Ten days ago we published a video about the highly suspicious disappearance of Fred, one of our satellite-tagged golden eagles.
The video included a number of interviews that had to be edited due to time contraints in the original film. One of those interviews was Chris Packham talking with Ian Thomson (Head of Investigations, RSPB Scoland) about the continued illegal persecution of golden eagles in Scotland.
Here is the full interview:
Raptor Persecution UK 
i still cannot understand why there is no law a harsh law against those barbarians -and if there is why is it not enforced by the police ??
An excellent interview. I was delighted to hear that this year’s tags of golden eagles (more than last year as well) will be more sophisticated, perhaps giving indication of death or killing.
You would think that the raptor killers would even now not be prepared to risk the opprobrium, and that shooters would be up in arms about their damaged reputation, but I see very few signs of this. Denial and abuse still seems to be the major reaction to the death of the many raptors by the shooting industry. Why?
We need to tag many Scottish Hen Harriers to ram the message home to this evil industry.
Where do I donate?
that new technology can’t come soon enough, brilliant work and thanks to all involved
the persecution of all our wildlife is HUGE. TRAGEDY . until government takes the shooting industry and its very serious activities, the mentality of the people who do this, will enjoy continuing to kill. Birds of prey, badgers, foxes all wildlife offers fun to the worst kind of man.
Excellent interview Ian Thomson….when this killing eventually stops [!?] it should always be remembered the horrific scale of the killing that has been going on on shooting estates in Scotland, for the best part of 200 years. The tagging only accounts for a very small proportion of our total eagle population..and yet we have this very high percentage of killed birds…how many are actually still being killed, every year?