In April, we reported on a series of suspected poisoning incidents at Fullerton Woods, Troon, Ayrshire. Poisoned rabbit baits were reported to have been found in February and March 2011 and were believed to be implicated in the deaths of a fox, two dogs and possibly two buzzards (story here).
In an article published in the Troon Times on 31 May 2011, wildlife police were reported to be “no longer hunting poachers after dead animal bodies were found in Troon Woods“. The on-line article does not provide any more information about this decision.
Interesting then that in the SASA animal poisoning report released earlier this week, the dead animals from Fullarton Woods were not included in the list of suspected poisoning incidents in Scotland between January and March 2011. Does this mean the dead animals were not submitted for poison analysis? Or does this mean that they were submitted somewhere other than SASA? Or has SASA deliberately excluded them from their interim report?
There’s another missing incident in the SASA report. Remember the allegedly poisoned buzzard discovered on Mountquhanie Estate, Fife, in January 2011? The news report at the time stated that the dead bird had been sent for post-mortem to establish the cause of death. Where is this bird in the SASA report? Was it sent to SASA for post-mortem, or somewhere else? If it was sent somewhere else then surely the SASA figures cannot be used by the government as the official reporting mechanism for poisoning incidents, because they are excluding a number of suspected incidents?
Raptor Persecution UK 