There’s an interesting article published today by the BBC, looking at the behind-the-scenes work of the poisons forensics team in Scotland.
The government’s Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) team is the one that detects poisons in the carcasses of raptors (and other species) and identifies the type of poison which has killed the bird.
This is a highly-specialised field and the SASA team’s work is well-respected by both sides of the poisoning issue – conservationists and the game-shooting industry alike. Their work forms the basis for the government’s annual ‘poisoning maps of shame’, which depict confirmed poisoning incidents (but still inexplicably exclude the locations of confirmed poisoned baits).
The BBC article can be read here.
The last sentence is interesting: “But visitors can, at least, be assured that the team of scientists here are doing all they can to help the police secure convictions in cases of raptor persecution“. Unfortunately, despite the expert toxicology results provided by SASA, very few convictions are secured against those who poison our birds. Even when SASA has managed to identify the poison, and the same poison is found in the possession of a suspect, the resulting prosecution is usually (with a handful of exceptions) for the lesser offence of ‘possession’ [of a banned poison], as opposed to the offence of actually poisoning a protected species.
The BBC article is illustrated with an image of a dead golden eagle on the post-mortem table. To date, there has not been a single conviction for the illegal poisoning (nor shooting or trapping) of an eagle in Scotland. Our current figures show 31 eagles, 7 years, 0 prosecutions (see here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
This item was also featured on BBC1 TV Scottish news tonight.
An interesting piece that begs the following question; Was this eagle illegally killed and already known about, and therefore included in the 31, or is this yet another one to be added to the ever-increasing total?
Good to see their excellent work highlighted….I’m the biggest critic of our supposed justice system when it comes to wildlife crime investigation but having worked with SASA and their predecessors for many years I can say they were always professional, dedicated and helpful. Im sure the problems with publishing locations are not down to them but that sort of interference comes higher up the chain – and is well worth continual scrutiny by this Blog….Having seen poisonings being ignored in other countries due to a lack of efficient forensics I applaud anything which keeps these folk in the public eye..and continually funded..a good use of taxpayers money.
Marco have you ever been involved with TV filming? Most of these things are normally posed, the eagle will be one of the past victims defrosted for the cameras because it looks more impressive than a buzzard or kite. Betcha the bloke ‘in charge’ never normally wears a white coat or handles the dead animals either! But fair play to them, they do the analysis hand over the results and aren’t responsible for failures to prosecute….
No, I don’t have any experience in TV filming. I also don’t know how long institutes such as SASA will hold on to carcases, but I suppose this is all dependent on the length of police investigations and the miniscule number of subsequent court cases.
The reason I asked was that the eagle did appear to be in far more decomposed state than the last known illegally killed eagle, so I was wondering if this was a new arrival that the public do not know of. On the other hand, it could be a retained carcass because of an on-going investigation, but I thought it worthwhile asking the question.
It won’t be the first time that Police Scotland has deliberately withheld information for a number of months.