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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Roseburg shooting victim describes gunman's rampage ... Guest Opinion: Plaza fencing is ugly and wasteful ... Herb Rothschild Jr.: Require national service ... Roseburg shooting victim describes gunman's rampage ... Guest Opinion: Plaza fencing is ugly and wasteful ... Herb Rothschild Jr.: Require national service ... A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ASHLAND Ashland forensics lab leads way in halting global wildlife crime Comment By Jack Harbaugh DailyTidings.com By Jack Harbaugh Posted May. 19, 2015 at 7:40 PM By Jack Harbaugh Posted May. 19, 2015 at 7:40 PM » Social News When hired in 1979 to set up the first-ever forensics program for law enforcement, Ken Goddard never dreamt he’d end up training forensics agents from around the globe on how to help stop animal trafficking. The unforeseen is still to be expected at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) Forensics Laboratory in Ashland. On any given day, lab personnel don’t know what new CSI-like case they may deal with. Says Goddard, “we never know what’s going to come in the door. We average around 500 cases per year, and a case can be anything from a single feather to 200 pair of alligator shoes.” Goddard is the lab director of the Ashland-based FWS Forensic Lab. It is a one-of-a-kind operation. The lab is the only one in the world solely dedicated to helping solve crimes against wildlife. It operates very similarly to a “typical” police crime lab — except the victim is an animal. Currently the FWS lab’s staff of 30, including 15 scientists, supports investigations that can come from any one or many of 180 countries around the globe. Goddard and his team are in the process of developing forensics-training programs to enable agents around the world to curtail animal trafficking. The training programs will be implemented in a number of countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and possibly Malaysia and Indonesia. Notes Goddard, “each program will be built from scratch and has to be custom tailored to the specific needs and animal populations of the local geographies.” On this day, Goddard and some of his forensics scientists are working with their liaison in Bangkok, Thailand, to build a training program targeted at stopping tropical fish poaching. “The aquarium trade is not well regulated and catching poachers that are selling endangered species is a complicated task,” according to Goddard. “The poachers use a ‘net’ of cyanide in the water to stun the fish,” says Goddard. “By the time customs officials sample any of the fish in the shipments coming into the country, the fish have purged the evidence. We need to catch them at the source.” The FWS Lab’s efforts to train agents worldwide on the art and science of animal forensics is in support of an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2013 establishing a Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking. The order reads in part: “The poaching of protected species and the illegal trade in wildlife and their derivative parts and products … represent an international crisis that continues to escalate. Poaching operations have expanded beyond small-scale, opportunistic actions to coordinated slaughter commissioned by armed and organized criminal syndicates.” Building and delivering forensics programs from scratch is nothing new to Goddard. Prior to 1979, there was no such thing as a wildlife crime lab. It took seven years and a lot of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention political arm twisting) for Goddard to get the funding and planning approved to build the crime lab in Ashland — and another two years to construct the facility and hire the initial team of scientists and staff. One of the many examples of Goddard’s willingness to do whatever it takes is a program he developed that he calls “Coral Reef CSI," after the popular television shows about crime scene investigators in various U.S. cities. When approached eight years ago by a friend from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be part of an international team that identifies sources causing damage to coral reefs, Goddard said he’d love to be involved. In order to evaluate the reasons coral reefs were being destroyed, Goddard was tasked to develop CSI protocols to collect evidence, assign responsibility and be prepared to go to court. But in order to participate, Goddard, at the age of 60, had to learn how to scuba dive and log a lot of hours in the water to become scuba-qualified. No problem. Thanks to the people at Rogue Aquatics, hours of training in murky Lost Creek Lake, and multiple training dives off the coast of San Diego, Goddard was ready to go. He went to Cozumel, Mexico to work with a team of forensics scientists and scuba experts to implement the program. Understandably, creating a forensics program that could be implemented under water was vastly different compared to what Goddard had developed for land-based wildlife. “We took our notes with special pens on special tablets, then took pictures of the notes with waterproof cameras,” laughs Goddard. “In forensics, it’s important to show that the notes have not been altered or tampered with, so we had to get creative.” As described in a New York Times Style Magazine article last year, the lab is “also a hotbed of research, discovery and innovation. It’s a center of cutting-edge science that does double duty as a makeshift natural history museum.” Goddard notes modestly, “We’re proud of what we’ve got going here. It’s a pretty neat little operation.” The state-of-art FWS Lab facilities are at 1490 East Main St. in Ashland, next door to ScienceWorks. For more information on their operation, visit them at www.fws.gov/lab . Three-year Ashland resident Jack Harbaugh formerly worked in the software industry and is currently active in the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. By Jack Harbaugh DailyTidings.com By Jack Harbaugh Posted May. 19, 2015 at 7:40 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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