ECOLOGY : Animals Now Have Their Own ‘Scotland Yard’ : Federal lab helps to catch poachers and thwart illegal ivory imports. It is also the repository for the remains of dead eagles.

When a con man posed as a wildlife broker last year and bought two aging tigers from a Southern zoo for $500, his real intention was to kill the animals and sell them as rugs for a total of $15,000. But scientists at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory here proved what the man had done and helped put him behind bars.

And, when four bald eagles were found dead in an Alaskan town earlier this year, it was scientists here who determined that the deaths were inadvertently being caused by the local Humane Society. The eagles were being poisoned by eating the remains of small animals that had been put to death by the society and dumped in a landfill--a practice since discontinued.

In another case, importers of illegal ivory began declaring that the objects in their possession came from the extinct woolly mammoth, a legally collectable item, and were not obtained illegally from elephants.

Wildlife inspectors in the United States and around the world, bewildered because they could not distinguish one kind of tusk from another, turned to scientists Ed Espinoza and Mary-Jacque Mann for an answer. Using a $250,000 spectromicroscope and a 25-cent protractor, the pair discovered a “genetic fingerprint” that unmistakably distinguishes the modern elephant species from the old.

The 2-year-old, $3.5-million wildlife crime lab here, the only one of its kind in the world, is sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is headed by Ken Goddard, a criminalist and former director of the Huntington Beach, Calif., police crime lab. Its operating budget this year is $1,715,000.

The self-proclaimed “Scotland Yard of Wildlife” aids the 250 U.S. fish and wildlife agents and the nation’s customs inspectors and cooperates with 109 countries that seek to protect endangered species.

The lab was established in Oregon because state officials offered the federal government a renewable 50-year-lease for the land at the total cost of $1.

Much of the lab’s work involves building libraries of animal hair, bones, feathers and blood samples and designing identification manuals and booklets for agents in the field. “No one agent in the field can recognize all the animal species,” said Stephen Busack, chief of morphology, the study of animal forms.

Before the lab was built, wildlife agents depended on scholars at museums or universities for animal identification. According to Busack, that work, usually performed as a courtesy, sometimes was not done fast enough.

“We are a one-stop shop,” said chief pathologist Dick Stroud. “Evidence now does not have to be moved all over the country from one small lab to another. And we are also available for trial.” The veterinary pathologist recently spent an afternoon in a local courtroom testifying in the case of a hunter accused of killing a deer with a gun during bow and arrow season. Stroud testified that the suspect had shot the deer, than stuffed an arrow through the bullet hole to deceive a wildlife agent.

“We aren’t necessarily anti-hunter,” Goddard said in an interview. “Our cases come to us. We want to be relied upon as a reliable source of science.”

A gymnasium-size room in the back of the lab is filled with such objects as cowboy boots in every type of animal hide imaginable from Cayman crocodile to python and lizard. Another huge room holds confiscated ivory tusks. Goddard estimates that the larger ones are worth $7,000 on the world market and notes that collecting tusks has made African elephants an endangered species.

According to Busack, the United States is the largest market for wildlife parts and products.

The lab is also home of the national eagle repository. When eagles die from electrocution or are killed on the road, they are sent to the laboratory, which maintains a request list from Native Americans, who use the feathers or talons in religious ceremonies. James A. Kniffen, who runs the repository, said that about 450 eagle remains are received each year “but our request list numbers 1,450 from all over the country.”

Goddard would like to distribute ivory tusks and other rare items in the storage rooms to schools, national refuges or even airports for educational purposes. “That way, perhaps people leaving on vacation would know what not to buy,” he explained.