Wildlife Forensics Laboratory.
To protect wildlife from abuse by poaching, California Fish and Game Wardens must be able to determine as much as possible about the sex, species, age, and origin of bloodstains, tissues and other animal parts they confiscate or find. For example, in the course of an investigation, tissue samples may be collected at the site of an illegal kill, bloodstains may be found in a vehicle, and frozen meat seized at a residence. Other examples are as widespread as is the variation in fauna throughout the State of California, from the crest of the Sierras, the Desert and to the Pacific Ocean. Such samples can provide not only investigative information, but, can also later be used as evidence in criminal trials. A critical link in the impact of this physical evidence is the amount of information that can be obtained through analyses at a Forensic Crime Lab.

The term "forensic" is most simply defined as the application of science to the purposes of the law. "Crime Labs" are laboratories which, as their primary function, conduct forensic analyses on physical evidence primarily in criminal cases and provide legally acceptable reports and expert testimony regarding their findings. For wildlife purposes, the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) has maintained a Wildlife Forensic Laboratory (WFL) since the early 1950's. The WFL's sole purpose and mission is to use accepted forensic science procedures to examine, analyze, report and testify at criminal trials on physical evidence seized by CDFG Wardens in criminal poaching cases. As such, the WFL is a State Crime Lab. It is the only State Wildlife Forensic Lab. This mission is mandated by the California Judicial System in order to enforce and prosecute criminal cases. During the past fifty plus years thousands of poachers have been convicted of crimes perpetrated on wildlife partially because of results provided by the WFL on evidence submitted by Fish and Game Wardens. In addition the deterrent effect on poaching just by the mere existence of the WFL is immeasurable.

The impact made by forensic analyses of physical evidence in criminal investigations and in criminal trials can hardly be overstated. As former California Attorney General and now Congressman Dan Lungren stated in a news release on January 17, 1996 in which he proposed funding for State Human Crime Lab upgrades, "I have been trying to find some silver lining to the O. J. Simpson case, it may be that millions of people now understand the importance of criminal forensics. That has not always been the case". In addition the television series CSI has added to the public awareness, even though it may not always be realistic. The statement by Lungren alludes to a fundamental ignorance by many non-law enforcement government entities and individuals of the necessity for high quality criminal forensics in California Criminal Justice. This problem manifested itself at the CDFG when, up until 1992, the WFL was under the Wildlife Management Division rather than the Wildlife Protection Division, whose needs they served. During that time, the WFL was extremely under budgeted, given very low priority for supplies, manpower, and equipment, discouraged from scientific modernization, and was consistently the first section scheduled for elimination during the Departments constant cyclic budgetary problems. Virtually all public crime labs in California are assigned directly under a law enforcement agency to minimize this type of problem. They are either under their City or County Sheriff or Police Department, the County District Attorney's Office, or in the case of the California state government human crime labs, the California Department of Justice. Accordingly, the WFL appropriately became assigned under the Wildlife Protection Division in 1993 where the unique needs of criminal forensics could be monitored and directed by the CDFG's law enforcement entity which exclusively uses these highly specialized and judicially intensely scrutinized services.

The Wildlife Forensic Laboratory utilizes a wide variety of scientific techniques on submitted physical evidence and has increasingly come to depend upon modern biochemical genetics to answer the law enforcement questions presented to it. The newest and, by far, most powerful technique to become available is that of DNA analyses. DNA analysis has been extensively and successfully used in human forensic science for the last several years in paternity, rape, and homicide cases. With DNA analysis, individuals have been positively identified from their blood, hair, semen and other tissues. The potential uses of forensic DNA technology in wildlife criminal poaching cases are even wider in scope than in human forensic cases.

Since 1994, the WFL solicited and received an award of over $350,000 from the McConnell Foundation, various hunting groups, private individuals, and the CDFG to develop and place on line in its laboratory forensic DNA technology. In July of 1996, the WFL received an additional grant award of $55,000 to enhance the DNA Gender Typing technique for use with bloodstains, tissue and hair on mammals. The resultant projects were conducted in association with the University of California, Davis, UCLA, and Genetic Identification Services, a private DNA laboratory, and were directed towards Deer, Elk and the invasive Northern Pike DNA marker development. The goals were to use DNA analysis on bloodstains and tissue to (1) determine the sex of such samples; (2) exclude samples as originating from each other (i.e. a persons tagged antler vs. the deer meat in their freezer); (3) prove the presence of multiple numbers of individuals among samples; (4) match samples as having a common individual origin; and (5) determine the geographical origin or subpopulation of samples. These capabilities have not only Forensic application but Management application also. A comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for deer, elk and pike DNA techniques was written and formally presented and disseminated to the forensic science community. Several papers have been published by our lab on those forensic techniques. Major new forensic accomplishments are looming in the future providing funding and additional personal can be found or are provided. The WFL has developed project proposals for forensic DNA marker development for several taxonomic groups that are particularly significant and troublesome for Wildlife Protection and the Department as a whole including DNA projects on lion, bear, bear gall bladders, sturgeon, caviar, pike monitoring, abalone, bobcat and coyote. While DNA is a new and powerful tool to use against poachers the lab uses many other techniques in order to help solve crimes against wildlife.

THE SERVICE

On a daily basis, the WFL is a laboratory service provided exclusively to CDFG Wardens that is conducted by WFL personnel at the WFL facility. In other words, we are an in-house laboratory intensive service. We routinely analyze all casework ourselves and usually do not contract them out. The nature of criminal forensic casework usually requires this. Chain of possession and first hand knowledge are key elements (among many others) in giving expert witness testimony regarding analytical results of specific physical evidence. The rare exceptions to our in-house analysis have involved extremely expensive and unique pieces of equipment such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance for bear gall bladder and bile analysis and, even then, processing and supervision of the evidence is done by the WFL personnel. We do collaborate with outside experts in order to use other expertise when necessary.

Being a full time fully operational Crime Laboratory, the WFL does not conduct pure research in the "frontier science" sense. The WFL does, however, (1) conduct reference sample analysis and data collection and data profiling in support of casework, (2) apply innovative uses of established scientific technology to our unique needs in support of casework, (3) conduct validation studies to authenticate for ourselves and the courts new forensic techniques to be used on our casework, and (4) organize, monitor, collaborate, and orchestrate when contracting out true research projects to qualified research facilities such as the University of California or in some cases private laboratories in support of expanding casework needs or newly arisen scientific advances. An example of number (4) is our Forensic Deer, Elk and Pike DNA Projects where the complex development and production process of finding new DNA microsatellite DNA markers for Deer, Elk and Pike is performed by U.C. Davis, U.C.L.A. and Genetic Identification Services. We already provided another example by the use of Nuclear magnetic Resonance, (NMR) for differentiating animal gall bladders and bile.

Contracting out WFL routine casework has never been an option because:

1. Wildlife forensic laboratories do not and have not existed in the private sector. The work is too erratic in occurrence, varied in nature, specialized in requirements, and unique in overall scope and does not generate the consistent monotypic analyses necessary to become automated and, therefore, financially viable as do some areas such as human toxicology. WFL casework exists to enforce criminal law and is not profit making. While bureaucracies prefer to work and deal in profits at least on paper, criminal law enforcement of any kind is generally not a profitable venture. Occasionally, highly unusual single case events have been contracted out to a specialty lab. These incidences have invariably produced a financial paroxysm from Administration when the bills for services and expert witness fees come in.

2. Other Government Forensic Labs such as DOJ and City and County Crime Labs are so backlogged with rape, homicide, drug, arson, firearm, etc. cases that if forced to accept a wildlife case, the case will be given such a low priority that it will never be done.

3. A large Federal Wildlife Forensic Laboratory exists in Ashland, Oregon but they are so backlogged with international importation and Federal Agent casework that they are over 3 years behind. They will no longer accept cases from states unless the Federal Agents are directly involved. The State of Oregon where the USFWS Wildlife Forensic lab is located has even had to ask other states to assist them in order to get their State's criminal poaching cases done.

4. In-house analysis of forensic casework is desirable for a law enforcement agency because it (1) gives that agency control over the turn around time,
(2) allows for appropriate casework prioritization, (3) ensures that their forensic lab's capabilities are responsive to their law enforcement agencies particular needs and, very importantly, (4) gives monitoring and control over the quality of the forensic casework to the law enforcement agency whose reputation and credibility in court is most directly affected by the handling of the evidence presented.

THE PERSONNEL

The WFL is currently manned by two full-time Forensic Scientists and two part-time, temporary Scientific Aids. The two full time personnel are classified as Senior Wildlife Forensic Specialist.
The position of Wildlife Forensic Specialist is multi-faceted and includes many different duties, such as:
· conducts and instructs Wardens in the examination of crime scenes for collection of physical evidence;
· examine, analyze and interpret biological evidence; make difficult chemical, serological, and genetic tests, including forensic DNA analyses, on tissue, blood, hair and other physiological fluids and stains;
· morphologically identify and compare hair, feathers, scales, fibers, skulls, bones and other animal parts in forensic cases;
· perform necropsies on a variety of different wildlife to examine wounds, recover bullets, projectiles and trace evidence, determine the method of kill, and answer depredation concerns including predators and other animal attacks on humans;
· make macroscopic, microscopic and other technical examinations and comparisons of tissue;
· make photographs and photomicrographs using black and white and color films; digital cameras and equipment, use complex measuring, recording and testing instruments and devices;
· prepare evidence and exhibits and testify in court as expert witnesses;
· assist Wardens, and other wildlife law enforcement officers and prosecutors in understanding and interpreting wildlife forensic evidence;
· write reports and correspondence, write proposals and grants, give instruction in this field at Warden training schools and upon request as time permits;
· provide forensic applied research, advanced casework, methodology development, and training to State and/or local wildlife forensic scientists and wildlife law enforcement agencies

One Sr. Wildlife Forensic Specialist has been working continuously in this field since 1969, first at The Department of Fish and Game in fisheries, then at the California Department of Justice as a criminalist and since 1974 back to the CDFG and into the WFL. He has advanced degrees and studies in clinical medical technology and comparative pathology. He has qualified over 400 times throughout California and the Western U.S. as a forensic expert witness in courts of criminal law in both misdemeanor and felony cases. The Second Sr. Wildlife Forensic Specialist has been a full time State employee for over three years, however, he has a Ph.D. in genetics from UC Davis and three years of post graduate work plus nearly six years of experience working in this field, including an internship at DOJ’s Berkeley DNA Lab. He is an expert in DNA technology and in population genetics. He is what the laboratory needed in order to expand our capabilities. One part time Scientific Aid has a masters degree in genetics from UCD and is also very talented in her chosen field of Wildlife Forensic Biology. The second Scientific Aid is a biology student and was recently hired in order to help with the numerous samples processed by our laboratory for our DNA projects. Currently there is insufficient funding for additional professional personnel. We are usually several months backlogged in our case work in addition to our other duties. If funding were available it is difficult to recruit forensic experts in our field due to the low salaries paid our professional levels. Even other state forensic scientists are paid more than our wildlife forensic scientist. A similar situation to our Fish and Game Wardens verses other state police officers. We have been fortunate in finding dedicated people whose concerns are diminishing wildlife populations.

Testifying at criminal trials is routine and fundamental to the WFL’s scope of work. In other government labs, expert witness testimony may involve only civil cases and be infrequent and incidental to other primary routine duties. The very existence of the WFL’s mission is predicated on the forensic analyses of physical evidence and the subsequent generation of written reports followed, many times, by criminal trial testimony as an expert witness conveying, interpreting, and qualifying analytical results. Criminal trial expert witnesses are "voir dired" and their laboratory and their laboratory's methods can be subjected in California to "Kelly/Frye" Hearings by criminal defense attorneys challenging the witness's expertise and the legitimacy of the results. Our laboratory has successfully met such a challenge. Currently it is the only wildlife forensic laboratory in the United States that was challenged in Superior Court and won the court decision. In criminal cases "guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt" as opposed to the much lesser requirement in civil cases of "a preponderance of the evidence".

For all of the foregoing reasons, crime labs use in their routine operation some of the most meticulous and stringent Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) protocols in science. The Senior Wildlife Forensic Scientist belongs to the Northwest Association of Forensic Scientists, the American Society of Crime Laboratories, and the American Association of Clinical Pathologists. The other Senior Forensic Scientist will soon become a member of these forensic organizations and is a member of the California Association of Criminalists. Both closely follow the professional forensic guidelines for QA/QC that are well established by the NWAFS and by numerous other associated professional organizations, such as the American Society of Crime Lab Directors (ASCLD), American Academy of Forensic Sciences, American Board of Criminalistics (ABC), the California Department of Justice, and the Technical Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (TWGDAM) as published in the FBI's Crime Lab Digest. In addition to this, the QA/QC for the WFL is constantly inspected by criminal trial defense attorneys, by discovery motions, and by the courts. Senior Wildlife Forensic Specialist, Dr Jeff Rodzen, is currently on a national committee that is developing Accreditation Standards for North American wildlife forensic crime laboratories similar to those that have been developed by the ABC for the human crime labs. QA/QC issues are methodically treated by Accreditation and these professional organizations. QA/QC issues for the WFL must be handled by the WFL, the professional forensic Crime Lab community and the judicial system.

The WFL possesses very unique facility requirements due to its crime lab status. Security, access, and chain of possession are the operative concepts here. Access to various Labs and Evidence Rooms is restricted by judicial requirement. Standard access and security protocols have a long tradition and are well delineated by Crime Lab professional organizations, basic forensic science textbooks and manuals, Crime Lab Standard Operating Procedures, Prosecuting and Defense Attorney communities, and are expected and demanded by the Courts. The basic guideline governing criminal physical evidence after it is seized by a law enforcement agency is that all persons having access to the evidence:

be known, be authorized, and be available for questioning by the court.

To accomplish this, many procedures are established such as chain of possession logs and evidence tags and highly secure evidence storage rooms and Laboratory visitor entry logs. Because of this, crime labs do not merge or overlap their operation with other types of laboratories or services. Even standard janitorial services have to be escorted through the crime lab by professional staff. In addition to the crime lab access issues, the WFL also has other unique concerns. Having a fully functional forensic DNA laboratory, the WFL uses the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification procedure to increase its quantity of evidentiary DNA by millions-fold. This creates concentrations of DNA many times above its normal occurrence in nature. While not dangerous to humans, it is highly contaminatory to pre-amplified materials and evidence. This is why the DNA Lab must be and has been partitioned and physically separated into several rooms. This is also why special procedures are employed to protect against generalized Lab contamination by amplified DNA. Overlap of the Forensic DNA Lab with other CDFG Laboratories would, thus, be a very poor analytical procedure in addition to being unacceptable by Crime Lab professional standards.

A SUMMARY OF CDFG WILDLIFE FORENSIC LABORATORY

The WFL is a very unique and specialized operation within the California Department of Fish & Game. The WFL is a State Crime Lab. As such, the WFL's operation, security, organizational assignment, autonomy from other Labs, protocols, QA/QC, and existence is dictated by the California Judicial System and the professional and governmental organizations that oversee Criminal Forensics in the United States. Assignment to the Law Enforcement body within the CDFG, the Wildlife Protection Division, is in keeping with the universal structure of government Crime Labs throughout California and the U.S.

 

 

 

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