Year: 2019

Yesterday evening we were sent a link via Twitter to the following website: Seven Years On

The website name didn’t mean anything, nor did the byline, ‘Snared by a driven pheasant shoot: a story of dishonour and arbitrary power in the British countryside‘.

[Photographed through the cottage window, by @SevenYearsOn1]

It took a while to understand what it was all about but gradually, flicking through the various sub-headings, a story emerges that will resonate with many others – indeed it already is doing on Twitter.

The author of the website (@SevenYearsOn1) is calling for a statutory right to know the proximity of driven pheasant shoots in relation to domestic dwellings. When you read about what she’s had to put up with over the years, it’s hard to disagree.

Proposed new legislation in Scotland will have significant ramifications for those who continue to kill birds of prey.

The Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections & Powers) (Scotland) Bill was introduced by Environment Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham on 30th September 2019 (see here for associated docs) and will, amongst other things, increase the maximum available penalties for the most serious animal welfare and wildlife offences.

For example, under the Wildlife & Countryside Act, the current maximum penalty available for intentionally or recklessly killing, taking or injuring a wild bird is six months imprisonment and/or a £5,000 fine with the case being heard in the Sheriff Court.

Under the proposed new Bill, the case could still be heard in the Sheriff Court where the maximum penalty would be 12 months imprisonment and/or a £40,000 fine, but the case could also be heard on indictment in a higher court where the maximum sentence would be five years imprisonment an/or an unlimited fine.

This policy document from the Scottish Government is worth reading for a clear explanation of what else is proposed under the new legislation.

These proposed changes are significant and very welcome – especially in light of the monumentally inadequate sentencing of convicted Scottish gamekeeper Alan Wilson recently (see here) although the new proposals still pale in to insignificance when compared with the zero tolerance penalties imposed in Spain (e.g. see here, here and here).

This Bill has been a long time coming – six years in fact – from 2013 when the then Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse commissioned a review on whether penalties for wildlife crime should be increased, as a direct response to ongoing illegal raptor persecution. Professor Mark Poustie submitted his report and a series of recommendations, including a penalty increase, in 2015. The then Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod broadly accepted those recommendations in 2016 and the Scottish Government committed to progressing them in its 2017/2018 Programme for Government.

Importantly, the five-year custodial penalty is big news because effectively it would mean that Police Scotland would now have the authority to apply for permission, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000 (RIPSA), to install covert cameras on private sporting estates for the purpose of detecting wildlife crime.

Currently, Police Scotland do not have the authority to seek permission to install covert cameras as part of an investigation simply because raptor persecution crimes do not merit a custodial sentence of three years or more. Authority can only be given if the activity is considered ‘proportionate’ and when the crime being detected is considered ‘serious’ (i.e. where the penalty would constitute a term of imprisonment for three years or more).

As we’ve seen in recent years, the RSPB has installed covert cameras at the remote nest sites of specially protected birds of prey and has recorded what is obviously a wildlife crime, but because the RSPB is a charity and not a statutory agency it is ineligible for RIPA/RIPSA authorisation so clever defence lawyers have been able to get cases thrown out of court on technicalities, and more recently some of these cases haven’t even reached court because the Crown prosecutors have decided the footage is inadmissible (e.g. see here and here).

It’s ironic that a law (RIPA/RIPSA) intended to protect the innocent has actually been exploited to protect the guilty and has undermined justice time and time again.

The Bill is currently at Stage 1 and is open to Parliamentary scrutiny. On 29th October the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform (ECCLR) Committee took evidence from a number of Scottish Government policy officials and there was an interesting discussion about the implications of the Bill for police-led video evidence, and also questions about why the Bill didn’t include proposals to extend vicarious liability and increased powers for the Scottish SPCA. You can read the transcript here: ECCLR Animals and Wildlife Bill stage1_29Oct2019

In early December RPUK will be participating in a round-table discussion on this Bill at the Scottish Parliament.

A couple of weeks ago the RSPB announced it was going to conduct a review of its policy on game bird shooting (see here). That’s all it was – a statement of intent to review a policy, nothing more, nothing less.

However, this statement elicited a surprisingly strong reaction from the game shooting organisations who mostly appeared to be terrified at the prospect of such a review and responded by hurling characteristic abuse at the RSPB. For example, Tim Bonner of the Countryside Alliance was quoted in the press as follows:

“Disappointingly this seems to be the final step in the RSPB’s long journey to becoming an anti-shooting organisation. 

It displays the organisation’s bizarrely warped priorities in the face of so many other pressing concerns that face the countryside we know and love“.

This morning the RSPB’s Martin Harper has responded to the media frenzy with a measured blog setting out the facts and dismissing the hysteria – well worth a read (here).

There’s another example of the RSPB hitting back this week….

In the Oct 9th edition of Shooting Times there was a spectacularly crap article based on a claimed conversation between an unknown gamekeeper and the article’s author, Jamie Blackett, claiming that two people who said they were from the RSPB were ‘inspecting‘ the property of the unnamed keeper and in doing so, according to Blackett, were ‘likely to be acting unlawfully‘, acting ‘contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights‘, ‘were probably trespassing‘, and ‘acting as if they were the police force’.

There was also some very strange and embarrassing drivel about allegations that another [unnamed] organisation had been removing eagles from nests without licences to fit trackers which “would probably be a criminal activity“. Er, yes it would be ‘a criminal activity‘ if the people removing eagles from nests to fit trackers weren’t licensed to do so – if Mr Blackett has any evidence of this we’d urge him to report it to Police Scotland without delay.

The text of this article appears to be based entirely on unsubstantiated claims and innuendo but also looks to have been carefully ‘lawyered up’, peppered with language that would prevent any accusations of libel from sticking. It says a lot about Shooting Times that it would publish this dross.

The RSPB wrote a letter of complaint to Shooting Times the following week and the letter has finally been published this week, as follows:

‘We note, with considerable disappointment, the recent article by Jamie Blackett (Country Diary, 9 October), which contains many false and totally unsubstantiated allegations about the RSPB.

It appears that this article seeks solely to damage the RSPB’s reputation and create suspicion and distrust in the minds of your readers. Its publication does nothing to encourage constructive discussion between the shooting industry and nature conservation NGOs, and is all the more disappointing in the light of recent discussions and meetings between RSPB staff and Shooting Times, where we are trying to build bridges between our sectors.

There is no evidence whatsoever to support the apparent source of this story’s assertion that the two individuals he claimed to encounter were from the RSPB, other than his claim that they told him this. The falsities are compounded by the fact that no attempt was made either by the author or your editorial team to put them to us for comment.

RSPB staff have no powers or right to ‘inspect vehicles’ – the only time we would be involved in carrying out any search would be when we are specifically requested by the police to assist them under their instruction and immediate close supervision. Similarly, the further accusations that RSPB staff were ‘trespassing’ or are vigilantes do not stand up to scrutiny.

The final paragraph of the article suggests that the RSPB may have brought the law into disrepute by acting dishonestly. Again, we repudiate this baseless accusation.

This article is constructed entirely on false accusation and allegation and on unevidenced opinion. For clarity, we refute the allegations completely and request that you publish this letter and provide us with an apology‘.

Allie McGregor, Communications Officer, RSPB

ENDS

The Shooting Times editor chose not to publish an apology.

The article’s author, landowner Jamie Blackett, is not new to this game. George Monbiot called him out earlier this year (see here), arguing that an article in the Telegraph that had been written by Blackett was likely to encourage further harassment of Chris Packham at a time when Chris had been receiving death threats.

And according to Blackett, sacking Chris Packham would ‘save our songbirds’. Ahem.