Wildlife Crime in Scotland 2024
Statistics on wildlife crime in Scotland.
National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU)
The NWCU is a police intelligence unit providing operational support to law enforcement. All intelligence relating to wildlife crime in Scotland is gathered by the NWCU and researched on a weekly basis to identify emerging trends and prepare tactical and strategic analysis.
Data in this section are presented up to 2024-25.
Figure 14 provides a summary of wildlife crime intelligence logs, broken down by relevant keywords, and this illustrates the spread of wildlife crime intelligence dealt with by Police Scotland and the NWCU.
The most common species-specific keywords recorded in NWCU intelligence logs were hare, fish and deer in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
Figure 14: Scottish wildlife crime intelligence logs 2023-24 and 2024-25 by species keyword.
Categories in figure 14, above, are in ascending order according to 2023-24 and 2024-25 combined. Over the six-year period, 2019-20 to 2024-25, the most common species-specific keywords have been ‘Hare’, ‘Fish’ and ‘Deer’ every year.
It should be noted that an intelligence log is not a detected crime but a tool for Police to use to establish a bigger picture of what is happening in a given area. A single incident may generate a number of pieces of intelligence. Intelligence logs cannot be used to (a) directly compare year on year or (b) comment on long term trends, as they are reviewed on a yearly basis and deleted if grounds for inclusion for policing purposes no longer exist. As a result, the number of intelligence logs for any given year decreases over time.
Further detail: see Tables 34 to 36 of the supporting documents.