land (probably with a firearm because that is how most Hen Harriers are killed) and committing crimes (this second one poses the greatest risk to the landowner, their staff and the public).
"We have developed new drones with tag tracking capability and wildlife detection dogs"
And we asked them to work with us to find out what was going on, to end the criminal activity and to protect the people, wildlife and businesses involved.
We asked for permission to do high-visibility patrols, to install cameras and use other crime prevention techniques that are quite common for hotspot areas (this would also help with any other crime they were experiencing or reporting). We are maintaining contact with these landowners and land users to provide updates, offer support and to act if required.
We changed the focus from purely wildlife crime to include crimes like theft and criminal damage to the tags, and potentially other offences like fraud and encouraging or assisting an offence. This increases the consequences for a criminal, and it could also provide the police with access to different policing tactics. A lot of these other offences are also notifiable, something that most wildlife crimes are not. The notifiable crimes push up crime figures and have a wider social, economic, and political impact.
We are using publicity to raise awareness. We took North Yorkshire’s brilliant Operation Owl and made it a national project which we now lead on. And we have developed new drones with tag tracking capability and wildlife detection dogs to help us recover best evidence.
We are applying for funding from DEFRA to use the IUCN Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Guidelines as a tool for building for the future. This funding will bring in independent facilitators to collaborate with key stakeholders to find and implement long term solutions. We hope that this funding will be for three years.
HHA: How is this new approach being received by landowners?
As you would expect, there was some debate from landowners regarding our data and the fact that we were calling them a hotspot for Hen Harrier crime. But I stand by our data. We did listen to them and their concerns about the implications of being identified as a hotspot especially in the media and they flagged up some safeguarding concerns and other impacts that they could encounter.
So, I decided that we would not make their exact locations or identity known to the public. This would hopefully prevent any of the consequences and safeguarding issues that they had highlighted, and it would be an opportunity for us to start building trust and respect.
We started our visits early in 2024 and since then there has not been a single suspected incident involving a tagged Hen Harrier in any of the hotspot locations.
I should say that we are supported in all this work by the relevant police forces, Natural England (NE), the Wildlife Trusts, British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC), Countryside Land and Business Association (CLA), National Gamekeepers Organisation (NGO), the National Parks and the RSPB. We would not have been able to do this work without them.
"We just need the right people coming together in the right way to do the right thing"
HHA: What are the challenges you are facing now?
My team and I have been on a journey with the Hen Harrier Task Force, and I believe that it should keep evolving and adapting to make it better. I always listen to good ideas and feedback, and it is not a case of forcing this on people and make them adhere to it. I know that no one organisation or community can fix this alone. We must work together to resolve it. But we must do that with a foundation of honesty and openness. If the crime continues then those foundations are flawed and there will be no trust or respect.
I have said it before, there is a lot of noise around this issue. Organisations and people pushing their own agenda, twisting what is being said or done and shouting about who they`re supporting and what they are doing. Unfortunately, there is misinformation being shared which is making the matter worse by confusing and scaring people.
At times you can`t move forward to resolve an issue because people are arguing about the dictionary definition of a word that someone has said. You can come out of a presentation or meeting worried that you have upset someone by accidentally saying the wrong word. On both sides of this debate there must be better coexistence.
We don`t need to convince everyone to talk or act the same way. We just need the right people coming together in the right way to do the right thing. There are a lot of good people caught up in the middle of all this and along with the birds it is these people and their livelihoods that are being affected the most.
HHA: You mentioned some innovative ideas to improve evidence recovery and investigation. Which look most promising?
The new tag tracking drone that James Leonard from my team has developed with the RSPB is very exciting, as it has removed the issues caused by the terrain when trying to track and locate a device at ground level.
And we are improving our ballistic evidence capabilities too. I`ll soon be sharing some work that has been done on a recovered damaged satellite tag that can evidence that it was shot with a shotgun. We worked on this in collaboration with ZSL, Nottingham University, ballistics experts in Police Scotland and the local police. We are really trying to push the boundaries with these approaches and it’s amazing to see the results these experts can deliver.
And of course, I’m excited about the potential for wildlife crime detection dogs.
"We have tested the dogs on several deployments now and they have been really useful, even locating carcasses buried several inches underground"
HHA: Tell us more about the work with detection dogs.
This is one of the most exciting areas of development for wildlife crime in the UK. Initially I tried to create a network made up of police dogs, but that was not possible due to conflicting priorities and resources so I explored the private sector. The private sector already supports the police with things like expo dogs and there is a thriving sector for environmental detection dogs. I wanted to see if we could use them.
I met several organisations before concluding that the best potential partner was Conservation K9 Consultancy (CK9C), a well-established specialist in the field of detection dog training.
Louise Wilson at CK9C already had several detection dogs that could find things like bird and bat carcasses, great crested newts and water voles, so it wasn`t a huge leap to take those skills over to crime detection. What Louise has now done is train dogs to find satellite tags and other devices, and she is exploring using the dogs specifically to find Hen Harriers and anything that they come into contact with, including the perpetrator. We hope this will have a major impact on our searches and help with all Hen Harriers, tagged or not.
We have tested the dogs on several deployments now and they have been really useful, even locating carcasses buried several inches underground. Combined with metal detectors, we can locate the tags too. But the NWCU has to fund the dog deployments so we are limited in what we can do.
HHA: Finally, what will be the priorities for 2025? Are you optimistic about reducing wildlife crime in the UK?
The NWCU has just come to the end of its last strategic threat assessment, and we will be launching our new priorities early in 2025. I can’t say too much about that at the minute, but I am excited about it and the directions we could go in.
Birds of prey and illegal wildlife trade will still be a priority for us, and these are areas where I want to start using more varied and covert tactics. I want us to become even more proactive and prevent the loss of any more precious UK wildlife.
We will continue with the Hen Harrier Task Force and maintain contact with the hotspots. We will identify new ones as they emerge and take the same approach with them.
I am hopeful that we will get the DEFRA funding to start the Build phase, creating crime-free communities that are self-policing.
And we will keep attempting to deter criminals and prevent crimes from occurring and continue to improve evidence recovery.
We have an innovation and technology project where we are engaging with academia, industry, law enforcement and other partners to push the boundaries of evidence and intelligence gathering.
There is a lot to do for UK wildlife, but reducing wildlife crime would have a major impact. It is still a challenge.
Yes, I am optimistic. I love my job and look forward to achieving every goal.