The RSPB has this evening released video footage of an eyewitness’s account of a short-eared owl being shot on the well-known Broomhead Estate in the Peak District National Park last summer.
The eyewitness, who understandably doesn’t want to be identified (probably due to the harassment and intimidation suffered by other eyewitnesses in this region – e.g. see here), watched the owl being shot by an armed man who had arrived on the grouse moor on an all-terrain vehicle, carrying a shotgun and a bag. He shot the owl and shoved its lifeless corpse inside a rabbit hole in an effort to conceal the crime.
Fortunately, this eyewitness was savvy enough to have filmed the event and was able to return to the grouse moor the next day and pinpoint the spot for investigators from the RSPB and South Yorkshire Police.
They retrieved the owl’s corpse and a post-mortem confirmed it had been shot.
A local gamekeeper became the immediate suspect but, as happens so often, there was insufficient evidence to link him conclusively to the crime and so no prosecution could take place. You can read the RSPB’s blog about this case here, including a link to the video.
Grouse moors in this part of the Peak District National Park have been at the centre of other police investigations into alleged raptor persecution in recent years, including the suspicious disappearance of a satellite-tagged hen harrier (‘Octavia’) in 2018 (here).
Last year, another satellite-tagged hen harrier (‘Anu’) roosted overnight on a local grouse moor before ‘disappearing’. His tag was found several km away, no longer attached to the harrier and a forensic examination revealed the tag’s harness had been deliberately cut from the bird (here).
Two other hen harriers ‘disappeared’ from their breeding attempts on National Trust-owned grouse moors in the Peak District National Park last year (see here).
I’ve blogged previously about the Broomhead Estate in relation to the apparent mis-use of medicated grit (see here) and the use of gas gun bird scarers (here, here, here and here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
You name the estate which is good but why not name the estates where shop dummies are put put as bird scarers?
[Ed: for various reasons, some strategic, some legal]
My blood is boiling.
I was marvelling at a short-eared owl hunting just this morning and I come home to learn this.
There are some dispicable excuses for human beings amongst us. That bastard knows what he has done – I don’t know how these shits sleep at night. When is this going to end?
This incident should be enough to [Ed: rest of sentence deleted as libellous].
Only when raptor crime has serious consequences for landowners and those who lease shoots will this persecution stop.
Licensing will be a step in the right direction, but on its own may not be sufficient to stop all the criminal activity taking place, as criminals will no doubt work out ways to hide their activities and navigate around the licensing scheme to avoid penalties. (The fact the owl killed in this incident was hidden in a rabbit hole is a clear demonstration of the measures the criminals undertake to hide their crimes- had the shooting not been witnessed there is no doubt this crime would ever have been detected)
Just like the gentleman who reported this incident, I too often wonder what has happened to the birds of prey I have seen regularly flying over a particular moor, only to notice their absence later on. My suspicion is that they have been illegally killed- and that really angers me!
The incident also highlights the importance of members of the public getting out onto the moors, particularly early in the morning or evening, as if more of these crimes are witnessed, then the harder it will be for politicians to deny what is happening.
The witnessing, and reporting of similar incidents could also be helpful to those who choose to engage in direct action, so that they can lawfully protest and disrupt the shooting on the moors where the crimes are taking place.
One way or another this criminal activity has to be stopped, and those responsible need to understand that what they are doing is not acceptable and needs to be punished.
Perhaps some “bull shit shooter” might like to try and deny/justify this?
The industry is clearly beyond redemption and needs banning at this stage, especcially within so called NP’s
I completely agree
I expect this to be a busy comments section over the next day or so. Why? Well I noted over the past few weeks a good number of naïve deniers / obfuscators / ostriches & plain dimwitted trolls prefaced their comments on many recent RPUK blog posts by saying things along the lines of… “I oppose raptor persecution…I condemn illegal persecution…anybody doing it should be prosecuted…etc, etc,” and then write the big-but- small-word “but” and go on to talk total shit about “it’s only a few bad apples…grouse moors are great…keepers are the real conservationists, etc, etc”. So here is their chance to condemn it in this comments section, and to praise the witness for reporting, and RSPB and Police for publicising it, and to spread awareness of the request for information on social media. Oh, and if members, to ask BASC / NGO / the astroturfing “Moorland Groups” on Facebook, etc (as they purport to represent ‘real conservation’) what they are all doing to help the investigation.
Damn straight, spaghnum!
Various quarter-wits have commented here lately, under the misapprehension that they can con the readers with the same tired, old garbage that they’ve parroted for years. It’s almost as if they’ve a list of cliches available somewhere which they copy/paste with no awareness that the world has moved on, leaving them and their discredited opinions behind.
Rather predictably, when their ignorance and dishonesty is exposed, they either melt away like wet farts, make complete fools of themselves or run off and get their pals to back them up.
[Ed: comment deleted as libellous]
Can you please explain to me exactly what I wrote that could be construed as libel? Absolutely not seeking a fight, just enlightenment.
Many thanks and apologies for any inconvenience.
[Ed: Hi Ian, I can’t explain ‘exactly’ because that would repeat the libel, but it’s worth remembering that nobody has been convicted so attributing the offence to specific individuals would be libellous. Hope this helps]
After my initial outrage at this incident, I have given the matter some more thought and wonder if a simple change in the law could help the police in incidents like this where an unknown person is seen with a vehicle on a moor when a crime takes place?
At the moment most off road vehicles used on shooting estates are not registered and fitted with registration plates making identification of a particular vehicle more problematic.
The law only requires motor vehicles used on the public roads to be registered and fitted with registration plates.
Since most of the grouse moors are public places then there is always the potential for an incident involving a member of the public and a mechanically propelled vehicle driven on the moors. (There are differences in the definition of motor vehicle and mechanically propelled vehicles)
Should not the government consider making it a legal requirement for all vehicles, whether they be motor vehicles or mechanically propelled vehicles used in public places to be licensed?
The owner of that vehicle could then be traced and obliged to furnish details to the police of who was using the vehicle at the time when a crime was committed or when the vehicle was involved in a traffic offence..
This could potentially make it much easier for the police in incidents like this to positively identifying who was using the vehicle at the time when a crime was committed.
At the moment the position is such that even when a crime is witnessed and police enquiries lead to the identification of a suspect, on most occasions those suspects evade justice because of identification issues. This is totally unacceptable.
I would therefore suggest that every avenue of the law should be explored to help the police positively identify suspects and bring them to justice, especially in our modern society when vehicles are frequently used in the commission of crimes.
This is something readers of this blog could perhaps write to their MPs about?
I believe that it is still legally problematic, even if a VRN is noted on your typical road legal Hilux type 4wd, quad or Polaris, etc at the scene of a persecution incident. The vehicle will be said to be an estate pool vehicle, and on many estates this means potentially (or so they will claim) used by a fair number of similarly outfitted camo-green clad (often with face coverings / snoods) individuals. To me, root & branch new legislation that is good for the real world is needed, not just laws suited only for muddying the waters in parliamentary debates.
You are no doubt correct that estates will hide behind the fact that any of a number of people might drive a given vehicle so they can’t say who was the driver on a given occasion. That said, it is hard to believe that someone can take out a six wheeled atv onto the moor for a spot of ‘predator control’ with no-one else being aware. The perpetrator in this incident has no doubt been aided and abetted by those others who have kept their lips sealed.
As I understand it from reading details about other cases, mainly on this website- I think all the Headkeeper, other keepers, Agent, etc would need to do is give a “No comment” reply in a police interview. But you are right of course, it is known perfectly well who is driving which vehicle and when.
And also which keeper is “at work” in any given location is known perfectly well by the Headkeeper and Agent – that is why they are given “Beats” these days i.e. in employment terms of reference called a “Beatkeeper” rather than just an “Underkeeper” (a “Beat” being geographic areas carved up on Estates map, bit like a police “Bobby on the Beat”) that each keeper is specifically responsible for. Unlike an Underkeeper who’s work is general, informal and at discretion of Headkeeper. The “Beatkeeper” principle gives direct accountability for a Headkeeper or Agent to identify a keeper that is underperforming, by not producing the number of grouse his specific Beat should be generating…and give him some sage “words of advice” etc.
Or sack him and replace with someone who can & will produce grouse. Sorry to cover that again, as you probably know it already, I repeated it more for benefit of newcomers!
We need a proper vicarious liability law: one where the landowner is deemed responsible for the criminal actions that occur on their land, the exception being where the crime committed is actually committed against, rather than on behalf of, the estate. Where it is a tax-evading / avoiding company structure there should be a named director who is to face the sanctions of the law, including imprisonment, for a failure of their employees (direct or indirect / casual) to observe the law.
Obviously the real answer is a ban on intensive shooting, be it wildfowling, grouse, pheasant and / or partridge: and a complete ban on shooting any other so-called game species. The casual ownership of shotguns (and air rifles whilst they are at it) should be banned. I do not consider that gamekeepers have a non-casual reason for owning and using them. They are not a profession: no matter how they might try and dress it up. They are about as professional as your average farm hand. Actually, having been a stockman back in the day, they are less professional than the average farm hand: they measure success on how much they can get away with killing, whilst my job was the direct opposite.
We have vicarious liability in Scotland. It has made no difference. I wouldn’t waste any time and effort in campaigning for its introduction in England. Better to focus on a licensing system.
“We need a proper vicarious liability law: one where the landowner is deemed responsible for the criminal actions that occur on their land”
Would that apply for all property/land, to every such (land)owner and for all possible crimes?
All shooting of any animals should be banned, no ifs no buts… there’s proper selfish egoistic people out there, they dont give a toss as long as their grouse are there to be shot.. it needs banning, there should be no such job as a game keeper … totally outdated..
We are all appalled by this incident but, sadly, no-one will be surprised by it. The game shooting industry professes to vehemently condemn raptor persecution and pretends that it is a rarity, practised by only a minority of bad apples but this blog endlessly reports evidence of an ongoing onslaught on birds of prey across the grouse moors, exposing the bad faith of such utterances. The pretence of the industry to be supporting the recovery of the hen harrier whilst casting a veil over this slaughter is the height of hypocrisy.