In light of recent events, showing continued evidence that some Scottish police forces are incapable of taking wildlife crime seriously, even though raptor persecution has been identified as a ‘national wildlife crime priority’, the time is right to once again call for additional investigative powers to be given to the SSPCA.
You may remember we’ve blogged about this before (see here and here for detailed background information), after the former Environment Minister, Stewart Stevenson MSP promised a consultation “in the first half of 2012” to consider this option and ask for the views of the various stakeholder groups. Although we already know that the SGA doesn’t support it (see here). It’s now the second half of 2012, so where is this consultation?
Perhaps we should give the new Environment Minister a nudge in the right direction, or at least ask him when we can expect this consultation to open. Email Paul Wheelhouse MSP directly at: ministerforenvironment@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Raptor Persecution UK 
It makes absolutely no sense at all not to give the SSPCA more powers, especially when it comes to wildlife crime. They are dedicated, are very professional and competent, have good knowledge of the subject, are well equipped and cover a wide area of Scotland.
I received this poem and thought I might share it with you. Sadly, it sounds like an average year in the Scottish countryside.
Silent suffering, welcome to the Scottish countryside 2012.
A golden eagle, collapsed on the ground and fighting for breath as she lies by the poisoned rabbit. She desperately tries to fly away, beating her wings with the little strength she has left, but soon she becomes still. The agony is almost over as her eyes slowly close on the skies and the cry of the male circling above fades away. Nobody will find her. He removes the satellite tag and nobody will ever find her.
Bang! Just one shot is all that it takes. Nobody will take much notice of a single shot from a rifle up on the hills and behind the forest. He will find the Red Kite and vanish it away, just like he has done so many times before. Nobody will ever know.
Weak, desperate and now barely moving, the raptor chicks slowly starve to death when for the second day their parents do not return to feed them. They will never return because he has taken them both and nobody will know.
A Peregrine falcon’s nest is raided, the eggs destroyed by man’s hand. The parents do not defend their eggs because he has already dealt with them.
She flies hard at the cage, but the goshawk cannot escape the trap that has been baited with live pigeons. Instinctively, she kills the pigeons, but then continues her vain attempt to free herself. Soon he will free her, he will arrive and he will free her with his gun. Nobody will know.
Other cages litter the hills and forests and frantic attempts to escape are made by the birds that have been placed in them to attract more of their kind. These crows, magpies and rooks unwittingly are calling others to their deaths. Snapped necks, shot or battered bodies, the victims of this deceit will soon be dead bait for the ring of snares he has set up in the forest.
Barely still breathing, a badger gives up her four day battle to free herself from the snare, as the pain of the wire around her body, cutting through deep into her flesh, is too much for her to bare any longer. The maggots have begun their work deep inside her wounds and with no more strength to fight she rolls up; head tucked under her body and breaths her final breath. Finally she is free.
A fox, wire tight around its neck, digs hard into the ground, the deadly wire snare tangles itself in the branches that were set to guide this animal to its death. The more the fox struggles to free himself the more entangled he becomes, until finally the animal can no longer move. He kicks and digs with his legs and paws, but his head is locked tight in the noose as the hours pass and with too many snares to bother checking, the hours become days. Other foxes approach cautiously to investigate the trapped animal, whose cries have become weaker and his breath shorter. Finally, the suffering ends, but for his mate that came to investigate his struggles and cries, her head now in the wire noose beside him, her suffering has only just begun.
Forty minutes and they can’t find him; the dog just ran off from the path it was on when it picked up a scent of rotting flesh. Fifty minutes pass and he is finally found deep within the forest. He lies motionless and silent by the stink pit. Only his bloody mouth and torn tongue give any clue as to the violent struggle he had fought to free himself from the snare that had finally choked him.
A squeak and a screech give away the location of the spring trap that has been set, like thousands of others across the countryside, on a wooden post that lies across a stream. The deadly steel jaws didn’t do their job this time as they had done further along the river where a dipper bird had been crushed as it made its way through the open ended wire cage that covered the fen trap. The brown and white stoat looks up for a moment, lets out another loud screech and then carries on desperately scratching with its one loose rear leg at the steel jaw trap that has caught the animal around the body, but has failed to break the animal’s neck or crush its vital organs. With no requirement to check these traps the stoat fights for her freedom for two days before exhaustion and hunger finally releases her from her broken body.
When did this blog turn from the raptor debate and politics into an outlet for emotive twaddle!
Emotive? Ok admittedly there was some poetic license within this person’s writing, but twaddle? Twaddle isn’t a word that most people choose after viewing the video and photographic material I have obtained of badgers, almost cut in half from days of struggling in a wire snare, raptors pulled from the earth and later discovered to have been poisoned or live pigeons used as bait to catch and kill raptors. Twaddle certainly wasn’t a word either that thousands of people used when they watched the film of a game keeper beating to death several caged birds or another game keeper deliberately setting out an illegal poison onto a dead rabbit to kill raptors. I wish that the stories of raptors deliberately shot, poisoned or trapped was just twaddle, but the realities and evidence are all too real.
How can any decent person support the use of snares or any sort of trap, they should all be outlawed. I have received notification from Paul Wheelhouse’s office regarding my recent e-mail about 26 illegally killed eagles and other wildlife crime, he will respond in due course.
A letter appeared in our lacal paper (Strathspey and Badenoch Herald) today. It is from a well known gentlemen who has lived in the Scottish countryside for over 70 years. In it he states that he has never known of a wildcat breeding with a feral or domestic cat, and blames the formers situation on gamekeepers and the use of spotlights. “The easiest animal to shoot with the spotlight is the cat (domestic or wild) because they sit still” “Ban the spotlight , waste no more money and the wildcat will prosper”.
Chris, you should encourage the above gentleman to write to the national papers about that & all the other issues on this website, indeed all readers of this site should be writing to the national press with the points they have been expressing here.
This gentleman often writes in this paper about countryside matters, much of which I don’t agree with, eg he is totally against re-forestation which I am for. Apart from blaming the gamekeepers for the wildcats plight, which I fully agree with, I am not so sure about hybridization as I personally am sure this does happen.
If the case really was that wildcat and feral cats did not interbreed why does virtually every wildcat expert talk about hybrid cats (ones which look like a wildcat in every way but aren’t genetically pure)!? As they say don’t believe everything you read in the papers! I find it interesting that your willing to accept information from a guy that has lived in the countryside all his days because it suits your keeper-bashing agenda but everything gamekeepers claim must be nonsense when they have been countrymen all their days.
Thought this a thread about the proposal for increased powers for SSPCA and not cats!
For the following reasons we must support these proposals;
Wildlife crime is a national crime priority
Police have very obvious difficulty in investigating this type of crime
Wildlife crime has animal welfare implications
SSPCA have existing statutory powers are have shown they can use them effectively and professionally
Inter agency working has been shown to have been effective in many others of criminality
and ITS FREE……..!
Why would anyone who wants to reduce wildlife crime not support these proposals?
I am sure we will hear from certain quarters that it should be the police and the police alone who investigate wildlife crime. If you were committing or permitting wildlife crime wouldn’t you want the police investigate. The police are under resourced, inexperienced and have little internal support.
I will watch with interest as to which parties appose these proposals?
I for one will by contacting the minister to get behind these proposals and urge as many others as possible to do the same.
Giving the SSPCA more powers is rediculous. Whether investigating any crime from drug dealing to robbery to wildlife crime it is a prerequisite of the job that the police remain unbiased and impartial at all times. There is no way anyone can claim many or most of the members of the SSPCA are against countrysports so giving them powers to investigate those within the industry would lead to set ups, harassment and a breach of people’s human rights!
I have to say that I agree with this sentement. Dealing with criminal incidents is the job of the police and the fiscals office. I have no problem with RSPB and SSPCA or anyone else reporting crime or acting as expert witneses but the police should be the ones to investigate the crime and bring charges against the gamekeepers.
Remember we are talking about some fairly dodgy individuals…how often do we hear about wildlife crime raids rapidly changing direction(a source of disapointment) to illegal substances or fire arms offences.
But the SSPCA already DOES investigate those within the countrysports industry. They already have statutory powers, just like the police, to investigate incidents of animal welfare and suffering. The problem is, their current statutory powers are limited to investigating cases where animals are still alive (although some are barely this).
So the argument about them being biased and therefore unable to investigate fairly is really a non-argument. If there were true concerns (and evidence) of this, they would have been relieved of their statutory powers some time ago.
As for the concern about their ability to deal with some ‘fairly dodgy individuals’, let’s not forget the SSPCA routinely investigate dog fighters and badger-baiters….and gamekeepers.
I realise they have these powers in relation to welfare, and that they can and do dot a good job. But my preferene would be for the police to lead…I would rather that society accepted its responsibilities in terms of criminal investigations and didnt leave it to charity.
It is the polices job to investigate criminal activity when it comes to many wildlife crimes. Yes, when there is a possible welfare issue – such as birds in a crow trap, the SSPCA will be involved but that’s as far as their powers should go. I gravely dislike keepers being referred to constantly on here as ‘very dodgy induviduals’ if you look through the list of charged and convicted keepers over the years I guarantee most of them have had no criminal record before having wildlife charges brought against them. You are talking about in the majority of cases about good, decent hardworking people not some seedy bunch of underground criminals.
I hope that you are right that the majority of keepers are decent hardworking etc. people and, apart from their profession which I find distasteful as it envolves the killing of our countries wildlife, I am sure they are.
However there are a very large number of very dodgy individuals, who keep putting out illigal poison indiscrimately and killing protected spieces. I just wish that the (hopefully) decent majority of keepers would do more to help stamp out these illigal practices, which in turn would give all keepers a better reputation.
Well I am only repeating what I have seen in the press and actually been told by police officers. How many of these wildlife offenders actually get busted for wildlife offences? This blog is full of complaints about wildlife crime issues being sidetracked by what the police and the fiscals consider to be more serious offences.
The view from the police is that folk who are prepared to break the law are never fussy about which laws they break and once they commit an offence (and think they get away with it) it becomes a habit.
As to the reference to no criminal record until they get caught….they may not have been caught before then- but how long have they been doing it before they get caught? Are you so naive as to believe that every keeper is busted while commiting their first offence?
“I gravely dislike keepers being referred to constantly on here as ‘very dodgy induviduals’ if you look through the list of charged and convicted keepers over the years I guarantee most of them have had no criminal record before having wildlife charges brought against them.”
This is hardly an indication of well-respected and law-abiding citizens. I might be wrong here, but I am sure that Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) had no convictions before his murder trial. And despite being responsible for many murders, Fred West was not convicted for the crimes. Ian Huntley, despite being investigated for various crimes before killing two schoolgirls, had no convictions before his guilty verdict.
The problems lie with the police force in trying to pin people to crimes and you just have to look at the numbers of gamekeepers that have been convicted for illegally killing raptors to realise that the current system is flawed. So to recap, yes many gamekeepers are very dodgy individuals with years of criminal experience behind them. A lack of convictions doesn’t necessarily translate to innocence.
Not sure about the logic there. Police unbiased ………… I have always found them to be rather biased against criminals and rightly so.
Sorry – in my days poems rhymed – maybe it was the way it was printed.
The somewhat disjointed final sentence in the blog above – which I presume was meant to infer that members of the SSPCA were in fact against “countrysports” (aka killing things for fun and profit) and would therefore be biased, reveals a certain guilty apprehension that a more effective investigative body into wildlife crimes might be in the offing, Grouseman, and others in the “industry” as he so charmingly calls it, need have no fear whatsoever of any agency – if they follow one basic precept – DON’T break the law and it really is as easy as that. Most industries have regulatory bodies with full investigative powers and punative punishments for transgressions and perhaps this industry need one also…………….
Any agency, RSPB, police or perhaps the SSPCA would hardly need to “set up” or “harass” anyone – in actual fact they’d be spoilt for choice for people or places to investigate!
And thre’s always the thought, Grouser, that if estates and landowners continue to overlook or countenance wildlife crime – and it receives enough publicity – then never mind the people’s human rights aspect you trail, you might get some downside involvement fron the animal rights activists at one of your shoots – a couple of instances of that and some shooting venues might as well shut up shop.
Pip
Grouseman…………….I am sure you are supportive of the powers given to water baillifs which entitles them to stop, search, seize evidence from persons susupected of fish poaching. These powers are considerable and are many years old. By your logic you may infer that they may be biased. etc etc etc
You said it yourself these powers were granted many years ago. At one time the illegal taking of game was a major crime not all laws put in place in the past have a major significance now but it doesn’t mean we should keep granting new ones.
When the SSPCA do eventually get granted more powers, which they will, then we shall begin to see an increase in wildlife crime detection and more of these criminals being brought before the courts. That is why we have those apologists, with a keen interest in the shooting industry and keeping the status quo as it is, on forums attempting, in vain may I add, to convince people that things are OK as they are and to try and make an argument why competent and highly skilled officers from the SSPCA should not be allowed to be given the powers which would increase the success rate of wildlife crime detection and ultimately convictions.
It is clear that wildlife crime in Scotland is not going away and the police do not have the resources do deal with this issue effectively alone and so the obvious answer is to give the SSPCA more powers to assist with this issue. Of course, the SSPCA is an animal welfare organisation, but this is an irrelevant argument to make, to suggest that they will be biased in their operations. You could say the same about some Scottish wildlife officers who shoot game for sport and are very friendly with some gamekeepers on their patch. Are you saying that if a crime were to take place on an estate where a wildlife crime officer shoots that he/she won’t carry out his/her duty in a professional and correct manner? Of course not and so it is for the professional, competent, knowledgeable and well equipped SSPCA inspector. The perfect answer to a disturbingly increasing situation we have in our countryside just now. Let every one of us who has a genuine respect and healthy regard for Scottish wildlife support this move.
Well put – I agree entirely.
Grouseman,
you appear to have missed the point entirely. Statutory powers were granted to water bailiffs as far back as the 1800,s to specifically protect the interests of landowners. At this time wild animals were offered no protection and were relentlessly persecuted (predominantly on sporting estates) until many species became extinct.
Attitudes have changed considerably since then and there has been a succession of legislation passed to protect wild animals, birds and habitats. Legislation is only effective if it can be enforced and this is clearly a problem at present in Scotland hence the very low numbers of successful prosecutions.
Legislation is continually changing and that includes giving increased powers where appropriate. Hence the 2006 Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland Act 2006 and most recently WANE).
There are many other bodies that are empowered to report crimes directly to the Procurator Fiscal in exactly the same way as the police, these include.. SNH, water bailiffs, VOSA, Marine Scotland, sepa, border agency, HM Customs the list goes on.
So to suggest that it should only be the police that investigates crimes that occur on sporting estates makes absolutely no sense unless of course you would prefer the current situation because you yourself realise it is ineffectual and allows persecution to occur with little or no chance of detection!!!