In anticipation of a new RSPB report, due out tomorrow, documenting the ongoing illegal killing of birds of prey in the UK, the BBC News website has an article this morning, stating Britain’s protected birds of prey are still being shot, trapped and poisoned.
The BBC says the new report records 921 confirmed attacks on birds of prey between 2015 and 2024, with more than half, according to the RSPB, on or near land managed for game shooting.
Mark Thomas, head of the RSPB’s investigations unit, told the BBC the killings were “about money”, with birds of prey targeted to stop them taking young pheasants, partridges or grouse, leaving more birds to be shot by paying customers.
Shooting organisations strongly deny persecution is widespread across the industry. They say it is carried out by a small minority and condemn it outright.
Same old, same old.
The BBC has created an interactive map based on the RSPB’s data, showing confirmed incidents per 100 km sq, between 2015 and 2024. There’s a map showing all confirmed incidents (see below) but you can also click on various tabs to show the data for Buzzards, Red Kites, Peregrines, ‘Owls’, Goshawks and Hen Harriers.
The article highlights the convictions of three gamekeepers this year: Thomas Munday, convicted after brutally clubbing a trapped Buzzard to death on a Pheasant shoot at Hovingham, North Yorkshire (here); Racster Dingwall, convicted of conspiracy to kill a Hen Harrier on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here); and Russell Mason, convicted of brutally clubbing a trapped Goshawk to death on a Pheasant shoot in Perthshire (here).
The RSPB repeats its call for all gamebird shoots to be licensed. Dr Marnie Lovejoy from the British Association for Shooting & Conservation (BASC) is cited as saying BASC opposes licensing because it ‘would add another layer of regulation to activities already covered by law and would affect everyone involved in shooting’.
It’s a strange argument, often repeated by the game shooting industry. Licensing would protect those who aren’t committing crimes and penalise the ones who are. The industry has failed, spectacularly, to rid itself of the criminals so licensing should be the very least it should expect and if they’re all abiding by the law, the threat of a licence being withdrawn/revoked shouldn’t be of any concern.
The RSPB’s latest report will be published on Wednesday morning and I’ll post a copy of it on the blog, first thing.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Of course they are still widespread…when this sort of persecution is regarded as not that important and when even if perps find themselves in court and are found guilty all they usually get is a minimal fine. The answer is obvious. Animal cruelty and murder should be severely punished….
We always need to bear in mind that this is the tip of a very large iceberg, because almost certainly most illegal raptor persecution never gets detected as it takes place in remote places with poor or no public access. So actual incidents of illegal raptor persecution are much higher than these figures. There must be very few in the industry that aren’t well aware of what is happening and personally I believe that raptor persecution is the norm. The main thing varying, being the intensity and how brazen it is. I now believe, that the whole idea of ethical shoot managers, is a fairy story. They lie so much. I am old enough to remember, the shooting industry claiming over 40 years ago, that it was only a few old school gamekeepers doing it, and as the younger gamekeepers came through, it would die out. This is establishment corruption. They could have clamped down on it decades ago. The only reason they don’t is that it is done at the behest of the most senior members of the British establishment.