Recorded crime

Recorded crime statistics are a Scottish Government statistical output derived from Police Scotland's recorded crime database. Various factors will affect the number of crimes recorded, including the number of crimes committed, whether crimes committed were observed and reported and also the impact of operations by Police Scotland and other organisations to target specific types of crime.

Data in this section are presented up to 2024-25.

Recorded wildlife crime offences increased by 15% between 2022-23 and 2023-24, before falling by 27% between 2023-24 and 2024-25.
Figure 1: breakdown of wildlife crime offences from Scottish Government recorded crime statistics, 2019-20 to 2024-25.

Over the six-year period 2019-20 to 2024-25, annual recorded wildlife crimes have fluctuated, ranging from 186 to 308 offences per year. The numbers in 2024-25 (186 offences) are the lowest since 2019-20. Fish poaching was the most common offence type over the six-year period (348 out of 1452 offences; 24%), followed by offences against birds (323; 22%) and other wildlife offences (229; 16%).

Looking at offence categories in detail, year-to-year variations can be substantial. For instance, in 2023-24, there were notable increases in hunting with dogs offences (from 14 to 33 offences), which subsequently fell to 17 offences in 2024-25. Likewise, ‘other wildlife offences’ increased from 22 to 56 offences in 2023-24, before falling to 11 offences in 2024-25.

The data in Figure 1 is provided by Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services (derived from Police Scotland data) and aligns with official statistics on crime across all types. However, this data includes some broad categories (e.g. ‘Other wildlife offences’; and ‘Cruelty to wild animals’) which provide little detail on the type of crime, or the species involved. For this reason, the Wildlife Crime Priority Areas section later in this report provides information on recorded crimes categorised by priority area (badgers; bats; trade in endangered species; freshwater pearl mussels; poaching & coursing; and raptor persecution) and some further information on types of crime.

There can be slight differences in the data used in the recorded crime and wildlife crime priority areas sections of this report, for example due to differences in when the data has been extracted from the police database, but the underlying datasets are broadly similar (see also Data sources and methodology supporting document).

The Lothians and Scottish Borders police division recorded the highest number of wildlife offences in 2023-24 and 2024-25 combined.
Figure 2: number of recorded wildlife offences by Police Scotland division, 2023-24 and 2024-25.

Looking at 2023-24 and 2024-25 combined, the Lothians and Scottish Borders had the highest number of recorded wildlife offences (72 offences). Fife had the second highest recorded offences (66 offences), driven by a large number of offences in 2023-24 (59 offences). Of these 59 offences in 2023-24, 25 were classed as ‘other wildlife offences’ and 16 were classed as hunting with dogs offences. The unusually high number of offences recorded in Fife during 2023-24 can be attributed to an investigation against one individual who was charged with, and reported for, a large number of wildlife offences.

Further detail: see Tables 1 to 3 of the supporting documents for breakdowns of recorded wildlife crimes by year, offence type and Police Scotland division.