Month: May 2014

There was a radio debate yesterday about zero tolerance of wildlife crime in Scotland. The debate was hosted by the Good Morning Scotland programme and for those who missed it, here is the transcript:

Presenter: This week the Scottish Wildlife Trust called for zero tolerance when it comes to wildlife crime. It says that the current punishments aren’t enough to deter people. In recent months 22 raptors have been found dead, 12 of them have been confirmed as poisoned. So what would zero tolerance look like and do we need it? Joined now by Tim Baynes from the Scottish Moorland Group, part of the Scottish Land and Estates, and Mike Flynn, Chief Superintendent of the Scottish SPCA.

Mike Flynn, first of all, you approve of the idea of zero tolerance?

Mike Flynn: Well I don’t think anybody disapproves of it, I mean even if you’re talking about Scottish Land & Estates, they’ve roundly come out saying that all these kind of acts have got to stop and what we really need is some of the people that are linked with those involved to come forward so they can be dealt with.

Presenter: What would it look like though, Mike Flynn?

Mike Flynn: Well, what it’d look like is we’d have a lot more wildlife going about, you wouldn’t be getting organisations like the landowners and gamekeepers being instantly castigated every time some of these incidents happen and you can’t just point the finger at any organisation, this could be down to single individuals and they’ve got to be stopped.

Presenter: Well Tim Baynes from the Scottish Moorland Group, what’s wrong with enforcing the law?

Tim Baynes: Well absolutely nothing at all and I agree with what Mike says there. I think that zero tolerance is one of these quite easy phrases to use but in fact there is already zero tolerance for wildlife crime; zero tolerance within the law and the range of measures that are there to deal with it, zero tolerance within the organisations like ours and the Scottish Gamekeepers, who as Mike says are frequently castigated for this. So it is there, I mean the law governing wildlife crime is tough to start with in the sense that anyone committing a crime could have up to six years in jail, they could be fined for up to £5,000, sorry six months in jail, someone was jailed for poaching recently for 8 months, there is also a law called vicarious liability which deals with an employer or a manager of someone who is convicted, they can face the same penalties. Recently the Minister for the Environment has announced various other new measures, some of them aimed particularly at the land management sector.

Presenter: Well Mike Flynn, some people argue that actually what you should do is have a sort of absolute liability for landowners so that if a raptor or something is found on land the owner could be held responsible and perhaps even fined or sent to jail. Would you agree?

Mike Flynn: Well, Tim’s just said there is an offence now of vicarious liability but you can’t really point the finger at someone if they have absolutely no knowledge of what’s happening. If you’re looking at the crime that Tim just mentioned, poaching, people do not allow poaching on their land but it goes on quite often so you couldn’t blame the landowner for that kind of thing happening.

Presenter: Tim Baynes, it has been suggested, what’s wrong with the idea of, it would certainly focus minds wouldn’t it?

Tim Baynes: Well there is already absolute liability if someone is responsible for a crime on their land and they are absolutely liable. What the problem is that there are a whole lot of different circumstances and it seems to be very difficult for the police ever to find sufficient evidence to secure convictions, and you know, there’s a whole range of things that can go on on the ground that may not be quite so obvious to people looking from outside.

Presenter: What are you suggesting though, if an eagle or a buzzard or something is found on somebody’s moor that, you know, it’s been brought there by somebody else, it’s surely the responsibility of those whose ground it is?

Tim Baynes: Well yes it is, well there are a number of things that have happened and if you look back at some of the recent incidents where, you know, the police, very extensive investigations have gone on and yet they’ve not been able to work out exactly what happened. I mean I think the one, the extraordinary one at Conon Bridge recently as an example, I mean there’s a very big police investigation there but they haven’t managed to work out what happened there…

Presenter: Well we should point out that’s on farmland rather than estates…”

Tim Baynes: Yes but I think the same sort of accusations have been levelled at the landowners there at which quite possibly this incident is nothing to do with certainly anything deliberate that’s been done by the people responsible for managing that land. There are a whole range of different things that can happen and we have to be extremely careful about trying to apportion blame, you know it’s very easy to do but the police have to be given time to conduct these investigations, work out what really happened and then deal with the causes.

Presenter: Mike Flynn, on some readings the conservation movement has actually been extraordinarily successful hasn’t it, in actually bringing back lots of birds of prey, there’s far more around now than it used to be 10 or 20 years ago?

Mike Flynn: Yeah and a lot of that’s down to public awareness, I mean there is far greater awareness now that wildlife crime is illegal; the problem that we’ve got is that there’s so little enforcement and you’ve got to remember, a lot of these wildlife crimes happen in very remote areas, where there’s nobody’s actually around and about to actually witness these things and you do have a kind of anomaly in the law where one part of the Wildlife & Countryside Act a person can be prosecuted on the evidence of one person, and that was kind of brought in because like osprey eggs being stolen, it might be just one hill walker that sees somebody going up the tree, so there is legislation there, what it is is that there’s a lack of enforcement.

Presenter: Mike Flynn from the Scottish SPCA and Tim Baynes from the Scottish Moorland Group, thank you to both.

This debate highlights the importance of having an interviewer who knows the right questions to ask. In our opinion, this one didn’t. Why didn’t he challenge Mike Flynn’s assertion that you can’t blame an organisation when all the official statistics demonstrate very clearly that the majority of these incidents are taking place on land managed for game-shooting? Why didn’t he challenge the poaching example – you can hardly place poaching (a so-called wildlife crime that isn’t actually a wildlife crime at all – it’s based on the principle of ‘theft’) alongside raptor persecution when one ‘crime’ (poaching) is ‘against’ the landowner’s interests and the other crime (raptor persecution) is very much in the landowner’s interest?

Why didn’t he challenge Tim Baynes’ assertion that there already is zero tolerance for wildlife crime in certain organisations when several estates well-known as raptor blackspots, and their employees, are members of those very organisations or provide funding to those organisations?

Why didn’t he challenge Tim Baynes’ assertion that the incident at Conon Bridge was ‘possibly nothing to do with anything deliberate done by the people responsible for managing that land’? He doesn’t know that – the police haven’t yet released information about their investigation.

Why didn’t he challenge Tim Baynes’ assertion that the law governing wildlife crime is tough – how many of those convicted of raptor persecution have ever received the maximum fine for their crimes or received any jail sentence? None of them!

Having said that, we know that there is currently a review underway to assess wildlife crime penalties (a review instigated by the Environment Minister last July). He said in parliament earlier this week that he expected the review group to report their findings by December this year. The group’s remit is this:

“To examine and report on how wildlife crime in Scotland is dealt with by the criminal courts, with particular reference to the range of penalties available and whether these are sufficient for the purposes of deterrence and whether they are commensurate with the damage to ecosystems that may be caused by wildlife crime”.

Interestingly, the identities of the group’s members were revealed this week:

The group’s Chair is Professor Mark Poustie, an esteemed legal academic from the University of Strathclyde.

Detective Chief Superintendent Robbie Allan from Police Scotland.

Hugh Dignon (senior civil servant) from the Scottish Government.

An un-named representative from the Crown Office.

Jeremy Greenwood, former Director of the British Trust for Ornithology.

Hugh Campbell-Adamson, owner of Stracathro Estates.

An interesting line-up. A well-qualified Chair and senior representatives from Police Scotland and the Scottish Government. We’ll reserve judgement on the COPFS rep until we find out who it is. The former Director of the BTO is presumably there to provide scientific expertise about the population-level impact of raptor persecution. But what on earth is the owner of a landed estate doing on this panel when the panel’s remit is to make recommendations for penalties for wildlife crimes, some of which will have been carried out by, er, estate owners?!!!!