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Photo by Jim Craven Forensics specialist Cookie Sims stands amid stuffed animals packing a warehouse used by the National Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. A proposed expansion in 2001 would more than double the lab's space. Forensics lab is overstuffed By PAUL FATTIG ASHLAND -- Cookie Sims stepped carefully around the looming polar bear and past the African lion and walked up to a herd of antelope, all standing stock still. Silently watching her with glassy stares were bison, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, cougar, water buffalo, even a camel. "We need all these for comparative purposes," said the forensics specialist at the National Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. "We use just about everything," she said. "The horns, the ears, the hair -- they have great comparative value for us." Although the stuffed animals, including everything from alligators to wildebeests, are long dead, they continue to offer scientific comparisons for the facility's forensic experts as they take on those who would profit from the illegal killing and selling of wildlife worldwide. Yet the growing number of specimens found in the secure, air-conditioned warehouse is also an indicator of how the facility built in 1989 is bursting at its seams, said director Ken Goddard. A $9 million request to more than double the size of the lab is part of a $14 billion appropriations bill now being debated in Congress. Goddard The expansion would provide space for both work and storage, Goddard said. Inside the main facility are thousands of dried birds and animals as wells as skulls, feathers and skins, most confiscated in past cases. A warehouse apart from the main facility contains the stuffed animals as well as elephant tusks, furs and other materials. Two large cabinets house a rhino skeleton while a tiny box that could fit in the palm of your hand holds a rodent skeleton. Many are used in helping to crack criminal cases, Goddard said, noting that the facility's work load has grown from 800 to 1,000 cases each year. Nearly 150 countries now turn to the facility for its expertise, he said. "Right now, we're the only such crime lab in the world," he said. "If we are going to stop people from illegally commercializing on endangered and threatened species, to keep those animals from disappearing, we've got to have evidence we can present in court. It's got to be honestly presented, scientifically valid and ethically viable." The lab needs elbow room to store comparison materials as well as evidence, said Bonnie Yates, a senior forensic scientist. Yates is the head of the morphology section, responsible for all mammal, bird and reptiles identification at the facility. "We just don't have enough room here anymore," she said, noting her section now has some 3,000 prepared bird specimens as well as roughly 4,000 mammals. What most would consider bizarre to collect is routine within the facility. Consider the drawer full of dried animal penises. "In the Asian medicinal trade, things that look like this are sold as tiger penises," Yates said, holding up an example that looked like a piece of jerky. It came from a case in which someone was selling what was purported to be dried tiger penises for their reputed medicinal value. "At the time, I didn't have a dried tiger penis as a standard," she said. "So I had to go to the Smithsonian (Institution), which has a pickled penis collection. That didn't work too well because theirs is a different medium. "So the next time a tiger died at a zoo, and they asked what we would like, I said we needed the head, the feet and the penis," she added. "We got it and dried it in our fruit dehydrator." And the case? Turns out the penises being sold actually came from bovines, she said. That illustrates the unique niches of expertise required in the criminal world of illegal animal parts, said Goddard. "We also have to expand so we can bring in our second-generation scientists," he said. "Right now, the 17 forensics scientists here are all about the same age. We will retire about the same time. "The morphologists, the pathologists, the DNA people, the chemists -- everyone here depends on each other's expertise," he added. No other scientists could simply step in and fill their shoes, he said. "In a lot of areas like morphology, it's apprenticeship training," he said. "It requires five or six years working at the side of an expert before you can do it yourself. You don't learn it in college because it's not taught in college." Sims, a graduate biology student at SOU, first served as a volunteer for two years before she earned a slot in the apprenticeship program, he noted. The facility also needs a containment area for scientists to work on diseased materials, he said. "This would be where we would deal with biological contamination issues," he said, noting hoof and mouth disease and anthrax are possibilities. Although the scientists now deal with contamination by using chemicals, a sealed containment area would improve efficiency, he said. "This would be much safer in terms of dealing with large volumes of animals," he said. "For example, Israel wants to send us some gazelle ears (tissues samples for DNA analysis) to work on but the U.S. government blocks that because of associated brucellosis issues. "With this containment facility in place, countries could send us those kinds of samples in sealed stainless steel containers," he added. The samples would be opened in the containment area, where the DNA would be extracted and the samples destroyed, he said. "Most of the countries we work with can't afford a resource like this," he said. "This is one of our contributions to the world." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA