Month: July 2022

Farmer receives pathetic fine for poisoning two buzzards & a raven

This article appeared in The Journal today:

Farmer fined €500 for poisoning protected bird species in Co Wicklow

By Lauren Boland

A FARMER HAS been fined for poisoning protected birds in Co Wicklow after pleading guilty to what a judge described as a “serious crime”.

Christopher Thomas Noel Doyle, also known as Noel Doyle Senior, with an address at Crehelp in Co Wicklow, came before the Carlow District Court over a breach of restrictions on the use of poisoned bait.

The judge imposed a €500 fine and €1,500 in expenses that he must pay within four months.

A conservation ranger told the court he had discovered two dead buzzards, a dead raven, and a sheep carcass on lands at Athgreaney, Co Wicklow.

[Buzzard, photographer unknown]

The court heard that the ranger first found a dead buzzard and after further investigation identified a second dead buzzard, a dead raven, and a sheep carcass placed near a fox den.

Post-mortems by the Department of Agriculture and testing by Dublin Regional Veterinary Laboratory and the State Laboratory found that the birds died due to high levels of poison (carbofuran) in their systems.

The sheep had been cut open and the wound was laced with large amounts of carbofuran.

The ranger said that the levels of poison were extremely hazardous to all forms of life and that it was very fortunate that no humans had been accidentally poisoned.

He said it was likely that other wild animals had scavenged the carcasses and died from poisoning but were never found. 

Judge Marie Keane said there was an “astonishing amount of poison” used in what she described as a “serious crime” and “a deliberate enterprise” to try to persecute the local wildlife.

In a statement, Minister of State for Heritage Malcolm Noonan called it a “particularly heinous and disturbing wildlife crime”.

Buzzards are a protected species and deliberate poisoning of them is an offence under the Birds and Natural Habitats (Restrictions on the Use of Poisoned Bait) Regulations 2010.

Carbofuran was previously used as a pesticide in agriculture but is now banned because of its toxicity to wildlife, especially to birds.

Approval for the use of carbofuran products was withdrawn throughout the EU in 2007, including in Ireland in December of that year.

After an 18-month period to use up remaining stock, it was banned fully from 2009.

ENDS

Convicted Scottish gamekeeper Rhys Davies: delayed sentencing explained

In May this year, Scottish gamekeeper Rhys Owen Davies, 28, pleaded guilty to a number of depraved animal cruelty offences relating to the keeping and training of dogs for animal fighting (badger baiting) and of failing to seek veterinary attention for dogs that had sustained serious injuries from those fights (see here).

He also pleaded guilty to a number of firearms offences after the Scottish SPCA raided his home in 2019 on Millden Estate in the Angus Glens and found three unsecure guns and ammunition left lying around inside the house.

His fellow gamekeepers, the sporting agent and the landowner at Millden Estate (a well known raptor persecution hotspot) all apparently failed to notice any of his crimes, or the injuries sustained by some of his eleven dogs housed in kennels on the estate. They also apparently failed to notice the bags of dead raptors scattered around the estate – more on those soon.

Davies was only caught because, being a top-notch criminal mastermind, he sent ‘trophy’ photos of himself and some of his mates posing with mutilated animals to a printing shop and used his address on Millden Estate as the return address. The shop assistant alerted the Scottish SPCA who immediately opened an investigation.

On conviction at Forfar Sheriff Court on 5th May 2022, Sheriff Derek Reekie ignored the mitigation plea from the defendant’s QC (who paid for this QC??) and instead concurred with Crown Office Fiscal, Karon Rollo, who made clear that Davies was a fully-trained gamekeeper (three-years college training) and had been employed as a gamekeeper for four years so knew exactly what he was doing. Sheriff Derek Reekie agreed and asked for social reports on Davies before sentencing was due on 28th June 2022.

[Photographic evidence of badger baiting from Millden Estate gamekeeper’s phone. Photo provided by SSPCA]

Sentencing day arrived but frustratingly, sentencing was deferred for a further five weeks (here) without any explanation appearing in the media. This led to all sorts of unhelpful conspiracy theories on social media, mostly referring to the Masons and a corrupt judiciary.

I’ve since been provided with some information by someone who was present in court at that deferred sentencing hearing and hopefully this explanation will put to bed the conspiracy theories.

In May, Sheriff Reekie had asked for a report on Davies’ domestic circumstances in Wales, where Davies had since moved to after leaving Millden Estate in the Angus Glens. The Sheriff had allowed seven weeks for that report to be compiled and expected it to be available at the sentencing hearing on 28th June.

However, it turns out the social services department in Wales had only managed to make one phone call to Davies’ parents during that seven-week period and had not made a home visit. That’s probably an indication of how stretched these services are but nevertheless, the background report on Davies wasn’t ready.

Rather than ignore the non-existent social report and just pass sentence anyway, Sheriff Reekie allowed a further five weeks for that report to be completed. Apparently he made clear that this was to avoid providing any grounds for an appeal (by Davies’ QC) later on.

Sentencing is now due on 1st August 2022.

On the separate issue of dead raptors being found on Millden Estate during the search, I’ll be blogging about that very soon.

Raptor persecution “hasn’t been a problem for years”, claims Scottish Gamekeepers committee member

There was a jaw-droppingly half-baked article published in The Courier last week, featuring commentary from a Scottish gamekeeper.

Bob Connelly, who is reportedly a Committee member of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA), had been speaking at the Scottish Game Fair and the Courier‘s environment journalist Scott Milne took the comments at face value and wrote the following article, which has to be read to be believed.

People will not realise the importance of land management and the shooting industry until campaigners force the end of the sector.

That is the view of gamekeeper Bob Connelly, who works in an estate in north east Perthshire.

Bob was speaking at the Scottish Game Fair, which took place in Scone over the weekend.

The Scottish Government is preparing legislation that could see gamekeeper grouse shooting licenced.

This has come after a campaign by animal rights advocates [Ed: he’s referring to this blog!] releasing evidence which appears to show wildlife crimes such as raptor persecution and misuse of traps.

The theory goes that predators such as buzzards and hen harries are killed in order to protect grouse, which brings in a lot of money during shooting season.

ARE GAMEKEEPERS VICTIM OF A HATE CAMPAIGN?

Bob feels much of this evidence has been manufactured as part of a “malicious” campaign to turn public opinion against gamekeepers and the shooting industry.

He said: “They want to get rid of us.

“But people don’t understand what we do and why we do it.”

A case in point is the controversial practice of heather burning.

It has been criticised as unnecessary and potentially damaging to peatland, which can release large swathes of carbon.

But Bob has a different perspective.

“You have to accept that there are going to be fires in places like that if you let it overgrow.

“So if it’s inevitable, do you want to have a controlled fire or let a wild one get out of hand?

“That would be even more damaging.”

Bob also feels it’s important gamekeepers are allowed to control predator populations in order to protect smaller species.

He said: “What we do is we build it from the ground up. We make sure the right environment is in place for insects and other small species and then bigger ones can naturally thrive on top of that.

“There’s more and more red-listed birds. If you want to protect them, it’s important to control predators such as foxes and buzzards.

“There’s a lot of people who have been manipulated to feel a certain way on social media, but don’t fully understand what we do.

“They’ll will miss us when we’re gone.”

WILL LEGISLATION CHANGE THINGS?

Bob thinks the upcoming gamekeeper shooting legislation is not needed.

“There is already rules surrounding things like traps. I can’t see how it can be legislated anymore.

“Yes, there were problems in the past with raptor persecution and things like that.

“But if you discount one or two recent examples, it hasn’t been a problem for years.”

GAMEKEEPERS AND LAND MANAGERS ARE WORRIED

Tim Baynes is director of moorland with Scottish Land and Estates.

Also speaking at the Scottish Game Fair, he said many gamekeepers and land managers he knows are worried for their jobs.

“A lot of these people have a very specific skillset that has come down from generations.”

Tim wouldn’t go as far as Bob and say anti-shooting campaigners have adopted “malicious” practices, but he does feel they “have an agenda”.

“They want to remove shooting.

“But they are not involved in it or in managing land so they are coming at it from a different perspective.”

Tim hopes the shooting industry can work with politicians to have legislation that works for everyone.

However, he is concerned that last-minute changes might be brought in that would work against their favour.

“At the end of the day, we have to work with the government that has got the votes.

“There are people within the government who are pragmatic about the industry.

“But it can be difficult for them to publicly say so.”

ENDS

The level of idiocy in this article is quite staggering, even for an SGA committee member. I guess it’s what we’ve come to expect from the SGA though, who have been in denial about the extent of these crimes for at least the 12 years I’ve been writing this blog and probably for years prior to that, as their standard response to the most glaring of truths.

And it is that level of idiotic denial, combined with ongoing raptor persecution and the SGA’s inability to influence those within the shooting industry who continue to commit these disgusting wildlife crimes (e.g. see here, here, here, here, here), that has brought about the Government’s decision to introduce a grouse shooting licensing scheme.

That decision wasn’t based on so-called ” manufactured evidence“. It was based on the number of raptor corpses found dead and mutilated on game-shooting estates over many, many years, including poisoned eagles found on grouse shooting estates even inside our National Parks for God’s sake, combined with the massive weight of incontrovertible scientific evidence that all points to an outright refusal to abide by the law by many members of the game-shooting industry.

It’s not the fault of this blog, nor the fault of the many other campaigners who have been fighting against this abuse of our raptors for decades. The blame lies entirely, and obviously, with the criminals.

Have your say on General Licences in Northern Ireland

Last year conservation campaign group Wild Justice won another legal victory after challenging Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs’ (DAERA) about its awful and unlawful General Licences for killing wild birds (see here).

As a result of that successful legal challenge (only possible thanks to a magnificent response to Wild Justice’s crowdfunder), DAERA provided written assurance that its flawed general licences would be replaced by interim licences and that a full public consultation would be launched in due course.

That promised public consultation has now finally emerged, after months of delays by DAERA. The consultation opened earlier this month and is due to close in ten days time on Thursday 21st July 2022.

Wild Justice is encouraging all its supporters to respond to this consultation, to ensure DAERA cannot simply slide backwards and claim that nobody was interested.

For instance, Wild Justice is arguing that sparrows and starlings should NOT be killed ‘to protect livestock and crops’ because (a) there isn’t any scientific evidence to show these species have an impact; (b) General Licences for this purpose don’t exist anywhere else in the UK; (c) they’re both red-listed species(!) and (d) in the unlikely event that evidence was found that these two species are damaging livestock and crops then an individual (e.g. one-off) licence could be applied for. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for including these two species on a General Licence where they would be killed in unlimited numbers.

Wild Justice has provided a very easy-to-follow guide on how to respond to the consultation and you can find that information here. Thank you.

If you’d like to see the results of the rapid reform of General Licences across the UK, brought about by Wild Justice’s legal challenges, supported by crowdfunding from the general public, this blog from Wild Justice provides a good analysis.

If you’d like to be kept up to date with Wild Justice activities, you can subscribe to their free newsletter here.

Guest blog: Ospreys in the Glaslyn Valley

This is a guest blog written by Bywyd Gwyllt Glaslyn Wildlife, a small Community Interest Company (CIC) working to protect breeding ospreys and other wildlife in the Glaslyn Valley in north west Wales.

Ospreys in the Glaslyn Valley

Thanks to concerted conservation efforts, the osprey has in recent decades made an encouraging comeback in parts of the UK, none more so than in a stunning corner of North West Wales, the Glaslyn Valley near Porthmadog, where a special success story continues to unfold.

It was in 2004 when a local man first spotted an osprey flying up the Valley carrying a fish. He later found a nest and a temporary viewing area and nest protection scheme was quickly organised.

The male osprey was a Scottish bird born in 1998, Ochre 11(98) who had been translocated to Rutland Water, before making his way to Wales. His partner was an unringed female, now known as Mrs G, who remarkably has this year returned for her 19th year and is Wales’ oldest female breeding osprey.

[Scottish osprey Ochre 11]

It wasn’t the best of starts in 2004 with the nest blowing down in a storm, killing two chicks. The nest was repaired over the winter and happily the pair returned the following year and went on to breed until 2014. Their dynasty has since spread far and wide.

Bywyd Gwyllt Glaslyn Wildlife, now in its tenth year, runs Glaslyn Ospreys and has managed the project since the RSPB’s stewardship of the project came to an end in 2013. BGGW is an entirely volunteer-run operation relying on visitor and supporter donations.

The success story of Glaslyn’s ospreys took a new turn in 2015 when 11(98) Mrs G’s partner of eleven years, failed to return.

There were various potential suitors at the Glaslyn nest including one of Mrs G’s chicks from 2012, Blue 80. After some uncertain weeks, an unringed male, thought to be around three years old, Aran, arrived on the scene and went on to breed successfully with Mrs G producing two chicks that year. By 2020 they had gone on to raise a further 13 chicks, some of which have since been resighted in the UK and Africa. A new chapter had opened in the story of Glaslyn Ospreys.

[Osprey pair Mrs G and Aran]

By 2021, forty-one of Mrs G’s chicks with her two partners had fledged and five of them were continuing to breed in the UK. Furthermore, three grand chicks were also known to be breeding in Northumberland and Scotland. In total there were 112 grand chicks and ten great grand chicks the project knew of. Offspring continue to be spotted in their winter migration grounds in Africa and in 2022, the first male chick from 2005, Yellow 37, returned to breed for the twelfth year at Kielder. A family tree produced this year illustrates the story so far.

In 2021 the Glaslyn pair returned to the nest in the Spring and three eggs were laid. Unfortunately, the hatching of the eggs coincided with a severe storm during which Aran injured his wing and, consequently, was unable to fish. Sadly, the chicks died, the first time since 2005 that none had fledged from the Glaslyn nest. It was a tremendous blow for the project, but gradually over the summer Aran went on to make a full recovery, fishing and re-enforcing his bonds to Mrs G and the nest. He returned in perfect condition from his winter migration in April this year and the pair have had three more chicks, bringing the number of the female’s offspring to 52.

[Chicks from the 2014 season – Blue 7C, 8C and 9C. Chick 9C is breeding in northern England and chick 8C was re-sighted this year at Poole Harbour in Dorset and then Loch of the Lowes in Scotland]

In the Glaslyn Valley alone, no fewer than 19 different ospreys were seen and many of them identified on the Glaslyn nest or in the surrounding area last year. Many were Welsh born returnees. In 2022 there are seven known nests in Wales, three of which are in the Glaslyn Valley.

Today, a popular Visitor Centre and a new Hide (recently opened by Iolo Williams) at Pont Croesor provide a place where people from far and wide can see these magnificent birds. Live pictures are streamed from the nest and followed by thousands. The Centre is open every day between 10.30am and 4.30pm until the birds migrate in September.

The project will be represented at Wild Justice’s forthcoming Hen Harrier Fest at Adlington Hall & Gardens in Cheshire on Sunday 24 July. Call in and see us!

‘Higher, lower’ – Revive coalition takes Play Your Cards Right into Scottish Parliament

The REVIVE coalition has come up with another creative idea to lobby effectively for grouse moor reform in Scotland.

In 2020 the coalition produced a spoof version of Dragon’s Den, where representatives of the grouse shooting industry were seen pitching their case in the Den, only to be met with incredulity by the Dragons (watch the video here).

Last week they took an interactive game based on the game show ‘Play Your Cards Right‘ into the Scottish parliament building, inviting MSPs to choose ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ cards from the board.

The game is designed so that the cards / numbers on the top row become progressively higher and more disastrous (the environmental impact of grouse shooting) while the cards / numbers on the bottom row become progressively lower (the so-called economic ‘benefits’ of grouse shooting).

At the end of the game, the MSPs are left with the juxtaposition of a large number of animals killed (including an estimation of grouse numbers killed) next to the economic contribution figure of 0.02%.

Lots of MSPs were encouraged to have a go, from across the political parties, and even Environment Minister Mairi McAllen was game.

This is a very clever way to engage with the policy-makers and get across a message that is likely to be remembered.

Well done Max Wiszniewski from REVIVE and many thanks to all the participating MSPs.

Special thanks to Scottish Greens MSP Mark Ruskell for sponsoring the event.

Large Scottish estates face fines for ‘nature restoration’ failings in new land reform proposals

Yesterday the Scottish Government moved forward with its latest land reform proposals by launching a consultation for a new Land Reform Bill, which it has committed to bring in during this parliamentary session.

This is a result of the Bute House Agreement in August 2021 when the Scottish Greens and the SNP reached an agreement on a shared draft policy programme which detailed the key areas of policy on which the two parties agreed to cooperate, and that included grouse moor reform.

[Ecologically poor grouse moors dominate the landscape in the eastern Cairngorms National Park. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

The public consultation is seeking views on what measures should be included in the Bill. The Government says:

‘The Bill will be ambitious. It will address long-standing concerns about the highly concentrated pattern of land ownership in rural areas of Scotland.  At the same time, we want to ensure that our land is owned, managed, and used in ways that rise to the challenges of today: net zero, nature restoration, and a just transition’.

Community empowerment and ‘nature restoration’ (which doesn’t appear to have been defined yet but surely doesn’t include the continuation of ecologically depauperate, intensively-managed driven grouse moors) both feature heavily and, subject to the consultation responses, landowners could face financial penalties for breaches of the new rules in the form of fines and/or subsidy withdrawal.

Sev Carrell has written a good overview piece in the Guardian about the proposals in the consultation – see here.

You can read the Government’s overview here, which includes links to the consultation paper and to the respondent’s form.

The consultation opened on 4th July 2022 and closes on 25th September 2022.

Wild Justice invites you to Hen Harrier Fest, 24 July 2022

Hen Harrier Fest takes place in just under three weeks time on Sunday 24th July at Adlington Hall & Gardens, Cheshire.

To register for this free event, please visit Wild Justice’s Hen Harrier Fest webpage (here) and keep an eye on it as more detail will be uploaded soon!

Scottish Government appoints taskforce to review SSPCA’s powers to investigate wildlife crime

Yesterday, the Scottish Government made the following announcement on Twitter:

As a quick recap, the SSPCA’s current powers (under animal welfare legislation) limits their investigations to cases that involve a live animal in distress (including some wildlife crimes). The proposed new powers would allow them to also investigate wildlife crimes under the Wildlife & Countryside Act legislation, e.g. where the victim is already dead, and also incidents where a victim may not be present (e.g. if an illegally-set pole trap was discovered). See here for further detail.

So the latest announcement from the Scottish Government that a review is underway sounds good, yes? Who wouldn’t want increased powers for the SSPCA to allow them to investigate a wider suite of wildlife crimes, including raptor persecution? Quite a few actually, mostly those connected to the game-shooting industry – quelle surprise (see here).

However, this announcement is just the latest move in a long and tedious 11-year saga, and whilst the news is welcome, it should be considered within the context of those 11 years of excruciating can-kicking by the Scottish Government on this issue.

For new blog readers, here’s the embarrassing timeline of events to date:

February 2011: Increased powers for the SSPCA was first suggested by MSP Peter Peacock as an amendment during the Wildlife & Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill debates. The then Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham rejected it as an amendment but suggested a public consultation was in order.

September 2011: Seven months later Elaine Murray MSP (Scottish Labour) lodged a parliamentary motion that further powers for the SSPCA should be considered.

November 2011: Elaine Murray MSP (Scottish Labour) formalised the question in a P&Q session and the next Environment Minister, Stewart Stevenson MSP, then promised that the consultation would happen ‘in the first half of 2012’.

September 2012: Nine months later and nothing had happened so I asked Paul Wheelhouse MSP, as the new Environment Minister, when the consultation would take place. The response, in October 2012, was:

“The consultation has been delayed by resource pressures but will be brought forward in the near future”.

July 2013: Ten months later and still no sign so I asked the Environment Minister (still Paul Wheelhouse) again. In August 2013, this was the response:

“We regret that resource pressures did further delay the public consultation on the extension of SSPCA powers. However, I can confirm that the consultation document will be published later this year”.

September 2013: At a meeting of the PAW Executive Group, Minister Wheelhouse said this:

“The consultation on new powers for the SSPCA will be published in October 2013“.

January 2014: In response to one of this blog’s readers who wrote to the Minister (still Paul Wheelhouse) to ask why the consultation had not yet been published:

“We very much regret that resource pressures have caused further delays to the consultation to gain views on the extension of SSPCA powers. It will be published in the near future“.

31 March 2014: Public consultation launched.

1 September 2014: Consultation closed.

26 October 2014: I published my analysis of the consultation responses here.

22 January 2015: Analysis of consultation responses published by Scottish Government. 233 responses (although 7,256 responses if online petition included – see here).

I was told a decision would come from the new Environment Minister, Dr Aileen McLeod MSP, “in due course”.

1 September 2015: One year after the consultation closed and still nothing.

25 February 2016: In response to a question posed by the Rural Affairs, Climate Change & Environment Committee, Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod said: “I have some further matters to clarify with the SSPCA, however I do hope to be able to report on the Scottish Government’s position on this issue shortly“.

May 2016: Dr Aileen McLeod fails to get re-elected and loses her position as Environment Minister. Roseanna Cunningham is promoted to a newly-created position of Cabinet Secretary for the Environment.

12 May 2016: Mark Ruskell MSP (Scottish Greens) submits the following Parliamentary question:

Question S5W-00030 – To ask the Scottish Government when it will announce its decision regarding extending the powers of the Scottish SPCA to tackle wildlife crime.

26 May 2016: Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham responds with this:

A decision on whether to extend the investigatory powers of the Scottish SPCA will be announced in due course.

1 September 2016: Two years after the consultation closed and still nothing.

9 January 2017: Mark Ruskell MSP (Scottish Greens) submits the following Parliamentary question:

Question S5W-05982 – To ask the Scottish Government by what date it will publish its response to the consultation on the extension of wildlife crime investigative powers for inspectors in the Scottish SPCA.

17 January 2017: Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham responds:

A decision on whether to extend the investigatory powers of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will be announced in the first half of 2017.

31 May 2017: Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham rejects an extension of powers for the SSPCA ‘based on legal advice’ and instead announces, as an alternative, a pilot scheme of Special Constables for the Cairngorms National Park (here). It later emerged in 2018 that this pilot scheme was also an alternative to the Government’s 2016 manifesto pledge to establish a Wildlife Crime Investigation Unit as part of Police Scotland – a pledge on which it had now reneged (see here).

November 2019: The pilot scheme of Special Constables in the Cairngorms National Park was an absolute failure as a grand total of zero wildlife crimes were recorded by the Special Constables but plenty were reported by others (see here).

June 2020: Mark Ruskell (Scottish Greens) proposed further powers for the SSPCA at Stage 2 of the Animals and Wildlife Bill. The latest Environment Minister, Mairi Gougeon persuaded him to withdraw the proposed amendment on the basis that she’d consider establishing a taskforce to convene ‘this summer’ to consider increased powers (see here).

December 2020: Mark Ruskell (Scottish Greens) submits two Parliamentary questions asking about the status of the taskforce and who is serving on it (see here).

January 2021: New Environment Minister Ben Macpherson says the taskforce has not yet been appointed but that it is “expected to be established later this year“ (see here).

September 2021: In the 2021 to 2022 Programme for Government it was announced that the ‘independent taskforce [Ed: still to be appointed] will report before the end of 2022’ (see here).

May 3 2022: In an interview with Max Wiszniewski of the REVIVE coalition for grouse moor reform, new Environment Minister Mairi McAllan said: “It’s imminent and I wish I could tell you today but we are just finalising the last few points for the membership but I’m hoping to be able to make an announcement about that in the next few weeks“ (see here).

1 July 2022: Scottish Government announces Susan Davies has been appointed to lead the taskforce review and will ‘publish a report later this year’.

Mairi McAllan is the 8th Environment Minister to preside over this issue. It’s not her fault that it’s taken this long already and now yet another review has been commissioned; she was only 18 years old when this pantomime began and didn’t even become an MSP until 2021. Nevertheless, her party, the SNP, is responsible and it shouldn’t be surprised that this latest announcement will be met with an eye-roll and an accompanying yawn from those of us who have been waiting 11 years for any sort of progress.

If we can put that aside for a minute though, then we can probably appreciate the appointment of Susan Davies. She has masses of experience from the nature conservation sector (JNCC, SNH, Scottish Wildlife Trust, and currently CEO of the Scottish Seabird Centre) and acted as a special advisor to the Werritty Review on grouse moor licensing, so she’ll be very familiar with the extent of wildlife crime in Scotland. Most importantly, she doesn’t appear to have any links to the landowning/game-shooting sector so we may expect to see an unbiased and uncompromised review, unlike the Werritty Review.

The tweet from the Scottish Government indicates that her fellow taskforce members will be the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the Crown Office. That’ll be interesting. When the Government consulted on increased powers for the SSPCA back in 2014, COPFS said it would be inappropriate to respond but Police Scotland’s response was not in favour of increased powers for the SSPCA and this was discussed at length in a previous blog (here).

That was 8 years ago. Things have moved on, officers have moved on, relationships have improved and the SSPCA has been at the forefront of some impressive multi-agency investigations partnering with Police Scotland and others, leading to successful prosecutions (e.g. the conviction of shameless gamekeeper Alan Wilson in 2019 was notable and most recently, the conviction this year of depraved gamekeeper Rhys Owen Davies of Millden Estate – here).

And the taskforce doesn’t appear to be infiltrated by anyone whose sole motivation is to disrupt or delay proceedings or dilute the review’s recommendations in favour of no progress at all. That’s promising.

Let’s see what it’s able to produce by December.

UPDATE 27th December 2022: Taskforce review on extra powers for SSPCA ‘will be published within weeks’ (here)

UPDATE 1st February 2023: Wildlife Crime: key conservation organisations ‘excluded’ from Scottish Government’s review on increasing SSPCA powers (here)

Scottish Parliament sees sense & closes SGA’s petition seeking ‘independent monitoring of satellite tags fitted to raptors’

Hallelujah! After almost three years of wasting valuable parliamentary time, the Scottish Parliament has finally closed the petition lodged by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) calling for the ‘independent monitoring of satellite tags fitted to raptors’.

I’ve blogged about this petition several times before (here, here), as has Ian Thomson, Head of Investigations at RSPB Scotland – well worth a read here.

The petition has been closed because the cross-party committee scrutinising it recognised that adequate and proportionate monitoring is already in place. Contrary to the SGA’s ignorant and misinformed propaganda, there is already plenty of cooperative partnership-working between satellite taggers, the tagging licensing authorities, landowners and the police. We collaborate and share our data in order to improve conservation benefits for these iconic species across Scotland. What we don’t do is share data with those who would use the information to disturb and/or kill eagles or other tagged raptors.

Had the SGA not walked off from the PAW Scotland Raptor Group in 2017 when the damning results of the Gov-commissioned Satellite Tag Review Report was published, they’d have known that this petition was an utterly pointless waste of everyone’s precious time.

The SGA lodged this petition in September 2019 and it was seen by many as just the latest in a long line of efforts to undermine and discredit the use of raptor satellite tags, simply because the tagging of raptors like golden eagles, hen harriers, white-tailed eagles and red kites has exposed the previously hidden extent of illegal raptor persecution on many grouse moors and has finally led the Scottish Government to committing to the introduction of a licensing scheme for grouse shooting in Scotland.

[The satellite tag fitted to this golden eagle led researchers to a grouse moor in the Angus Glens where the bird was found to have been illegally poisoned. Photo by RSPB Scotland]

Raptor persecution crimes attract huge media attention because it’s hard to believe that people are still killing golden eagles and other raptors in Scotland in the 21st century.

As a result of this ongoing publicity, the game-shooting industry has spent considerable time and effort trying to undermine the satellite-tagging of raptors, either by launching disgusting personal & abusive attacks against named individuals involved in the tagging projects, or by blaming tagged raptor disappearances on imaginary windfarms, or by blaming tagged raptor disappearances on faulty sat tags fitted to turtles in India, or by blaming tagged raptor disappearances on bird activist‘ trying to ‘smear gamekeepers’, or by claiming that those involved with raptor tagging projects have perverted the course of justice by fabricating evidence, or by claiming that raptor satellite-tagging should be banned because it’s ‘cruel’ and the tag data serve no purpose other than to try and entrap gamekeepers.

There have also been two laughable attempts to discredit the authoritative golden eagle satellite tag review (here and here), thankfully dismissed by the Scottish Government. The industry knows how incriminating these satellite tag data are and so has been trying to do everything in its power to corrode public and political confidence in (a) the tag data and (b) the justification for fitting sat tags to raptors, hence this latest petition from the SGA. Unfortunately for the SGA, its petition wasn’t enough to derail the Government’s response to the Werritty Review in 2020, as many of us suspected was the intention.

[A young golden eagle fitted with a satellite tag in Scotland prior to fledging. Photo by Dan Kirkwood]

Those of us involved in raptor satellite tagging in Scotland submitted evidence to the various committees that have scrutinised this petition (e.g. Scotland’s Golden Eagle Satellite Tagging Group, who described the SGA’s petition as ‘fact-free nonsense’ (here); RSPB Scotland (here), and me (here), although strangely, in the three years the petition has been active, none of us have been asked about our evidence or invited to attend any of the hearings.

The latest committee to review this petition was the Net Zero, Energy & Transport Committee, who considered the petition at its meeting on Tuesday (28 June 2022).

The Committee had received a submission from NatureScot identifying that new data-sharing protocols [between taggers and NatureScot] are now in place that perhaps were not in place when the petition was originally submitted. [Ed: This is not the case at all; data-sharing has been open with NatureScot for years, just not formalised in writing because none of us deemed it necessary, so all NatureScot has done is confirm what was already happening!].

NatureScot also told the Committee it believes that the data provides important oversight and that tagging is being done ‘competently, professionally and in an open way’.

The Committee had also received correspondence from Police Scotland who said it was also happy with the protocols in place.

On this basis, the petition was closed. It was also noted that in future, stakeholders will be invited to attend the committee to provide expert input. That is welcomed.

I did note, though, that hilariously, the SGA had submitted a last-minute note to the Committee on the evening before the meeting, crying about how its attempt to get involved with the satellite tagging of a golden eagle last year had apparently been ‘blocked’. Funny, I didn’t think the SGA supported satellite tagging?!

Is there no end to their hypocrisy?

It’s a beautiful irony actually, as it illustrates perfectly just how regulated the field of satellite-tagging is in the UK, contra to the SGA’s absurd claims in this petition. All satellite-tagging project proposals have to provide rigorous scientific justification for fitting these tags, which is then scrutinised by a special panel of experts at the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO, the licensing body). If the proposal doesn’t meet these rigorous standards, the licence will be refused.

You can read the Committee’s decision to close the petition here:

net_zero_committee_report_28_june2022_sat_tag_petitionDownload

You can read the SGA’s story of apparently being ‘blocked’ from fitting a satellite tag to a golden eagle last year:

20220627_sga_to_con_pe1750Download

And if you want a really good laugh, I’d encourage you to read the Golden Eagle Satellite Tagging Group’s expert evisceration of the SGA’s petition here.