Environment Minister Richard Benyon announced on Wednesday (23rd January) that Defra would continue to fund the National Wildlife Crime Unit, a relatively new division of the police force which deals with wildlife persecution.

The announcement was made by the Defra minister after wildlife groups issued a plea to safeguard the Unit, which employs just ten people nationally. The government had refused to commit to further funding of the NWCU in the face of a report showing that the value of international trade in illegal wildlife products had risen to $19 million per year, and outlining its harmful effects.

image expired

On Wednesday, the environment minister agreed to renew funding past the March expiry date. The NWCU is joint-funded by Defra and the Home Office, with each department paying just £136,000 per year.

Announcing the funding, Richard Benyon said, "Wildlife crime is a very serious issue with organised gangs using the proceeds from illegally traded items like rhino horn to fuel other illegal activities. It's right that a specialist unit supports the police in bringing these people to trial. The funding for another year will mean the unit can continue to bring criminals to justice and tackle the illegal wildlife trade both at home and abroad."

Since its launch in 2006, the unit has attempted to collate and categorise incidents of wildlife persecution, which until recently were not recorded with this degree of organisation. In September 2012, with the fervour surrounding the government's badger cull policy at its height, the NWCU compiled a full report on badger persecution for the first time. NWCU officers said their report "not only exposed the cruelty badgers suffer, but also the need for the proper recording of wildlife crime in general."

However, wildlife groups warned that the majority of wildlife crime goes unreported. Earlier this month, researchers from a Welsh university released a study which suggested that over 10 percent of livestock farmers surveyed at livestock events in Summer 2012 had illegally killed badgers in the 12 months leading up to questioning. The researchers' figures were reached using a method for estimating how many people are involved in sensitive or illegal activities.

Reinforcing the Welsh study's value as the first to look at levels of reactive killing, and giving further credence to the claims of wildlife groups such as the Badger Trust, a spokesperson for the National Wildlife Crime Unit commented at the time that, although evidence of such illegal killing is sparse and that very little is known officially about levels of persecution, there is no reason to suggest the figures are incorrect. The spokesperson said, "We have nothing in our data to suggest that badger persecution is happening on this scale, though we don't have any evidence that would negate the findings either. We know there is a history of badger persecution in South Wales and issues of persecution tend to be reported to the RSPCA before they are referred to us."

The decision to continue funding NWCU's activities was made after pressure from members of the public and wildlife organisations led to the tabling of an early day motion in Parliament. Of 114 MPs that signed the EDM, 4 were from the ruling Conservative Party.

International assistance offered by NWCU in 2012:

• provided direct assistance in 175 cases;
• supported a further 74 cases and provided direct input into 13 ongoing enforcement operations involving wildlife and other criminality within the UK;
• collated and assessed 970 intelligence logs helped with a number of the 57 cases known to have been brought;
• supported a Europol project focussing on illegal trade in rhino horn; and
• supported Interpol projects on internet trade in ivory, on the illegal trade in birds and on illegal trade in endangered species and tigers particularly .