Issues in Policing Wildlife Crime

Abstract

This chapter discusses current issues in wildlife law enforcement and the policing of wildlife crime. It includes discussion of different policing models, the nature and practices of green NGOs and their role in the investigation of wildlife crime and the development of wildlife law. In doing so, it considers contrasting notions of activism in the policing of wildlife crime from the ‘hard’ activist approach of prosecuting NGOs like Earthjustice and the Sierra Club with the ‘soft’ or campaigning activism of organisations like the Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) and the advisory role of other NGOs like the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) which while maintaining a full-time investigations section primarily works to support the police service as the main investigator of wildlife crime in the UK and the statutory prosecutor, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales.