No surprise to learn that another buzzard has been shot dead in North Yorkshire, a county with one of the worst records for raptor persecution in the UK (e.g. see here).
The latest victim was found near Soar Spring Wood, between Wathgill Road and Reeth Road, Leyburn, on Easter Sunday. It was killed after being blasted with a shotgun.
North Yorks Police are appealing for info – see here.
The RSPB is suggesting that a clandestine campaign against buzzards is being carried out in the county and they’re calling for custodial sentences for anyone convicted of this offence (see here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
Large parts of Northern Britain are as bad as Malta etc. when it comes to the widespread and random killing of protected birds
I agree the publicity given by Chris Packam to the slaughter of migrating birds in Malta is well founded and is to be applauded, however, if our celebrity TV ornithologists would give as much publicity to the criminal Raptor persecution taking place on the grouse moor estates every day, I think it would be an even greater asset towards the fight against the slaughter of Raptors and wildlife crime in the UK.
There were a couple of tweets between Chris Packham and Simon King suggesting that the UK problem would be next on the list. I hope they see some real progress with the Malta issue quickly so they can turn their attentions closer to home.
You haven t got a clue my friend! Malta is targeted as it s a very small island (UK is nearly 800 times bigger than Malta),therefore it s easier to make a show. God knows, what happens in UK and is never heard of. Apart from that, what Mr. Packham said about our island was extremely inflated.
This is a quote from a letter of what a British citizen wrote yesterday in Times of Malta about Mr. Packham:
“I can only say these vile attempts at discrediting Maltese hunters were indeed DISGUSTING, FALSE and A MOCKERY of THE TRUTH “
Yorkshire is almost as bad as Scotland with regards to wildlife crime. This sad case will no doubt be another statistic, where the criminal gets away with his crime.
I’m beginning to wonder if the police actually do anything at all in these cases. Today at work the talk turned again to the Ross-Shire poisonings, and apparently ‘people are saying now that it came from that RSPB place that feeds them… it could have been anything, the meat could have been bad’ etc.
Despite the number of times it’s been confirmed that the birds were poisoned with a banned substance, the police’s silence on what the poison actually was is fueling these rumours. The farming community seems keen to distance themselves from blame, and the police aren’t making it difficult for them. The whole issue is in danger of being dumbed-down and forgotten about, and if people are beginning to question whether the poisoning was deliberate at all then it won’t take long for them to shrug it off and forget it ever happened.
Where has it been stated that they were poisoned with a BANNED substance!? To my knowledge it never has been which is why the secrecy.
My mistake – reading back through the various reports I see that they said ‘illegally poisoned’, which I took to mean ‘illegal poison’. I also noticed mention of poisoned baits having been found in some of the earlier reports. I’m not sure you can assume the poison wasn’t a banned substance just because the police are keeping the facts to themselves, though to be honest I don’t know what difference it would make – a mass poisoning has still taken place, and the poison, whatever it was, was extremely potent and fast acting. Being legal wouldn’t make it any less serious – the punishment should be the same in either case.
I’ve not read or heard and report that says poisoned baits were found either! Someone may be able to prove me wrong by finding an article that says so but there not one to my knowledge. That’s two of the things that have been so strange about this case – no mention of what poison killed them and no baits were found. what makes this relevant is that there has been no proof yet that this was a deliberate act. This may come out in due course but it certainly hasn’t yet!
This article in the Guardian refers to baits:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/09/record-reward-conviction-raptor-deaths-19-scotland
This appears to be the normal method the police have adopted for making the crime slowly die away from the publics attention span, then, when it’s usually too late to be of any use in bringing new evidence, they release a few meagre snippets regarding why they haven’t found any incriminating evidence leading to an arrest during their pathetic investigation, ( if you can have the barefaced cheek to call it an investigation). If by some chance I have got it wrong in this instance then I will hold my hands up and apologise profusely, I don’t however anticipate that I will have too much to do along those lines.