We are in person at the 2024 Animal Forensic Conference in Gainesville, Florida! Dr. G will be interviewing several of the speakers to give our audience a bit of the knowledge gained through the presentations. We will be releasing each interview individually to allow our listeners to find topics of interest.

Geographic Information Systems is the use of technology to identify crime hotspots through the use of spatial data. This is very useful in the prevention of wildlife crimes and poaching. Experts Jessica Pfohl and Anne Washington from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, share their knowledge and how others can obtain information and resources to implement this technology in their areas.

We would also like to invite our listeners involved in animal cruelty investigations to visit and join the International Society for Animal Forensic Sciences https://isafs.org/

Mentioned in this episode:

Keep it Humane Podcast Network

The Animal Welfare Junction is part of the Keep It Humane Podcast Network. Visit keepithumane.com/podcastnetwork to find us and our amazing animal welfare podcast partners.

Our next guests are Jessica Pfohl and Anne Washington from the Florida Fish

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and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

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Thank you so much for being here

and welcome to The Junction.

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Thank you.

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Anne Washington: Thank you.

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DrG: Can you introduce yourselves and

what your background is and how it relates

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to the field of veterinary forensics?

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Jessica Pfohl: Uh, so I'm Jessica Pfohl

and I have a bachelor's degree in criminal

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justice and a master's in administration

of justice, um, and I was an analyst for

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probably about 10 years before I came

to Florida Fish and Wildlife where I am

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the, um, intel analyst, uh, supervisor.

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Anne Washington: And my

name is Anne Washington.

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I have a degree, , in conservation biology

for my bachelor's and biodiversity and

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conservation biology for my master's.

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And, my projects were in GIS

and doing, spatial data analysis.

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So that kind of transferred over into

FWC, where I am now the GIS technician

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for their law enforcement department.

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DrG: What is the purpose of the FWC?

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Jessica Pfohl: So, Florida Fish

and Wildlife, um, it was created to

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protect him and preserve florida.

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Um, it's natural, um, habitats,

waterways, um, and protect its animals.

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Um, and we do a lot of enforcement

on obviously fishing, captive

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wildlife, boating, things like that.

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DrG: Your talk was on geographic

information systems, and that

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is something that is very,

can I say, very technological.

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What is GIS?

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Anne Washington: So, GIS is geographic

information systems, which is

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basically any sort of program or data

analysis that looks at spatial data.

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So, Crime is a spatial problem.

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It happens at a place at a time.

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So to be able to identify trends or to

be able to identify hot spots, you want

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to be able to map out this data and

then run statistical analyses on it to

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be able to better identify those areas.

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DrG: How does GIS help with

animal cruelty investigations?

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Jessica Pfohl: So we basically use

GIS to try to do more hotspots.

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Um, it's not really used in like,

per se, like animal cruelty.

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Um, but when officers want to

know where they should set up a

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deployment, because they're trying

to stop, you know, poaching.

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Good example is night hunting.

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Um, so you're not supposed to

do that, but that's when a lot

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of times guys go out to poach.

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So, um, we do hot spot maps to show them

in their area of responsibility where

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they should be setting up for deployment.

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Obviously, you don't want your

officer spending time deploying to

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a place over the last five years.

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It's never had.

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an incident or a call for service

or a warning or a citation written.

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You want them to go to places where

that has, has typically happened.

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And that's why we do the hotspots to

show them that this is where you need

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to go so that we can try to stop the

poaching of, you know, Florida's wildlife.

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DrG: What kind of data do you

use to, to get this information?

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Jessica Pfohl: So we use, not only, we

use calls for service, um, we use, um,

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We use citations and we use warnings.

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I don't, some, we could use field

intel reports, but they don't

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really, they're more for intelligence

gathering, but that's the data

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points that we're showing them.

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This is where all the resource

citations, resource warnings, and this

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is where it's your calls for service.

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And we do both, we do a map of calls for

service, we do a map of, of warnings and,

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um, citations, and then they can, then we

too do them together so you can kind of

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see whether they're correlating or not.

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DrG: So, once you collect the data and

you kind of know where the problem is

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happening, what's the next step and what

kind of technology can you use to, to

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find the perpetrators of these crimes?

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Jessica Pfohl: So, the officers will

then go out and do their deployments,

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um, and then we can also set up, you

know, game cams and things like that

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so we can see if there's traffic

coming in and out of that area.

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We can then use, like,

license plate reader systems.

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Um, facial recognition to

try to identify those people.

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People per se we get a picture of somebody

off a trail cam or something like that.

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Then, you know, we can use facial rec

or we can check the cameras to see who

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may have been coming in and out, um,

and then look at, look at the vehicles

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and, and tags and things like that.

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DrG: You were talking about using both

GIS data and then ecological data.

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So how do you use both of

them in, in what you're doing?

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Yeah.

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Anne Washington: So ecological data kind

of helps us focus in on areas of activity.

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So like for instance, you know,

you're interested in turtles or our

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freshwater turtles, which are being

poached and sold overseas as a delicacy.

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Uh, you're probably not going

to be finding them in areas

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where that turtle isn't present.

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So we kind of use that ecological

data to be like, okay, this is

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where the turtles are occurring.

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So if we have high populations

of them, that's most likely where

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they're going to get poached.

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And then we can then overlay that

with our hotspot analysis to actually

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see if that's actually the case.

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And if not, then we have to figure

out, okay, is there a gap in our data?

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What are we missing here?

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And then we can, uh, further continue

our, um, you know, deployments and

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rechecking that data to make sure

that we are focusing on those areas

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which are being um, used up basically.

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DrG: This is a really interesting

and great use of technology, and

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I imagine that there's not a lot

of places that are doing this.

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So if there are some of the listeners

that are interested in finding more

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information, what resources are there?

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Jessica Pfohl: Well, they

can contact one of us.

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Um, we've helped multiple, uh, wildlife

agents across the, uh, country with

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not only intelligence, but, uh, G.

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I.

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S.

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I know has been in touch with

several of the agencies as well.

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So anytime they need anything, it's

kind of hard to find training and

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things like that specific to wildlife

crime for intelligence analysts and G.

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I.

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S.

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Um, so we kind of all just

kind of help each other.

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So they'll, they'll, uh, They can

reach out to either Anne or I.

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DrG: Fantastic.

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Well, thank you so much for sharing

your knowledge with this, and

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thank you for what you're doing.

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Jessica Pfohl: Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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Thanks for having us.