The trial of (now former) Stody Estate gamekeeper, Allen Charles Lambert, 65, is due to take place today at Norwich Magistrates Court.
Lambert is facing a series of charges for offences alleged to have taken place 18 months ago in April 2013.
Background to this case here.
UPDATE 18.15HRS: CONVICTED! Details here.
Two of this year’s hen harrier chicks from Lancashire have ‘disappeared’.
Both were sat-tagged and both suffered ‘catastrophic tag failure’, according to the RSPB’s press release (here).
Dress it up all you like, as technological breakdown, possible predation or even starvation. We’ve heard it all before – every possible explanation except for the bleedin’ obvious – these birds have probably been illegally killed by those with a vested interest in driven grouse shooting, just like the hundreds, no thousands, of other ‘missing’ harriers in our uplands.
There will be some who’ll still say we need to give them the benefit of the doubt, we need to try and work with them, let’s all sit around the table and talk this through and find a way.
That’s laughable. The only way to deal with these bastards is to ban driven grouse shooting. Here’s the petition – please sign it.
Photo of one of the young Bowland hen harriers by Jude Lane.
A three-year-old satellite-tagged Montagu’s harrier called ‘Mo’ has ‘disappeared’ in Norfolk.
The bird was one of three sat-tagged adults being monitored as part of an RSPB study on migration routes. The project featured on The One Show last night. The two other tagged harriers have already left the UK and are in Africa.
Mo was known to have left a roost site close to Great Bircham in Norfolk on 8th August. There have been no further signals and it is suspected she has been killed and her sat tag destroyed.
Tellingly, one of the Dutch researchers who had fitted the three tags said: “Since 2005 we have tagged 58 Montagu’s harriers [in mainland Europe], and a sudden loss of signal is exceedingly rare“.
Unfortunately, a sudden loss of signal from a sat-tagged raptor in the UK is anything but rare.
Norfolk Constabulary has launched an investigation and a £5,000 reward has been put up by the project sponsor, Mark Constantine (the man behind Lush, the cosmetic company that has helped promote the plight of another harrier species in the UK, the hen harrier).
News article here.
Norfolk Constabulary press release here
RSPB project on tracking Montagu’s harriers here.
Photo of a Montagu’s harrier by William J S White
Suffolk police and the RSPB are appealing for information after the discovery of a young, injured peregrine near the village of Long Melford in Suffolk on 20th August. The bird had been shot.
The peregrine has survived and is currently being rehabilitated at a nearby falconry centre in the hope it can make a full recovery and be released back to the wild.
The RSPB is offering a £1,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.
Full news article here.
This is the 17th peregrine known to have been targeted in these isles this year. And these are only the ones that have reported – how many more have been killed?
In February, a poisoned peregrine was found dead in South Lanarkshire, Scotland (here). In March, a shot peregrine was found dead in Dorset, England (here). In April, a shot peregrine was found dead near Stirling, Scotland (here). In May, a shot peregrine was found critically injured in Devon, England (here). In June, the public foiled an attempted poisoning of six peregrines in Co. Dublin, Ireland (here). In June, a poisoned peregrine was found dead in North Wales (here). In July, four dead peregrines suspected to have been poisoned were found in Gwynedd, NW Wales (here). In August a shot peregrine was found critically injured in Co. Wexford, Ireland (here).
A dead red kite and a dead buzzard have been found in Herefordshire in what looks suspiciously like a poisoning incident.
According to an article in the Western Daily Express (here), the carcasses were discovered on farmland at Pontrilas, south Herefordshire, close to a dead pheasant. The farmer took the corpses to a vet but the vet couldn’t find any obvious sign of injury or disease.
The RSPCA is appealing for information, but strangely, the article doesn’t say whether the corpses have been submitted for toxicology analyses. Given the position of the two dead raptors and their proximity to a dead pheasant (commonly used as bait), it seems quite plausible that this could have been an illegal poisoning incident.
Let’s hope the RSPCA contacts the RSPB Investigations team for advice.
Red kite photograph by Drew Buckley.
A new trial date has been set in the case against (now former) Stody Estate gamekeeper, Allen Lambert.
At a previous court hearing in December 2013, Lambert, 64, pleaded guilty to storing Mevinphos and Aldicarb pesticides at the Stody Estate in north Norfolk on or about 4th April 2013, as well as storing them without reasonable precautions.
He also admitted a charge of failing to comply with a firearms certificate by poor storage of a .22 Mauser.
He denied further charges including intentionally killing 14 buzzards, a sparrowhawk and a tawny owl between April 1-4 2013, as well as a charge of keeping nine dead buzzards on 4th April 2013.
His trial was previously due to begin in May 2014 but it was adjourned. The new trial date is 1st October 2014.
Mark Stevens, a self-employed gamekeeper who worked on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sydmonton Court Estate in Hampshire, has been convicted of setting two illegal traps and has been fined £700 with £650 court costs and a £50 victim surcharge.
Stevens, 42, admitted setting the two pole traps at a pheasant release pen in August last year but claimed he was targeting a grey squirrel that had been eating the pheasants’ food. The traps, which were not set on Lloyd Webber’s estate but on land at nearby Echinnswell, were discovered after a member of the public found a tawny owl hanging upside down with its leg caught in one of the traps. Its leg injuries were so severe it had to be euthanised by a vet.
According to Stevens’ solicitor, the setting of the traps was ‘accidental’.
Well done to the RSPB Investigations Team, Hampshire Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service for securing a conviction.
Pole-trapping has been illegal for over 100 years. Stevens is the latest of a number of gamekeepers recently convicted for this barbaric practice (e.g. see here and here). Unsurprisingly, all of them have claimed the traps were targeting squirrels and not birds of prey (as if that makes a difference).
RSPB Investigations video here (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT)
RSPB Investigations blog here
News story in Daily Mail here
News story on BBC here
Derek Sanderson, a recently-retired head gamekeeper for a shooting syndicate on the Sledmere Estate in Yorkshire, was yesterday found guilty of storing five banned poisons in his house and in an unlocked outbuilding.
Those poisons were Carbofuran, Aldicarb, Mevinphos, Strychnine and Alphachloralose.
His sentence? A conditional discharge and a £15 victim surcharge!!!!!!!
The court apparently accepted that there was no causal link between the possession of these poisons and a dead buzzard found on Sledmere Estate in 2012 – confirmed as having been poisoned with Aldicarb.
Bob Elliot, Head of RSPB Investigations, has written an excellent blog about this, frankly, unbelievable case, here.
What sort of deterrent value is such a pathetic sentence?
The RSPB has posted a £1,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction following the discovery of a dead goshawk found in suspicious circumstances on Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire.
The dead female bird was found on the estate by a member of the public on 2nd April. A post-mortem revealed the bird had two broken legs, and that both breaks were in the same place – injuries that are consistent with being caught in a spring trap.
The bird had been fitted with a leg ring, showing it had hatched in 2003 in the Peak District National Park, 15km to the north of Chatsworth.
Derbyshire Constabulary and the RSPB are appealing for information.
For full details, including quotes from the RSPB, Derbyshire Constabulary and a Chatsworth Estate representative, see the article on the Derbyshire Constabulary website here.
A critically-injured peregrine was found at Seaton Beach in Devon on Bank Holiday Monday. The bird, soaked and unable to fly, was found by members of the public.
It was taken to a vets but had to be euthanized. Its injuries were consistent with a gunshot wound.
The police quickly issued an appeal for information (see here) and local birder Steve Waite has written about the incident on his blog (see here).
So here we are, another month, another reported raptor persecution crime to add to the year’s growing death toll:
Jan 2014: Shot buzzard, Norfolk.
Jan 2014: Dead bird (species unknown) & poisoned bait, South Lanarkshire.
Feb 2014: Shot buzzard, North Yorkshire.
Feb 2014: Shot buzzard, Norfolk.
Feb 2014: Shot sparrowhawk, Norfolk.
Feb 2014: Spring-trapped buzzard, West Yorkshire.
Feb 2014: Poisoned peregrine, South Lanarkshire.
Mar 2014: Shot peregrine, Dorset.
Mar-April 2014: Poisoned red kites (x 16) & buzzards (x 6), Ross-shire.
April 2014: Man arrested for alleged attempted raptor trapping, Aberdeenshire.
April 2014: Shot buzzard, North Yorkshire.
April 2014: Shot red kite, Northamptonshire.
April 2014: White-tailed eagle ‘disappears’ in suspicious circumstances, Aberdeenshire.
April 2014: Peregrine ‘illegally killed’, Stirlingshire.
May 2014: Shot peregrine, Devon.
Meanwhile, over in Northern Ireland a wildlife crime summit has learned that 90 raptors have been found poisoned there since 2006 – see here.
Raptor Persecution UK 