Ah, police wildlife crime investigations at their finest.
It has emerged that the ‘six skinned badgers’ reported by the police as having been found dumped by a road in Peebles last Friday (see here) were actually roe deer remains.
A news release put out this morning (see here) confirms that the mis-identification was revealed during post-mortem tests at the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh.
Quite how roe deer remains can be mistaken for badger carcasses is anyone’s guess.
The revelation will be doubly embarrassing for Police Scotland, as the ‘six skinned badgers’ report had led to a question in the parliamentary Chamber yesterday (see here).
We had expected Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse to field the question, although it turns out that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny Macaskill, had to answer instead, given that the question centred on ‘police resources’ for tackling wildlife crime.
His response was predictable – almost as if reading from a script. Video footage of the question and answer session can be viewed here (from 06.32 onwards). There was also a question from MSP Nigel Don (SNP, North Angus) about the poisoned eagle ‘Fearnan’ and the effectiveness of vicarious liability. Again, the answer was predictably staid.
Whilst this latest police fiasco reassures us that, on this occasion at least, six badgers have not been brutally killed and skinned, it does nothing to increase our confidence in Police Scotland’s ability to effectively tackle wildlife crime, especially if they can’t even tell the difference between two mammals that bear absolutely no resemblance to each other.
Raptor Persecution UK 
This must be somekind of April Fool – surely not even a child would make this mistake!!!!!!
Weird. Where i live i find plastic bags full of Red Deer offal dumped over a coastal cliff but why would anyone only take the skin?
They didn,t find any Goal posts nearby did they, you know what Badgers are like for moving the goal posts
Having checked the actual press release it states that it was skinned animal remains. So effectively a pile of meat and bones. Mike Groves – not sure most children would be able to distinguish between roe deer meat and bones. The positive here is that the Police took the incident seriously and ensured that experts were utilised to identify the animal type. It’s very easy to criticise especially when you don’t determine the facts.
Shows the standard of Wildlife crime officers in the country at least! There will be a few red faces now I’m sure!
In Angus we can appreciate the fact that our local MSP Nigel Don asked a question during minister’s question time about the poisoned Golden Eagle found in Glen Lethnot and how effective vicarious liability is in these cases. The answer from Kenny MacAskill was predictable and stating that he cannot comment on a live police investigation is even more predictable. Live police investigation – how many more raptor persecution cases are live and ongoing in Angus and Deeside – don’t make me laugh, most of the local bobbies up here haven’t a clue about wildlife crime in their area and the response after asking one of them in October 2012 about the G.Eagle with smashed legs ‘beamed’ over to Deeside was just that…..’I don’t know about that at the moment’……. and he was reporting to the Inveresk Community Council that specifically deals with the area where the incident took place.