Year: 2019

Bye then, Therese Coffey

Dr Therese Coffey MP has been promoted out of DEFRA and is now Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, following the resignation of Amber Rudd, according to today’s media.

There won’t be many in the conservation world sad to see her go. Despite (in spite of?) her scientific credentials, Dr Coffey has been the epitome of wilful blindness when it comes to the illegal killing of raptors on grouse moors; totally disinterested and apathetic time and time and time again.

This is the Environment Minister who sat through the 2016 Westminster Hall debate on banning driven grouse shooting playing with her phone and rummaging around in her handbag (here). The Environment Minister who was happy to pose on the grouse moor at Wemmergill Estate where the corpses of two shot short-eared owls had been found previously (here) and where a satellite-tagged hen harrier disappeared (here). The Environment Minister who was happy to rely on sophistry instead of addressing the issue of lead ammunition (here). The Environment Minister who couldn’t be arsed to issue a statement after the publication of research showing that 72% of satellite-tagged hen harriers were considered to have been illegally killed on driven grouse moors (here). The Environment Minister who couldn’t be arsed to offer a full explanation about why she refused to instigate an independent inquiry in to the (un)sustainability of English grouse moors (here). The Environment Minister who stifled attempts to improve wildlife crime reporting because she misunderstood the limitations of the current reporting structure (here).

There will be others from different conservation fields who share our disdain, including Friends of the Earth who criticised Dr Coffey last year for her enthusiastic promotion of the weedkiller Round Up which contains highly toxic Glyphosate (here).

Sorry to see her go? Not one tiny bit, although judging by her voting record her move to the Dept of Work & Pensions should be of grave concern to the sick and disabled.

Operation Owl: national awareness campaign 21-22 Sept 2019

Operation Owl originated as a multi-agency initiative led by North Yorkshire Police in 2018, designed to raise awareness of illegal raptor persecution across the county (see here), and especially in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, North York Moors National Park and the Nidderdale AONB, all known to be areas where raptor killing is rife.

Earlier this year, Police Supt Nick Lyall (Chair, Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group) took the brand and expanded it to become a national campaign, fully endorsed by the National Police Chiefs Council (see here).

As a follow on to this, in two weeks time (Sat 21 – Sun 22 Sept) there will be a nationwide raptor persecution awareness campaign under the banner of Operation Owl.

This campaign is being coordinated by Sgt Stuart Grainger, one of the leading lights of North Yorks Police Rural Task Force. In addition to inviting as many regional police forces as possible, Stu is also encouraging participation from non-police organisations and individuals.

The coordinated message from this campaign has been listed by Stu as follows:

The first seven points are uncontentious no-brainers. However, points 8 and 9 look to be clumsily expressed. Sure, educate the public on the difference between legally and illegally-set traps, that’s an important distinction, but the promotion of ‘good estate management practices’ is highly contentious. It’s that word ‘good’. Just because something is lawful doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ‘good’ and definitely shouldn’t be promoted as such by the police!

That minor point aside, this national awareness campaign deserves everyone’s full support. If you have an organisation that would like to get involved, please email Stu Grainger to help him coordinate: stuart.grainger@northyorkshire.pnn.police.uk

If you’re not part of an organisation but would still like to get involved on social media, there’s no need to sign up, just look for the #OpOwl2019 hashtags during the campaign weekend and join in!

 

What happened to this buzzard, caught in a trap on Leadhills Estate?

This buzzard was caught inside a crow cage trap on the Leadhills Estate in January 2019. It isn’t illegal to catch a buzzard in this sort of trap – it’s seen as accidental by-catch – but it is illegal for the trap operator not to release it immediately upon discovery and it’s also illegal to not check the trap at least once within every 24 hour period.

The trap, which was padlocked so was inaccessible to anyone without a key, was being filmed covertly by RSPB Scotland and their camera captured some interesting goings on in the night, with ‘somebody’ (unidentified, natch) rocking up on a quad bike, entering the padlocked trap, appearing to strike at something on the ground, removing something from the trap, and then driving off. As the cameras continued to roll, at dawn it became apparent that the buzzard was no longer in the trap.

Watch the video here:

According to a detailed blog (here) written by RSPB Scotland Head of Investigations Ian Thomson, there were at least two 24 hour periods where the trap was not checked by the trap operator, but despite a Police Scotland investigation, the trap operator could not be identified (presumably because the estate refused to divulge that information).

Nobody has been charged with anything relating to the operation of this trap.

Just as nobody has been charged for the witnessed shooting of a hen harrier on this estate in 2017 (here), or for the witnessed shooting of a short-eared owl on this estate in 2017 (here), or for the shooting of a buzzard found on this estate in 2018 (here), or for the savagely barbaric trapping of a hen harrier on this estate a couple of months ago (here). In fact, according to the RSPB, there have been a total of 72 confirmed raptor persecution incidents recorded on this estate since 2003 and only two of them have resulted in a successful prosecution.

Not only have there been no charges brought, but no civil sanctions either, such as a restriction on the use of the General Licence, which SNH has had the authority to impose since 1 January 2014 if there is sufficient evidence (from Police Scotland) that wildlife crimes have taken place but insufficient evidence to secure a criminal prosecution.

Great, isn’t it?

What are Britain’s uplands for? Debate in North Yorkshire tomorrow

This should be an interesting day tomorrow, with guest speakers including Martin Holland (Chair of Goathland East Moor Regeneration Group and a Goathland Parish Councillor), Andrew Johnson (Duchy of Lancaster), George Winn-Darley (Moorland Association regional rep & grouse moor owner [Spaunton Moor]), Rachel Pickering (North York Moors National Park Authority) and Robert Frewen (Country Land & Business Association).

The event will be hosted and chaired by Anne Gray of the Heather Trust (formerly of Scottish Land & Estates).

For those of us in to raptors, the North York Moors National Park, which is saturated with driven grouse moors, represents one of the major raptor persecution blackspots in the country. Indeed, these grouse moors were identified in the recent scientific paper on hen harrier persecution as being one of the worst of the so-called Protected Areas for hen harriers. Can’t imagine why. Perhaps this issue will be raised in tomorrow’s debate?

Hope to see some of you there!

NB: You need to book here

Raising awareness of eagle persecution at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Many thanks to multi-award-winning author Gill Lewis for inviting us to share the stage with her at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival to raise awareness about eagle persecution on Scottish grouse moors.

Gill was there to present on a couple of her new books, including Eagle Warrior, which was inspired by the suspicious disappearance of golden eagle Fred in the Pentland Hills in 2018. She generously shared an hour-long slot so the audience could hear not just just about her book but also about the long-term killing of golden eagles on driven grouse moors and the Scottish Government’s apparent reluctance to do anything much about it.

[Photo by Olivia Robertson]

[Photo by Olivia Robertson]

Thanks also to Kirsten Lamb of publishers Barrington Stoke who turned up to the event with a big pile of postcards, pre-addressed to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, allowing audience participants to draw pictures of eagles and write a personal message to Ms Sturgeon urging her to take action.

We ended up with 42 postcards, some created by children as young as five years old and others created by a Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh! It was brilliant to meet nine-year-old Freddie (now ten!) who’d previously drawn a postcard and had managed to get a response out of Ms Sturgeon, which is more than the rest of us had managed. Here are some of the cards drawn at the Festival:

At the end of the session a few of us decided to walk across the road to Bute House to hand deliver the cards but we were told at the door that we’d need to post them. The cards are all now individually stamped so hopefully someone in the First Minister’s office will make sure they land on the right desk. Perhaps Golden Eagle Species Champion Andy Wightman MSP should call in to her office and ask to see the cards and could put them on display somewhere at Holyrood, along with all the other cards that have been sent in in recent months.

Thanks again to Gill, Jane Sandell (Chair), Kirsten Lamb and everyone at the Book Festival who made us so welcome. Thanks also to the fantastically engaged audience who responded with such energy and purpose. We’re aware that some audience members were intent on taking cards back to their schools to encourage further participation.

Scot Gov schedules time for response to Werritty in 2019-2020 work programme

‘We’re waiting for Werritty’ has been a tedious and tiresome response for months now.

I wrote a long four-page article on this topic back in July, for the September edition of Birdwatch magazine. I wondered at the time whether the article would still be relevant by September because, surely, the Werritty Review would be published before the Sept edition of Birdwatch, right? It was stupid of me to be concerned; of course the Werritty Review hasn’t yet been published.

[Thanks, Birdwatch, for commissioning this work and continuing to highlight illegal raptor persecution with such prominence. The Sept edition is now available in the shops or online].

Originally due to report in Spring 2019, the Werritty Review (a Scottish Government-commissioned review of grouse moor management) was initially delayed due to health reasons, which is fair enough. Then we heard it’d report in June, then we heard it’d be in July, then we heard from Professor Werritty himself that it’d be ‘during the summer‘.

At the end of July, in response to public fury about on-going illegal raptor persecution on Scottish grouse moors, a Government spokesperson told us the report ‘was due in the next few weeks’ (see here).

Five weeks on and now in to September (some of us consider this to be autumn) and we’re still ‘waiting for Werritty’.

One of the major concerns about this ongoing delay was that the Scottish Government would have insufficient time to factor the Werritty Review in to its 2019 – 2020 work programme and thus any recommendations that Professor Werritty had made in his review would be kicked further in to the long grass and left to rot and fester for another few more years.

However, somebody in the Scottish Government appears to be on the ball. The Programme for Government has been published today (see here) and tucked away on page 59 is this:

That’s promising, sort of, in that we can expect a response before the end of 2020(!).

 

DEFRA’s incoherent response to latest ban driven grouse shooting petition

Wild Justice’s petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting had reached the 10,000 signature threshold required for a Government response within hours of going live on 13th August 2019.

DEFRA has now finally managed to compose a response (see here) and it lives up (down) to what we’ve come to expect from a wilfully blind Government that’s all about protecting vested interests rather than protecting wildlife and the environment.

Actually, it’s worse than that. The response appears to be a series of unconnected and irrelevant paragraphs, some clearly copied and pasted from previous responses, jumbled together in a failed attempt to appear coherent and intelligent. The end result is nothing of the sort, just a magnificent display of uncritical thinking and a refusal to engage with the actual issues raised.

Here it is in its full glory:

It’s very noticeable that this response statement only mentions driven grouse shooting once. The rest of the time DEFRA refers either to ‘grouse shooting’, ‘shooting activities’, ‘shooting’, and ‘game bird shooting’. This inconsistency can be expected when sentences have been copied and pasted from so many different sources, but it makes it look like DEFRA isn’t paying attention or, more likely, that it simply can’t be arsed and, crucially, misses the point that the petition focuses on driven grouse shooting, not the other types of grouse shooting which, arguably, are far more sustainable, certainly in relation to current management practices for driven grouse shooting.

As usual, there’s simply no acknowledgement that the driven grouse shooting industry is dependent upon wildlife crime, to such an extent that it is having detrimental effects on some raptor species at the population level. We’re not talking about one or two individual birds here, we’re talking about impacts on entire populations, sometimes at a regional level and sometimes at a national level. Ironically, the peregrine, used here by DEFRA as an indicator of success, is one of those species adversely affected on a regional (here) and a national scale (here) by illegal persecution on driven grouse moors. DEFRA tries to underplay this by stating ‘there are still individuals who continue to commit these crimes’. It’s classic wilful blindness, refusing to address the extent of the criminality either because of vested interests or for fear of reprisals (in this case, loss of votes and donations) from those involved.

If this DEFRA statement was an essay written by a university undergraduate, it’d be returned with a low grade and a ‘you need to do better than this or you’ll be booted off the course’ comment. The lack of critical thinking skills is startling. Seriously, why on earth would anyone think this was a useful sentence to include:

‘A report by the UK shooting community concludes that the overall impact of game bird shooting is positive‘.

In a strange way it’s actually quite reassuring that the quality of DEFRA’s response is this bad. It tells us that they (Government and its mates in the grouse shooting industry) haven’t developed any new ideas, can’t deal with the mounting evidence, and refuses to budge from a position of obstinate denial. This should provide us with all the motivation we need to continue applying pressure and gathering support for our movement.

For a more detailed deconstruction of DEFRA’s response, have a look at Mark Avery’s blog here.

Clear message to Westminster as 100,000 people call for ban on driven grouse shooting

At 7.32pm last night, less than three weeks after launching, this petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting secured the 100,000 signatures required for it to be considered for a debate in Westminster Hall.

The speed with which this was achieved is simply phenomenal. By way of comparison, the last time a petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting reached 100,000 signatures (in 2016) it took five months to get there.

This speed and this surety this time around will not have gone unnoticed.

A MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who has helped us reach the target. This is an ever-increasing movement of motivated and determined citizens and many people have helped spread the word about the petition, resulting in this landslide result.

We await the Government’s written response which was due after the petition reached 10,000 signatures (20 days ago, and counting) and now we also await a decision from the Petitions Committee who will consider our petition for a debate.

The petition is still live (here), for now!

 

RSPB Scotland demolishes BASC in radio interview

If you’ve got a spare five minutes it would be well spent listening to this radio interview on yesterday’s Farming Today programme on BBC Radio 4. (Starts at 7 min 50 sec)

It pits Ian Thomson (Head of Investigations, RSPB Scotland) against Duncan Thomas (BASC) discussing the ongoing illegal persecution of birds of prey on driven grouse moors.

It’s a masterclass from Ian, who bats away Duncan’s witless nonsense with ease.

Meanwhile, Chris Packham’s petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting is currently on 87,000 signatures – it needs 100,000. If you can help, please sign here.

[Ian Thomson speaking at this year’s Hen Harrier Day in Derbyshire. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

No vicarious liability prosecution for Longformacus Estate

Ten days ago Scottish gamekeeper Alan Wilson was sentenced for a catalogue of wildlife crime offences, including possession of the banned poison Carbofuran and the shooting of protected raptors, badgers and an otter on the Longformacus Estate in the Scottish Borders (see here).

[Criminal gamekeeper Alan Wilson, photo by Daily Record]

Very early on in this case we were aware that two individuals had been charged in relation to the crimes uncovered at Longformacus Estate (see here) and it was rumoured that the second man was facing a charge of alleged vicarious liability for Wilson’s crimes, although we were unable to verify this.

As a quick re-cap, vicarious liability was a measure introduced by the Scottish Government on 1 January 2012 as a direct and specific response to ongoing illegal raptor persecution, whereby somebody (e.g. a landowner or a sporting agent) may be held responsible for the criminal actions of an employee – see here for a more detailed explanation.

Following Wilson’s conviction and then subsequent sentencing earlier this month, we were keen to find out whether the Crown Office was now pursuing a charge of alleged vicarious liability against any individual associated with the management of Longformacus Estate. Last week we wrote to the Crown Office for clarification and this is the response received yesterday:

So, here we are yet again.

No prosecution for anyone associated with the management of Longformacus Estate where gamekeeper Alan Wilson was able to commit crime after crime after crime after crime, apparently without his boss(es) noticing.

For a defence of a charge of alleged vicarious liability, the gamekeeper’s boss(es) would need to show that (a) s/he/they did not know the offence was being committed; AND (b) that s/he/they took all reasonable steps AND exercised all due diligence to prevent the offence(s) being committed. Without knowing the full facts and circumstances of this case it is impossible for us to judge whether the Crown Office’s decision not to pursue a charge was sensible, but it has to be said that given the extent and duration of Wilson’s criminal activities, it would have been very interesting indeed to have heard his bosses’ interpretation and explanation of ‘all due diligence’.

We’ll probably never know why the Crown Office chose not to proceed – it is under no obligation to offer any explanation to the public. However, this latest decision really shouldn’t come as any surprise to anybody – remember, this is the same Crown Office that dropped five prosecutions for alleged raptor persecution in quick succession in 2017 (see here), even including several cases where RSPB video footage had captured the crimes on camera! Those decisions not to proceed with prosecutions hailed the start of what has now become complete exasperation at the authorities’ failure to take on many cases linked to wildlife crime on game-shooting estates.

The Crown’s decision not to pursue criminal proceedings in relation to the crimes committed at Longformacus Estate also further entrenches the view that vicarious liability as a measure for tackling ongoing raptor persecution is a resounding failure. Introduced seven and a half years ago on 1 Jan 2012, only two successful prosecutions have been secured: one in Dec 2014 (here) and one in Dec 2015 (here). A third case in Oct 2015 was dropped because the authorities couldn’t identify the estate’s management structure (here) and a fourth case was abandoned in April 2017 because the Crown said ‘it wasn’t in the public interest to continue’ (here).

Who thinks that two successful cases in 7.5 years is a measure of success? Perhaps if raptor persecution crimes weren’t still being committed then vicarious liability might have been viewed as a success in terms of its deterrent value but it’s quite clear, given the ongoing reports of persecution, that landowners and sporting agents are probably increasingly confident of evading prosecution and the Crown’s decision on the Longformacus Estate will only strengthen that view.

The question now is, for how many more years do we have to sit and watch the pathetic failure of vicarious liability as a measure to combat raptor persecution? The Scottish Government can no longer rely on this as an indication of its commitment to tackling these crimes. Sure, when introduced in 2012 it was done in good faith and with the best of intentions but it is quite clear for all to see that, for whatever reason, it isn’t working, and the Scottish Government needs to acknowledge this failure and find out why it’s failing and get it fixed.

It’s not just convicted gamekeeper Alan Wilson sticking up two fingers to our law-abiding society.

The topic of vicarious liability was raised at the recent SNP Conference Fringe meeting on grouse moor reform (here) as well as the Revive Coalition’s conference in Perth (here) and caused quite a stir amongst delegates and panellists at both events. It’s an issue we’re likely to follow up with several interested MSPs.

Meanwhile, Chris Packham’s petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting is doing exceptionally well, just two weeks after launching. It has now attracted over 81,000 signatures but is likely to fall if it doesn’t reach 100,000 signatures by Sept 9th, thanks to the current shenanigans at Westminster (if Parliament is suspended all unfinished business, including live petitions, will fall). If you haven’t yet signed, please do so HERE. Thank you.