A critically injured buzzard was found at Rushup Edge, near Mam Tor in the Peak District National Park on 13th January 2020.
A veterinary examination revealed shot in the body and a broken wing. Unfortunately due to the extent of its injuries the buzzard had to be euthanised.
Derbyshire Police’s Rural Crime Team issued this appeal for information on Facebook yesterday:
Without any further detail (like seeing an x-ray) it’s not possible to gauge the extent of the buzzard’s injuries and thus estimate how far it might have been able to fly before becoming grounded. However, with a broken wing it’s probably safe to assume that it didn’t fly very far from the area where it was found:
It should be shocking that a protected species has been found illegally shot inside a protected area (a National Park). However, this is the UK, where birds of prey are routinely targeted and killed inside National Parks, and especially inside this one – the Peak District National Park is a notorious hotspot for illegal raptor persecution.
On and on it goes.
Raptor Persecution UK 
I suspect it was shot by a member of the same shooting industry which has just issued a ‘Zero Tolerance’ statement condemning raptor persecution.
It is quite easy to connect this entry about a shot protected raptor in an area of grouse moors and the previous entry about the shooting and countryside organisations claiming an intolerance of such persecution. Perhaps they will be true to their word and ” shop” the culprit. I will however not be holding my breath.
I know this area well. Gutted to see this happen here. It’s very close to a very popular and busy tourist spot (Mam Tor) and there is no (so called) “sport” shooting that I am aware of in the immediate area, the nearest grouse moors are a few miles away. It’s all sheep farms and unimproved pasture, a significant amount of the nearby land and farms are National Trust owned but not all. It seems that it’s not only gamekeepers that don’t like raptors in the Peak District National Park…..
National Parks in the UK don’t seem to be much of haven for wildlife:(
I suspect that no prosecution will take place regarding this incident. Put simply, and I’m not usually defeatist when something like this happens, but any gamekeeper who committed the crime will be lying low and will have dealt with any potential evidence which proves his guilt. Gamekeepers in general are as wily as the fox which sadly is a legitimate target for their weapons of death. I dread to think how many Buzzards are shot carefully throughout the UK, and am convinced from experienced observations that the corpses that are found are merely a very small tip of a very large death toll. These guys are never going to change, and I’d say that the only way to make a serious impact would be to ban the obscenity of game shooting. The shooting lobby is powerful, particularly when we’re being ruled by an UK Conservative Government. Scotland has a less extreme Government in the SNP, but their proposal to make things better for predatory birds are exceedingly slow to develop. The question that has to be asked is, will they ever get round to introducing strong legislation? I hope they do, as soon as possible, but don’t hold out much hope for an immediate turn around.