Earlier this week, Police Scotland issued a press statement about the conviction of two men in relation to a wildlife crime investigation on a pheasant and partridge shooting estate in Stewartry, Dumfries & Galloway.
David Excell, 54, pleaded guilty to trapping and killing a pine marten on the estate, in addition to failing to comply with the conditions of his firearms licence. He was fined £9,700 and his firearms licence has been revoked.
Kenneth McClune, 61, pleaded guilty to failing to comply with the conditions of his firearms licence. He was fined £840 and his firearms licence was also revoked.
At a superficial level this seems like a good result and a half-decent fine, at least for David Excell. The revocation of the firearms licences is also very welcome, although it would have been useful to know whether the two individuals also held shotgun certificates and whether those had also been revoked. (My understanding is that a shotgun certificate isn’t automatically revoked even if a firearms certificate has been – see here).
However, even though the convictions are welcome, there is something very odd about this case.
Firstly, the statement from Police Scotland was (deliberately?) vague, excluding the date the offences took place, the name of the estate where the offences took place and the occupations of the two guilty men. Is there some ‘shielding’ going on here?
Secondly, the police statement also included a gratuitous reference from the Police Wildlife Crime Officer in defence of shooting estates in general:
“The actions of a few individuals do not reflect the positive steps taken by most land owners and managers to maintain and encourage wildlife in our countryside“.
Eh? Why on earth is this statement included in a press release about a man convicted of wildlife crime, and perhaps more seriously, on what qualified evidence has this claim been based?
Some would argue that the intensive and systematic (currently lawful) killing of wildlife on sporting estates (up to an estimated quarter of a million animals per year on grouse moors alone), undertaken entirely on the basis of increasing gamebird stocks for shooting, is not ‘maintaining and encouraging wildlife in our countryside‘. Some species will benefit, for sure, but other species definitely don’t. Either way, this isn’t a pronouncement that should be coming from Police Scotland.
But the oddest thing of all about this case is that I believe it is linked to this 2021 Police Scotland investigation into the alleged killing of birds of prey on an unnamed estate in Stewartry, but there’s no mention of this in the Police Scotland statement.
So either (a) I’m wrong that the allegations of raptor persecution relate to this case and there’s another, entirely separate case relating to another Stewartry estate going on; or (b) the allegations about raptor persecution do relate to this case but are being heard separately (which would be odd but not inconceivable, especially if those allegations relate only to the two other men charged in October 2021); or (c) the allegations of raptor persecution do relate to this case but have been quietly dropped.
Some clarification is needed. Watch this space.
UPDATE 16 November 2023: Charges dropped for raptor persecution offences committed on Overlaggan Estate, Dumfries & Galloway (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
The Police are no doubt not naming the estate to protect the identity of its millionaire owner but is only succeeding in placing them ALL under suspicsion which is not such a big problem because they all seem to think they can do as they like which is not that far from the truth. The UK and the people who live here do not yet seem to realise what a mess the countryside is in and the scum that go out with guns will have the upper hand for a long time to come I am glad I was not born any later because despite “the writing being on the wall” for a long time the attitude of the government Royal Family and most wealthy owners of these estates has not changed shame on you all. It might be difficult for the police who are one moment shooting and even working alongside gamekeepers to catch poachers to prosecute them but instructions from the top can be an even bigger hindrance .
Yep, the local rural police team who go out with Farmwatch alongside farmers and keepers overnight every few weeks for years – getting to know each other very well, are not the right officers to deal with a report by an unknown birdwatcher, a “townie” rambler or occasional dog walker of wrongdoing against those same keepers.
Well spotted, Ruth and team. Ii read the public statement by the police a couple of times and felt uneasy about the contents and the manner it was constructed as it was unlike most. However, Iignored my doubts, saw it as a result and said as much.
I am rapidly reconstructing my opinion and await the next development before saying anything more.
FOI request?
The hallmarks of a typical wildlife crime case against a keeper (not this one specifically). First, the main one – it’s best effort for a keeper to not get caught (which you shouldn’t do, if you are careful), then if caught it’s best effort to get the case dropped by police or dealt with by a quiet word (which you should get, if your boss has some influence) then if it goes to court it’s best effort for boss to get a top lawyer to exploit a technicality (and there’s a helpful amount of these) to get you cleared. But if convicted of the correct offences (which shouldn’t happen, and it will probably be something like storage of guns or possession of Cymag instead) it’s then a combined best effort to downplay, obfuscate and to find circumstances (mental health, divorce, bereavement, etc) to mitigate so that it doesn’t appear very typical or very serious after all. All if all that still fails, it’s another best effort for all to play the last card, the joker = “a few rotten apples” – and move the media attention on as quick as possible. Time and again, it’s quite an instructive model in damage limitation!
Must be universal Spaghnum. That’s how it works here too.
The unusually hefty fines, makes you think there is more to this than meets the eye.
[Ed: Thanks but won’t be publishing this level of detail until clarification received that the case has closed & there’s nothing further pending. Hope you’ll understand]
My suspicions are that the two were found guilty on firearms charges relating to the manner in which their guns and/or ammunition were being kept, this being incidental to the primary offence which involved trapping rather than shooting. We do not know whether they were gamekeepers. It could well be the case that they were not and that they do not own shotguns.
It’s a pity that we do not know more about the circumstances which brought about the finding of the trapped Pine Marten.
All the more reason to have the SSPCA involved in these investigations
I just want to say that there was a very swift arrest for felling a tree recently. Hmm
And an even swifter release
What strikes me most with this conviction is the inconsistency in fines awarded by the court for illegally killing wildlife.
On this occasion the perpetrator was fined £9700, yet on other occasions when protected wildlife has been illegally killed we have been told the courts have only issued very paltry fines of only a few hundred pounds.
Is there some form of postcode lottery in the administration of justice, where different courts fine different amounts depending on how the court feels on a particular day?
[Ed: it’s not yet clear how much of his fine was related to the killing of the pine marten and how much of it was related to his firearms offences. We also don’t know exactly what those firearms offences were].
The value of the fine on this occasion is perhaps what should be expected for such an offence, but if the amount a convicted criminal is fined is to have any real impact on deterring future offending, or to serve as a warning to others that the illegal killing wildlife will not be tolerated, then there really needs to be consistency in the amount an individual is fined across the length and breadth of the country.
So, I am really please that the court issued such a meaningful fine on this occasion but I wish this level of fine was consistent across all the courts in the UK for similar offences.
Regarding the revocation of the firearms licence. The statement is a bit vague, but a shotgun is a firearm.
My understanding is that a firearms licence holder is required to hold a certificate for each firearm they hold, which also specifies the conditions of use of that firearm.
So, if a firearms licence has been revoked, it could mean that possession of all the firearms listed on a persons certificate would now be unlawful, which would include any shotguns that person possessed.
[Ed: I don’t think this is accurate. Shotgun certs and firearms certs are separate licences for different types of weapon (section 2 and section firearms respectively) and as I wrote in the blog, according to the Govt website the revocation of one does not automatically revoke the other].
However I believe that even if a firearms licence is revoked, a non licence holder can still use firearms if any of the exemptions in Sect 11 of the Firearms Act apply, such as borrowing a shotgun for shooting game or vermin control, on private land, and in the presence of the occupier or one of their representatives, as long as occupier has a certificate for that particular firearm.
So, if I am understanding this correctly an employee on a shooting estate who isn’t a firearms licence holder could still go out and shoot game or vermin if they were in the presence of the landowner or one of the land owner’s representatives.
Surely, it would be far better that if a court has decided to revoke a persons firearms licence for convicted wildlife offences, then there should be a complete ban on the possession or use of any firearm in all circumstances? Such a move might make convicted wildlife criminals unemployable on shooting estates, which is surely something the shooting industry should welcome, if it really has zero tolerance for wildlife crimes?