The Only Crime lab for Animals

Way back in 1975, a special agent of the Division of Law Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, by the name of Terry Grosz managed to get transferred to the Washington Office and assigned to the endangered species desk...which basically meant that he was responsible for coordinating endangered species investigations nationwide.

One of the first things that Terry discovered was that he had no way of getting his evidence identified (we didn't have a crime lab, and the FBI lab didn't work with wildlife parts and products, and museums rarely hire forensic scientists, and....well, you get the picture). So Terry did the proper agent thing, which was to start insisting that the Fish and Wildlife Service needed a crime laboratory to identify wildlife parts and products evidence. Otherwise, wildlife law enforcement officers would have to try to catch the suspects in the act of killing the animals, or in possession the entire (identifiable) carcass.....both of which represent far more difficult and dangerous situations for the investigator.

So, thanks to Terry's persistence, in 1979, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hired Ken Goddard, a police crime laboratory director (that's me, in case you were wondering who was writing this stuff) to set up a forensics program for wildlife law enforcement. I spent the next seven years in Washington D.C. working to get funding for a laboratory facility. Finally, in 1987, thanks to Terry, and Amos Eno [the executive director of the Fish and Wildlife Foundation] and a bunch of other people too numerous to name, and a chiropractor from Eagle Point, Oregon, named Dr. Ralph Wehinger [don't ask, you wouldn't believe it anyway], the following events began to occur:

December, 1985: Funds were allocated to build a wildlife forensics laboratory (to be built somewhere).

June, 1986: Ashland, OR, was selected as the site.

August, 1986: Ground-breaking ceremonies.

September, 1987: Design approved, construction begins.

August, 1988: Construction completed, staff hiring begins.

June, 1989: Dedication

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