Press release from North Yorkshire Police (23 April 2024):
SUSPECTED SHOOTING OF A BUZZARD ON NORTH YORK MOORS
Our Rural Task Force is appealing for information following the suspected shooting of a buzzard in the North York Moors National Park.
The Buzzard is thought to have been killed near to Laskill, Bilsdale, on Thursday 4 April, and we’re appealing for anyone who saw any suspicious people or vehicles in the area to please come forward.
Buzzards and all other birds of prey are legally protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. To intentionally kill or injure one is a criminal offence which could result in an unlimited fine or up to six months in jail.
If you have any information that could help please email tom.gaunt@northyorkshire.police.uk or call North Yorkshire Police on 101, select option 2 and ask for PC Tom Gaunt.
If you wish to remain anonymous you can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or online at crimestoppers-uk.org
Please quote NYP reference 12240059635 when passing on information.
ENDS
This is a bit of an odd press release. The appeal for information is in relation to a ‘suspected shooting’ so I guess we can assume an injured/dead buzzard wasn’t found otherwise it’d have been x-rayed which would have confirmed whether it’d been shot or not.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that another buzzard had been shot here though. This so-called National Park, where the landscape is dominated by driven grouse moors, is a well-known hot bed of raptor persecution where there are repeated crimes against birds of prey, mostly involving shooting or poisoning (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
I know what the Police are meaning, but when they continually phrase their appeals for information about “suspicious people or suspicious vehicles in the area” it just doesn’t sit right with me. Makes it sounds like they are already thinking of a shady stranger in a battered transit van with it’s rear number plate missing, etc, etc. Someone statistically at the lower end of likelihood for these crimes!
In general, regards raptor shooting (not things like nest robbing or egging) - it’s the familiar people in their familiar vehicles who go around the same roads and private tracks in familiar ways and at similar times of day – and who are probably known to all long term residents, that Police should be prepared to ask people if they may have suspicions about. They could amend their phrase to include “and / or anyone you may have information about, regards this type of crime occurring in the area”.
Very well put. I believe the police need to have the courage to ask local people if they have suspicions about what some of “their neighbours” are doing. As was mentioned by another commentator in a previous blog, most local people often know who is responsible for these crimes.
Again very well put. The wording needs to be different my partner and I spend hours round these places on foot riding classic motorbikes I ride regularly on my horse. Pottering around for miles there are no suspicious people in cars lurking about we know the perpetrators as do the police farmers etc but people are kept quiet by fear and repercussions if they speak up.FACT.
And these people are not out and about at normal hours like illegal cubbing it’s done at daft o’clock. When most people are in bed. I’ve been up at crack of dawn crawling about the undergrowth getting footage in the past.
Let’s help the police by building up a psychological profile. Most convicted perpetrators of raptor crime, are gamekeepers or other estate employees, sometimes pigeon fanciers. I think we can rule out the latter, because Buzzards aren’t much of a threat to pigeons. Therefore, your typical profile is a shoot employee, based on the organized shoot, nearest to where the raptor was killed. Typically, they drive around in 4x4s, used as part of their work. So the most likely profile of the Buzzard killer would be a gamekeeper or other estate worker, employed on the nearest managed shooting estate to where the Buzzard was killed, driving the vehicle they use for their daily work. Oh, and they are likely to have a shotgun, and possibly firearms certificate. I may not be Sherlock Holmes, or Cracker, but I’d be confident enough to put a moderate bet on this.
We agree completely. Though my opinion – and frustration – is that the rural policing teams know who is at it, as you describe. But that they are scared to imply it in the public statements / crime appeals that they make. This is because they work to “build relationships” with “rural working communities” etc, etc on wider fronts such as general rural crime & Farmwatch type schemes. The police aren’t capable of keeping on top of rural crime (at least to the point of staying popular with MP’s and local councillors, and avoiding complaints to the Police head honchos!) without utilising the support of – let’s be honest – a lot of local people who have only a neglible or non-existant twinge of guilt over raptor persecution (as they prefer the status quo of charmed idyll estate life in the their locality) – and need to work directly with a good few people who have raptor blood and feathers just recently washed off their hands.
We shouldn’t have the general rural crime team coppers as the ones to investigate raptor persecution, it rarely works – and when they do a good job (as in Shaftesbury case in Dorset) they get pulled up early. Too many stretched and compromised loyalties. It needs fairly well trained and dedicated officers who are a bit “niche” and are arms length from the other rural policing.