Tag: buzzard

George Mutch trial: Sheriff to rule on admissibility of video evidence

The sheriff presiding over the trial of Scottish gamekeeper George Mutch is due to rule today on the admissibility of covert video footage.

Mutch is accused of several offences relating to the alleged killing or injuring of two goshawks and a buzzard that had been caught inside traps in August 2012. He has denied the charges. The evidence against him is based on covert footage collected by RSPB Scotland.

Mutch’s trial began on Monday, after months of adjournments, but so far the trial has focused on whether the evidence is admissible. The defence advocate, Mark Moir QC, has argued that the footage is inadmissible because the RSPB has an agenda against the use of crow cage traps and didn’t have the landowner’s permission to film. The prosecution (Tom Dysart from COPFS!) has argued that the evidence should be deemed admissible because the RSPB were filming as part of a research study.

Sheriff Noel McPartlin is due to rule on the question of admissibility today. Whatever his decision, it will have significant ramifications for not only this trial but also for future potential prosecutions.

News articles on this trial here and here.

First vicarious liability prosecution: part 4

Criminal proceedings continued yesterday against Mr Ninian Robert Hathorn Johnston-Stewart in the first known vicarious liability prosecution under the WANE Act 2011.

Mr Johnston-Stewart, the landowner of Glasserton & Physgill Estates, is charged with being vicariously liable for the criminal actions of Glasserton gamekeeper Peter Bell, who was convicted in 2013 of laying poisoned bait which killed a buzzard (Carbofuran), and for possession of three banned pesticides (Carbofuran, Strychnine and Alphacloralose) (see here).

Yesterday’s intermediate diet was continued, with another intermediate diet scheduled for 23rd December 2014.

Previous blogs on this case here, here and here

Case against gamekeeper George Mutch: part 13

The criminal trial of Scottish gamekeeper George Mutch is set to re-start today.

Mutch, of Kildrummy Estate, Aberdeenshire, is accused of a series of offences relating to the capture and subsequent killing or injuring of a number of raptors, alleged to have taken place in August 2012. He has denied the charges.

This case has dragged on for over two years. Eventually a trial date was set for October 2014 but it was quickly adjourned after the defence QC argued that the presiding Sheriff shouldn’t hear the case as she was a member of the RSPB (see here).

Presumably there’ll be a different sheriff in court today; one with absolutely no connection whatsoever with game-shooting, eh?

Buzzard licence applicant gets High Court approval for judicial review

The following statement has been issued by the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation:

High Court Grants Gamekeeper Go-Ahead To Challenge Natural England

Tuesday 25th Nov 2014

A gamekeeper has been given permission by the High Court to proceed with a claim for Judicial Review against the Government’s wildlife licensing authority, Natural England (NE). The self-employed gamekeeper had applied for a licence to control buzzards attacking young pheasants on a small game shooting enterprise he runs for local farmers in Northumberland. NE acknowledged that the birds of prey were causing serious damage but refused to issue a licence under the well-established licensing process approved by Parliament for use in such circumstances.

The Honourable Mrs Justice Thirlwall DBE gave permission to proceed with the claim for Judicial Review on the basis that it was arguable NE had been inconsistent and unreasonable in refusing the licence. The case will now proceed to a full hearing which is likely to take place in the first half of next year.

Ricky McMorn, the self-employed gamekeeper seeking the buzzard control licence, may go out of business and lose his livelihood if a licence is not forthcoming. He said:

“This is a real David and Goliath situation. I am having to battle the might of the state in the form of Natural England to protect my birds and my job. They admit I’ve got a problem and agree that I have done everything I can but still they won’t give me a licence. It’s unfair and it’s wrong. Hundreds of other people get licences to kill protected birds every year.”

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 protects all wild birds but it also allows for control licences to be granted for certain purposes. One of these is the prevention of serious damage to livestock including, specifically, gamebirds kept for the provision of shooting. Before any such licence can be granted by NE strict tests must be met – including demonstrating that the damage being caused is indeed serious and that there is no other satisfactory solution. Where these tests are met, however, a licence cannot be unreasonably withheld.

Whilst refusing this licence, in earlier considerations of the case NE has accepted that:

  • the damage being experienced is serious;
  • buzzards are the main cause of the pheasant deaths;
  • Mr McMorn has done all that can reasonably be expected of him in scaring off the buzzards and otherwise protecting his pheasants;
  • removing a small number of buzzards from the site would not compromise the species’ conservation status.

There are now over 300,000 buzzards in the UK and numbers are booming. The population has undergone a four-fold increase during the last forty years according to The State of UK Birds 2014, published on behalf of Natural England by the RSPB.

To prevent damage to fisheries, NE regularly issues licences under the same system to kill many thousands of cormorants each year – up to 20% of the UK population. Cormorant numbers peak at around 41,000 birds in the UK, compared to 300,000 buzzards.

NE also allows buzzards to be killed at UK airports and it has, in the recent past, allowed a free-range poultry farmer to trap and remove buzzards causing serious damage to his chickens. This is in sharp contrast to applications made by gamekeepers, where no licence to kill or remove buzzards has ever been granted.

Mr McMorn’s case is being supported by the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO), which believes strongly that the law and due process should always be followed. The NGO’s spokesman said:

“This case is about a gamekeeper who is trying to do the right thing within the law to address a real and serious threat to his livelihood. NE has a duty to administer licensing fairly, yet the facts speak for themselves. Extensive discussions with NE about solving our member’s problem and saving his job have got nowhere. It is time to let the High Court decide whether NE has been acting in accordance with the law.

“Fair and proper implementation of the longstanding licensing system is essential, not only to the wellbeing of the countryside and those who work there but also ultimately to its wildlife. If expanding predatory species become problematic but people are denied access to the existing legitimate solution, the risk of mavericks undertaking indiscriminate, illegal activity will never go away. We utterly condemn illegal persecution of birds of prey and it must stop.”

END

Previous blogs on this issue:

21 May 2012: Buzzard ‘management trial’ gets govt approval and £375K funding.

23 May 2012: RSPB response to DEFRA’s (illegal) buzzard trial.

24 May 2012: DEFRA responds to public outcry over Buzzard management trial.

30 May 2012: DEFRA backs down on Buzzard ‘management’ trial.

13 June 2012: #Buzzardgate aftermath.

10 January 2013: The buzzard blame game.

23 May 2013: Natural England issues licence to destroy buzzard eggs & nests to protect pheasants.

25 May 2013: New petition: SNH, do not licence buzzard culling in Scotland.

30 May 2013: Two important questions to ask about the buzzard licence applicant.

3 June 2013: Buzzard licencing: turning up the heat.

5 June 2013: Surely the buzzard licence applicant doesn’t have prior convictions for poison offences?

5 June 2013: Natural England says no to buzzard-killing licence.

20 June 2013: Hand in of buzzard petition today at Holyrood.

13 August 2013: Natural England claims release of buzzard licence info ‘not in public interest’.

26 September 2013: Buzzard licence applicant tries for four more licences.

1 October 2013: Why we don’t trust the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation.

Buzzard shot and left for dead

The ISPCA has been forced to euthanise a buzzard that had been found shot and badly injured in County Westmeath, Ireland.

They are appealing for information after a member of the public found the wounded buzzard in Castletown Geoghegan and took it to the ISPCA National Animal Centre in Longford. It was given immediate pain relief and was then transferred to the Kildare Animal Foundation for specialist treatment by a wildlife vet.

Unfortunately the bird’s wing had become gangrenous and had no chance of survival.

Buzzards are protected in Ireland under the Wildlife Act 1976 and it is illegal to take them from the wild, injure or kill them.

Dr Andrew Kelly of the ISPCA said: “Why such a beautiful bird would be targeted in this manner remains a mystery. This poor bird must have been in agony until it was found and given pain relief. Buzzards are magnificent birds and are an integral part of Ireland’s natural fauna. They feed on carrion and rodents such as rats so they pose no threat to farm animals or pets. 

“Although they are found mostly in the north and east of Ireland, they have been recolonizing other parts of the country over the last few years. They are scarce in the midlands where this one was shot“.

Anyone with information is urged to contact either the ISPCA or the National Parks & Wildlife Service.

BZ Westneath 2014

BZ Westneath 2014 x ray

Ross-shire Massacre: MSP calls for review of police investigation

As the Ross-shire Massacre fiasco rolls into its eighth month, one MSP is making a stand.

Dave Thompson MSP (SNP: Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) has called on Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to undertake a review in to the police handling of this investigation. Well done, that man!

The police investigation into one of the most high profile mass raptor poisoning crimes in decades has blundered along for far too long and is fully deserving of public scrutiny, as is the accompanying police media strategy. Rather than providing clear and timely information, their strategy has been to release a series of untimely, misleading and willfully ambiguous statements that have done anything but inform. Indeed, these statements have simply led to more and more outlandish speculation and a growing sense of frustration and anger. Given how keen Police Scotland are on “public accountability” (e.g. see here), they’ll no doubt welcome a review of their handling of this case.

Dave Thompson MSP is a member of the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment (RACCE) Committee, who recently heard evidence from two senior Police Scotland representatives about the Ross-shire Massacre (see here). It seems he was as unimpressed with their answers as we were.

He said: “It would be useful if a full review of the investigation process was carried out. It would go a long way to allaying any fears the general public may have but also, in the interests of transparency, such a review would take away any lingering confusion about how these great birds of prey met their demise.

“This is why I have written to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to request that a review of the investigation process takes place and why I will be making sure the Lord Advocate is copied into any correspondence on the matter“.

Dave Thompson MSP formally opening the Tollie Red Kite feeding station in 2012, assisted by Alex Matheson (Brahan Estate) and George Campbell (RSPB Regional Director). [RSPB Scotland photo]

Dave Thompson MSP

 

Wildlife crime penalties: have your say

There has long been dissatisfaction with the penalties handed out to those convicted of wildlife crime. Yesterday’s sentencing of convicted mass raptor poisoner Allen Lambert of Stody Estate merely served to highlight the issue, again. But what we perceive to be unacceptably lenient penalties is certainly nothing new, and especially those sentences given to people (usually gamekeepers) associated with the game-shooting industry.

There’s a huge lack of public confidence in the way the judiciary deals with these criminals, with many people often talking about corruption, vested interests, biased judges/sheriffs etc. We’ve all come to expect unduly lenient measures – you only have to look at the comments on social media even before Lambert’s sentence was announced – people were predicting a metaphorical ‘slap on the wrist’, and in essence, that’s indeed what he got, even though the judge had stated that Lambert’s crimes “had crossed the custody threshold“.

Quite often (although apparently not in Lambert’s case), the accused’s employer (typically a wealthy landowner) will even fork out for a Queen’s Counsel (QC) to put forward the accused’s defence. A QC is considered to be an exceptional lawyer of outstanding ability – it’s hardly a level playing field to pit a QC against an ‘average’ public prosecutor, leading to even more public concern about the perceived ‘fairness’ of these trials and any subsequent punishment.

Sentencing for wildlife crimes has been hit or miss in both Scotland and England. For most wildlife crime offences (although not all), the maximum sentence available for each offence is a £5,000 fine and/or a six month custodial sentence. So for example, if someone had been convicted of poisoning two buzzards, they could potentially be hit with a £10,000 fine and a 12 month custodial sentence. As far as we’re aware, the maximum sentence has never been given. Instead, a large dollop of judicial discretion has been applied, resulting in weak and inconsistent penalties and a growing level of frustration amongst the general public who wish to see justice being done.

For example, in 2011, a gamekeeper in South Lanarkshire was convicted of poisoning four buzzards with the banned pesticide Alphachloralose. His sentence? An admonishment (basically a telling off). The maximum penalty available to the Sheriff was a £20,000 fine and/or a two-year custodial sentence. What was even more astonishing about this case was that the gamekeeper had been convicted of another wildlife crime three years earlier (illegal use of a crow cage trap in which he’d caught a buzzard), on the same land, for which he’d received a £300 fine. So the poisoning of four buzzards with a banned pesticide was his second conviction and yet he was given the most lenient penalty available.

A few months later, and just down the road in South Lanarkshire, a second gamekeeper was convicted of possessing the banned pesticide Carbofuran, which had been found in his vehicle. No charges were brought for the discovery of a dead buzzard and a pheasant bait (both tested positive for Carbofuran) found on land where this gamekeeper worked. His sentence? A £635 fine for possession (maximum sentence available was a £5,000 fine and/or a six month custodial sentence).

Things may be about to change in Scotland. Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse has, to his credit, instructed a review of wildlife crime penalties. The group’s remit is:

“To examine and report on how wildlife crime in Scotland is dealt with by the criminal courts, with particular reference to the range of penalties available and whether these are sufficient for the purposes of deterrence and whether they are commensurate with the damage to ecosystems that may be caused by wildlife crime”.

Now, while we don’t for one minute think that a potential increase in penalties will be the great panacea to stopping wildlife crime (for that to happen there also needs to be a significant change in investigation and enforcement procedures…..it’s pointless having a severe penalty in place if the criminal knows the chances of being caught are virtually nil…but more on that in due course), it is nevertheless an encouraging step, assuming of course that the review committee recommends an increase in penalties. They may not – see here for our previous comments on the membership of this review committee, which inexplicably includes the owner of a game-shooting estate.

This is where you come in. There is an opportunity for you to share your views with the review committee by answering a simple questionnaire that includes some carefully-thought out questions. The deadline for responding is two weeks today (21st November 2014) and the questionnaire can be filled in on-line and emailed to the committee. Please click here to download.

This is an excellent opportunity to have your say and perhaps have some influence on future wildlife crime sentencing options. Although the review is only applicable to sentencing options in Scotland, you do not have to live in Scotland to participate – it’s open to anyone from anywhere. And who knows, if improvements are made in the Scottish system then it provides more leverage for calls to do a similar review of wildlife crime penalties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The review committee is due to report its findings (and recommendations) early in the New Year.

Stody Estate mass poisoner gets…..10 week suspended sentence

Gamekeeper Allen Lambert, convicted of mass raptor poisoning at Stody Estate, Norfolk, has been given a 10 week suspended sentence for poisoning 11 raptors (suspended for one year), a six week suspended sentence for possession of firearms and dead buzzards (suspended for one year) and has been ordered to pay £930 prosecution costs and an £80 victim surcharge.

This sentence will infuriate many. Lambert’s crimes contributed to one of the worst incidents of mass raptor poisoning in the UK. Although it’s not the worst incident, it’s right up there near the top of the list and is certainly the worst mass poisoning of raptors uncovered in England.

District Judge Peter Veits said Lambert’s crimes ‘had crossed the custody threshold’ but that his sentence would be suspended. Why? Sentencing is supposed to serve two purposes. It’s supposed to be a deterrent, not only to the convicted criminal, but also to others who may be contemplating committing the same crime. It’s also supposed to provide a punishment to the perpetrator for having acted criminally.

Does a suspended jail sentence meet any of these aims? No, it certainly does not.

What a wasted opportunity for the judiciary to send out a clear message to those who continue to commit abhorrent wildlife crimes. It’s so rare to actually get a conviction for poisoning; usually it’s the much lesser charge of ‘possession’ of banned poisons [in Scotland] or ‘storage’ of illegal poisons [in England] but here’s a gamekeeper who has been found guilty of actually poisoning 11 protected raptors. Sure, the judge’s sentencing options are constrained within statutory boundaries but the sentence in this case is nowhere near as strong as it could have been. Some of Lambert’s crimes are offences under the Wildlife & Countryside Act. Under this legislation, the maximum sentence, calculated for EACH offence is a £5,000 fine and a six month custodial sentence. That’s just for poisoning 11 birds – in Lambert’s case there are numerous other offences to consider, including firearms offences which usually carry a custodial sentence.

A suspended custodial sentence and a less than £1000 ‘fine’ (prosecution costs) for what Lambert did is absurdly lenient. According to the RSPB, since 2001, four gamekeepers have received suspended custodial sentences for persecution offences. During the same period, 12 egg collectors have actually been jailed. The inconsistency in wildlife crime sentencing is remarkable.

In Scotland there is currently a wildlife crime penalty review underway, at the behest of Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse. There is an opportunity for you to participate, by filling in a questionnaire which seeks views on whether penalties for wildlife crime offences in Scotland are sufficient deterrent. The closing date is 21 November. Full details here.

So, Lambert’s pretty much got off scot free, but what of his (now former) employers, the Stody Estate? According to the BBC, ‘there is no evidence the estate owner, Charles MacNicol, knew about the poisonings. He wouldn’t tell BBC News whether he knew, or whether he condemned the killings’. Lambert was not sacked by Stody Estate, but instead was allowed to take early retirement, according to ITV news.

What we do know is the Stody Estate has received millions in agricultural subsidies over the years (see here), and as a result of blog readers’ efforts, the Rural Payments Agency is understood to be investigating to see whether financial penalties can be applied for cross-compliance offences (see here).

UPDATE 8/11/14: Here are the judge’s comments on Lambert’s sentencing:  DJ Peter Veits sentencing 6 Nov 2014

Media coverage of Lambert’s sentencing

RSPB press release here

BBC news here

BBC news video here

RSPB Investigations blog here

Daily Mail here

ITV news here

Norfolk Eastern Daily Press here

Telegraph here

Guardian here

Independent here

Norfolk Constabulary press statement here

Lambert 9 bz

Sentencing due for Stody Estate mass poisoner

Allen Lambert, the mass poisoning gamekeeper from Stody Estate, Norfolk, will be sentenced today following his convictions last month.

What sort of sentence does a convicted mass poisoner deserve? He was found guilty of poisoning 10 buzzards and 1 sparrowhawk. He was found guilty of the illegal storage and use of some of the most dangerous pesticides in the world. He was found guilty of having equipment capable of being used to prepare poisoned baits. He was found guilty of having nine dead buzzards in his possession.

Let’s hope the magistrate views this case with the seriousness it deserves.

Previous blogs on this case here, here, here.

First vicarious liability prosecution: part 3

Criminal proceedings continued today against Ninian Robert Hathorn Johnston Stewart in the first known vicarious liability prosecution under the WANE Act 2011.

Mr Johnston Stewart, the landowner of Glasserton & Physgill Estates, is charged with being vicariously liable for the criminal actions of Glasserton gamekeeper Peter Bell, who was convicted in 2013 of laying poisoned bait which killed a buzzard (Carbofuran) and possession of three banned pesticides (Carbofuran, Strychnine and Alphacloralose) (see here).

Today’s hearing was continued for an intermediate diet on 8th December 2014.

Previous blogs on this case here and here