Thanks to @EimearRooney1 for the following tweet:
“36th buzzard found dead at Drumbanagher, Co. Armagh, this week. Coincidence? Unlikely. The PM will be interesting“.
Indeed.
Previous post about this area here.
UPDATE: Buzzard testing positive for Alphachloralose.
On the subject of counting, in his latest blog the ever-sharp Alan Tilmouth examines Alex Hogg’s apparent inability to count (see here). This is well worth a read if you’re interested in understanding what ‘evidence’ the game-shooting industry uses to support its claims that raptors (especially buzzards) are decimating pheasant poults.
On the subject of accountability, George Monbiot has written a response to Magnus Linklater’s latest attack on the RSPB. This is also well worth a read, especially as Monbiot confirms Linklater’s association with game-shooting and uses it to suggest that journalists should be made to declare their interests so that readers can judge the independence of the journalist’s opinions. Monbiot’s article here.
Everyone’s favourite Minister Richard Benyon has been giving evidence at the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into wildlife crime (see here, here and here for earlier blog posts about this inquiry).
Some of the topics on which Benyon was questioned included #buzzardgate, hen harriers, the introduction of vicarious liability in England, the legislation concerning possession of illegal poison, and the independence of Natural England.
So how did he do?
He started off badly when questioned about the need for legislation to criminalise the possession of certain poisons. The legislation is already in place in Scotland but a loophole in the English legislation means that ‘possession’ (rather than ‘use’) is still not an offence – see here for an RSPB press release last year on this very topic. Bungling Benyon suggested that the current legislation was adequate and didn’t require updating. He was picked up on this a bit later by the Committee Chair, who insisted on clarifying whether there was a difference between ‘possession’ and ‘use’ in the legislation. Benyon chose the safe option and asked whether he could make the clarification in writing at a later date, presumably to give himself time to actually go and read the legislation.
On the issue of whether to introduce vicarious liability legislation in England for raptor persecution crime, Benyon commented that there were no plans to introduce VL but he will watch the impact of it in Scotland. That’s fair enough. Why waste time and funds to introduce something that may be completely useless as a tool to combat raptor crime until you’ve seen whether it can make a difference in Scotland. It was suggested to Benyon that some might say the Scottish government takes wildlife crime more seriously than their English counterparts. Benyon rejected that and said there are wildlife crime measures that are making a difference and the legislation is adequate. Unfortunately he didn’t give any examples.
When asked about #buzzardgate, he basically said he loved buzzards but that some of the people protesting about the ‘study’ had misunderstood the research. Er, what was there to misunderstand? Benyon and his game-shooting cronies wanted to spend our money removing native buzzards from the wild, on private shooting estates, for the benefit of mass-introduced non-native species that are bred for the sole purpose of being killed for sport. “I recognise that it hit a wall of credibility“, said Benyon. Too bloody right it did.
When asked whether he was doing anything specific to protect the hen harrier, Benyon stated, “Yes, we are“. He said he was looking at the possibilty of a project that might work, but he didn’t want to provide any specific details because “it is at a very conceptual stage“. Hmm. Could this be the controversial plan to introduce a so-called ‘ceiling’ for hen harrier numbers, a concept that has been knocking around since 2008Â (see here and here)? We’ll have to wait and see.
Benyon was then asked: To what extent are you satisfied that Natural England is making sufficient use of its civil enforcement powers in relation to SSSIs? Benyon’s response: “…….It is also very important that Natural England is an arm’s length body with the neccessary statutory basis that they have, and that they are able to operate the laws and sanctions that they have freely and unencumbered“. Now that’s an interesting statement! If you’ve been following Mark Avery’s superb analysis of what went on in the Walshaw grouse moor fiasco (see here for his 23rd blog entry on the subject), you’d be hard pressed to believe that Natural England acted “freely and unencumbered”. There’s still plenty more to be uncovered about what happened between Natural England and Walshaw Moor Estate but rest assured that Mark Avery will have a good go at getting to the bottom of it. Benyon’s statement may just come back to haunt him.
To read the full transcript of Benyon’s evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, see here. Bear in mind that this is the uncorrected version; the corrected version should be posted shortly.
The EAC has now finished compiling the written and oral evidence in this inquiry and a report should be published in due course.
Sick of reading all the depressing news on this site? So are we, so as a one-off-feel-good-Friday special, here’s a link to some positive raptor news in Scotland, thanks to the efforts of Forestry Commission Scotland and their partners.
Follow this link (here)Â to find out about this year’s Aberfoyle ospreys & buzzards, Tweed Valley ospreys, Huntly peregrines and Mull sea eagles.
Tune in next week for a return to depressing news. Monday will be a big day…
Some surprising news emerged this morning….an announcement has been made that the RSPB’s Scottish Birdfair will probably take place again next year (ironically 2013 is ‘The Year of Natural Scotland’) at the same venue: Hopetoun House (see here for announcement).
Why is this surprising? Well, for a start this choice of venue for the inaugural Scottish Birdfair 2012 raised plenty of eyebrows, and for very good reason (see here). If that wasn’t reason enough for RSPB management to reconsider their options (and it clearly wasn’t), then how about this:
Scottish Land & Estates (Andrew Hopetoun is a Director, remember?) issued a press release a couple of weeks ago that implied their support for buzzard ‘control’ (for control read ‘licences to kill buzzards’), basing their argument on the ‘evidence’ from that now infamous ‘buzzard snatches osprey chick’ video. The Chief Exec of SLE (Douglas McAdam) said:
 “This video provides the sad but clear and conclusive evidence of the serious impact that this growing population of Buzzards is now having“. [See here for SLE’s press release].
Actually Douglas, it provided no such thing. What it showed was an example of intraguild predation – a common and perfectly natural ecological phenomenon where a competitor kills and eats another competitor.
Come on, RSPB. Surely you can find a more suitable venue and partner for the next Scottish Birdfair? Sure, there are advantages to holding it at Hopetoun, e.g. the geographic location can catch punters from both sides of the border, then there’s……well actually it’s hard to think of another advantage. But maybe things like venues and partners don’t matter to the public? Another surprise this morning was to learn that this year’s Birdfair at Hopetoun House attracted almost 4,500 visitors. Were those visitors unaware of the Hopetoun/Leadhills connection, or was it just a case of knowing but not caring? You’d have to guess that if they were attending a Birdfair then they were probably into birds, in which case it’s probably likely that they were unaware of the connection, rather than not caring. You’d hope so anyway.
This is a photo of a dead buzzard inside a hole. How did it get there? Did the person who illegally killed the buzzard stuff it inside the hole to hide the evidence from casual passers-by? Or did the buzzard crawl inside the hole to die of natural causes? Yep, that must be it. Didn’t 13 of them do the same thing on a Scottish sporting estate a few years ago? Interesting that they all chose rabbit holes within close proximity to a crow cage trap. Oh and then there were the gunshot wounds…
Red kites have also been known to do it, funnily enough on another Scottish sporting estate. First they removed their wing tags, placed them in a hole and then covered the hole with moss. Then they severed their own legs, placed those in holes and also covered the holes in moss. Remarkable.
Regular blog readers will be well aware that the concept of vicarious liability in relation to raptor persecution became enacted in Scotland on January 1st 2012 as part of the WANE Act. For new readers, some background can be found here. Vicarious liability has had its critics but until the first test case in court, nobody really knows just how strong, or weak, the new legislation will prove to be.
An interesting comment about vicarious liability was received on the blog at the end of last week; it suggests legal loopholes may be being exploited to avoid possible conviction. Given the interest in VL, we’ve decided to re-post the comment here. Thanks to Steve from OneKind for submitting it:
“Information gathered by Onekind suggests how some estate owners may try to avoid vicarious liability in the future by sending their game keepers on all the trapping and best practice courses there are going. According to our intelligence, top lawyers are being hired to travel around the country lecturing to gamekeepers on the law related to wildlife crime. Our information suggests that the idea behind this action, being taken by landowners and worked on by these top Lawyers, is that if a wildlife crime were to occur on their land by one of their keepers then the landowner can say that he put his keeper through the relevant courses and that he doesn’t know why the keeper did what he did. They hope that this will be enough to persuade the court that they were not complicit with the crime carried out on their land. Further information we have acquired tells us that a well-known land owner has been urging other landowners to take this idea on and which will probably be up and running properly within the next few months“.
I guess we’ll wait and see whether this defence is used if/when charges of vicarious liability are ever brought against anyone. It’s an interesting one because what they are allegedly proposing to do is not illegal, but its hardly in the spirit of moving towards the elimination of raptor persecution from the game-shooting industry, is it? In its defence, some will probably argue that we should all be thankful that gamekeepers are receiving such excellent training, but some may argue that some of the training is far from excellent. For example, OneKind has concerns about the adequacy of the snare training courses and suggests there may be an ulterior motive for running them (see here).
The use of legal loopholes to avoid possible conviction is a well-known tactic in many areas of crime, not just wildlife crime, although wildlife crime does have its fair share of examples. A recent one was reported in a newspaper at the beginning of July (sorry, no URL available) concerning the case of a gamekeeper on the Airlie Estate at Kirriemuir, Angus. He was accused of alleged criminal activity after the discovery of three buzzards inside a crow cage trap. However, he was acquitted after Sheriff Kevin Veal decided that the keeper was not given proper information about why he was being interviewed by an SSPCA inspector and a Tayside Police wildlife crime officer. Some lawyers are very good at their jobs.
It certainly pays to employ a professional lawyer rather than a pretend one. An employee from a very well-known organisation recently sent an email to a group (no, not us!) who publish the names of convicted gamekeepers and other wildlife criminals on their website. The email suggested that certain names should be removed from the website because the convictions were considered spent. The email explained the relevant law under which the names should be removed and went into some detail about how the law applied. The employee signed off with an impressive number of letters after their name, including LLB (a law degree). Uncannily, the information that the impressively-qualified employee wrote about this particular law bore an incredibly close resemblance to a Wikipedia entry on the same subject. Hmm, not quite so impressive now!
The airwaves are busy with criticism of last night’s episode of Countryfile, which featured a few pieces on evil birds of prey, especially buzzards and peregrines.
It’s too tedious to reproduce all the arguments here – we’ve heard it all before, although the SGA chairman Alex Hogg’s apparent inability to count was quite amusing. In a voiceover we were told that Alex was due to release 700 pheasant poults into his woodland pens (prior to letting them loose into the wider countryside so they can be shot dead). The interviewer (Tom Heap)Â then asked Alex if he had any idea how many poults he might be losing to buzzards. Alex’s response: “We’re probably losing, getting on for over a thousand pheasants in a year to buzzards“. Hmm.
At least the RSPB’s Duncan Orr-Ewing was able to provide some balanced and constructive discussion, but it was disappointing that the producers failed to include any meaningful discussion on the persecution issue. Tom Heap took to his Twitter account after the programme and offered this:
“Am intrigued…many accusing #countryfile of buzzard bias. Why? Real country issue, meticulous balance. Proud of our work“.
For anyone who missed it, the episode can be seen on BBC iPlayer for the next seven days (here).
Following the post we wrote on 31 May 2012 (see here), another Scottish gamekeeper has been convicted of a wildlife crime offence, this time for allowing a buzzard to starve to death inside a crow cage trap.
Jonathan Smith Graham (30), a gamekeeper on Glen Lyon Estate in Perthshire (see here), pleaded guilty to using a crow cage trap in which a buzzard was trapped and then starved to death. He has been fined £450 which is pretty pathetic when you consider the scope of available penalties (up to £5,000 &/or 6 months in prison), but perhaps more importantly he has now been banned from operating a crow cage trap for five years. Sheriff McCreadie’s comments about Graham’s actions (and in-actions) were also greatly encouraging and are welcomed. Credit to Tayside Police for undertaking the investigation on their own initiative and to wildlife fiscal Shona McJannett for a successful prosecution.
For the details of this case see here, here and here.
Some questions:
1. Will Jonathan Smith Graham be sacked from his gamekeeper job at Glen Lyon Estate now he has a wildlife crime conviction? Ask them directly: sally@glenlyonestate.co.uk
2. Was he/is he a member of the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association? (His defence lawyer was David McKie – the SGA’s solicitor – just coincidence?). If he is a member, will he be expelled now he has a wildlife crime conviction? Ask them directly: info@scottishgamekeepers.co.uk and while you’re there, ask them if they’re ready to say yet whether convicted gamekeeper Robert Christie (Lindertis Estate) is/was a member (see here).
3. Why hasn’t the SGA issued a public statement condemning the actions of this gamekeeper? Ask them directly: info@scottishgamekeepers.co.uk
4. Is Glen Lyon Estate a member of Scottish Land and Estates? Ask them directly: info@scottishlandandestates@co.uk
Raptor Persecution UK 