Tag: gamekeeper

Judicial review of Natural England’s refusal to issue buzzard-killing licence to be heard in June

The judicial review concerning Natural England’s decision to refuse a gamekeeper a licence to shoot buzzards and sparrowhawks to protect his pheasants will take place during a three-day hearing at the High Court in London in June.

The gamekeeper, Ricky McMorn from Northumberland, has received financial support from the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation to bring this review and challenge Natural England’s handling of his licence applications.

A quick recap: in 2013, Natural England secretly provided Mr McMorn with a licence to destroy buzzard eggs and nests in order to ‘protect a pheasant shoot’ in Northumberland.

Later in 2013, Natural England received an application for four more licences, this time to shoot 16 buzzards and three sparrowhawks. Natural England rejected the application.

In 2014, Natural England refused another licence application, this time to shoot ten buzzards to prevent “serious damage” to pheasant poults.

It is these refusals that are being challenged in the judicial review.

Previous blogs on this issue:

25 November 2014: Buzzard licence applicant gets High Court approval for judicial review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 January 2013: The buzzard blame game.

13 June 2012: #Buzzardgate aftermath.

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

24 May 2012: DEFRA responds to public outcry over buzzard ‘management’ trial.

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

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

Henry’s Tour: Day 19

Fri 24 April Copy

Henry went for a skydance across the lawns of Holkham Hall in north Norfolk.

This place is home to Viscount Coke, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of that well-known raptor-loving organisation Songbird Survival.

In 2000, a Holkham Estate gamekeeper was prosecuted for 17 offences including the shooting of two kestrels and the poisoning of a third. He kept his job on the estate. Case write-up here.

In 2009, a dead buzzard was found at Holkham. It had been shot. The Holkham Estate put up a £500 reward for information leading to a conviction, as did the RSPB. Nobody was ever prosecuted.

Henry didn’t see any female hen harriers during his visit but he did watch a buzzard and three red kites. One kite had what some would call the ‘Malta Moult’ – a large hole blown through the feathers of one wing.

Henry thought it was time to get out of Norfolk but not before he called in for tea and cake with the legendary Richard Porter, author of the 1974 classic Flight Identification of European Raptors. More recently, Richard’s studies on the local buzzard population helped to convict Stody Estate gamekeeper Allen Lambert. Lambert had claimed that the ten poisoned buzzards found on the Stody Estate had been killed elsewhere and then ‘dumped’ on his estate in an attempt to set him up. His defence was to claim that they couldn’t possibly have been poisoned at Stody because there weren’t that many local buzzards to start with. He hadn’t banked on the evidence of one of the world’s leading raptor ID experts, who had recorded 233 buzzard sightings and had counted 73 pairs. Oops.

Thurs 23 April Copy

 

Mis-use of crow traps (again)

This week’s Landward programme featured a section on the (mis)-use of crow traps, quite often used by gamekeepers to target birds of prey.

The programme featured Hugo Straker from the GWCT and Ian Thomson from RSPB Scotland Investigations. It didn’t cover any new ground, mainly because the same old problems that have existed for years with the mis-use of these traps, still exist.

Here’s some stuff we wrote about crow cage traps three years ago. It was based on material that the RSPB and OneKind had produced years before that. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that SNH has still not addressed many of these issues:

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/crow-traps-what-you-should-know-part1/

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/crow-traps-what-you-should-know-part-2/

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/crow-traps-what-you-should-know-part-3/

The Landward programme is available on BBC iPlayer for 29 days: HERE (starts at 08.21).

Ten conservation groups call for 3-year ban on grouse moor mountain hare slaughter

Ten conservation groups in Scotland have called on SNH to implement an immediate three-year ban on the mass slaughter of mountain hares that has been taking place in Scotland.

The indiscriminate and unregulated mass killing of mountain hares has been taking place on grouse moors for many years. We’ve blogged about it a lot (see here for previous posts) and many others have also been campaigning against this obscene bloodbath.

Mountain hares are (supposedly) protected under European legislation and SNH, as the Government’s statutory conservation agency, has a legal duty to ensure the population has a favourable conservation status. The problem is, nobody really knows how many hares there are (previous surveys have only resulted in crude and pretty meaningless results). More importantly, nobody knows how this persistent mass culling is affecting the status of the overall hare population.

The latest call for an immediate ban comes hot on the heels of SNH’s recent call for grouse moor managers to exercise ‘voluntary restraint’ with their culls – a system that’ll never work because it relies entirely on the altruism of grouse moor managers (see here).

The ten groups calling for the immediate three-year ban include National Trust for Scotland, John Muir Trust, RSPB Scotland, RSZZ, Highland Foundation for Wildlife, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish Raptor Study Group, The Cairngorms Campaign, the Mammal Society and the Badenoch & Strathspey Conservation Group. There are some quite hefty credentials there and SNH would be wise to take heed. You get the feeling that if they don’t, they might just find themselves facing (another) complaint to the EU.

Naturally, representatives from the grouse-shooting industry have reacted strongly against the call for a ban. According to the SGA, calling for a ban is “environmentally irresponsible” and “it will be bad for birds and bad for biodiversity”.

Tim (Kim) Baynes from Scottish Land and Estates claims the ban would be “ill-informed” and “heavy-handed”.

These are unsurprising responses and just provide further evidence that SNH’s ‘voluntary restraint’ plea will go unheeded because these grouse moor landowners and their gamekeepers don’t think there’s anything wrong with the current level of hare culling.

Calling for an immediate ban is just the first step. Several of the ten organisations calling for the ban will next call for a meeting with SNH and Scottish Government officials to discuss the issue further and, presumably, keep the pressure on SNH to stop procrastinating and actually do something meaningful to bring the carnage to a halt.

BBC News article here

RSPB Scotland press release here

Here’s what happens to mountain hares on many grouse moors in Scotland, including inside the Cairngorms National Park:

mh4 - Copy

mountain-hare-cull-angus-glens-large - Copy

Case against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick: another trial update

The trial of Scottish gamekeeper William Dick has been continued at Dumfries Sheriff Court.

Dick, 24, of Whitehill Cottages, Kirkmahoe, Dumfries is accused of bludgeoning and repeatedly stamping on a buzzard. The offences are alleged to have taken place in Sunnybrae, Dumfries in April 2014. He is also accused of alleged firearms offences. He has denied the charges.

The trial has been adjourned, again, and will now apparently resume in August! We don’t know the reason for the long delay.

Previous blogs on this case here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here

Case against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick: trial update

The trial of Scottish gamekeeper William Dick has been continued at Dumfries Sheriff Court.

Dick, 24, of Whitehill Cottages, Kirkmahoe, Dumfries is accused of bludgeoning a buzzard with rocks and then repeatedly stamping on it. The offences are alleged to have taken place in Sunnybrae, Dumfries in April 2014. He is also accused of alleged firearms offences. He has denied the charges.

Dick’s legal representative in court is Brian McConnachie QC, who has been described as ‘one of the country’s leading defence lawyers’.

The trial will continue on 2nd April 2015.

Previous blogs on this case here, here, here, here, here, here, here

PLEASE NOTE: WE WON’T BE ACCEPTING COMMENTS UNTIL AFTER THE VERDICT. THANKS.

Case against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick: trial begins

Criminal proceedings against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick have progressed to trial, which began yesterday at Dumfries Sheriff Court.

Dick, 24, of Whitehill Cottages, Kirkmahoe, Dumfries is accused of bludgeoning a buzzard with rocks and then repeatedly stamping on it. The offences are alleged to have taken place in Sunnybrae, Dumfries in April 2014. He is also accused of alleged firearms offences. He has denied the charges.

The trial is expected to continue for several days.

Previous blogs on this case here, here, here, here, here, here.

Case against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick: part 6

Criminal proceedings continued yesterday against Scottish gamekeeper William Dick.

Dick, 24, of Whitehill Cottages, Kirkmahoe, Dumfries is accused of bludgeoning a buzzard with rocks and then repeatedly stamping on it. The offences are alleged to have taken place in Sunnybrae, Dumfries in April 2014. Dick has denied the charges.

Yesterday’s intermediate diet was heard at Dumfries Sheriff Court and a further intermediate diet has been set for Friday 20th March. A provisional trial date has been set for 23rd March 2015, pending the outcome of the next court hearing.

Friday’s hearing will be #7 since the case was called in June 2014 (previous hearings occurred in October 2014, November 2014, February 2015 and March 2015).

Previous blogs on this case here, here, here, here and here.

Criminal pheasant breeder gets the chop

Last week we asked why the editorial team at Modern Gamekeeping had published an article by a pheasant breeder with eight wildlife crime convictions to his name (see here).

Modern Poisoner header March 2015 - Copy

Yesterday they issued the following statement:

“As soon as we learned of Mike Wood’s conviction, we made the decision to dispense with his services with immediate effect, though Mike Wood actually resigned from his regular column upon conviction. His last article was in the March 2015 edition. Blaze Publishing, publishers of Modern Gamekeeping, do not condone any unethical or illegal practices and do not wish to be associated with anyone involved in them“.

That’s impressive. A fast and unequivocal response – others in the gamekeeping industry could learn a lesson or two from it.

Although we’re not entirely convinced that “Mike Wood actually resigned from his regular column upon conviction“. That statement seems to be at odds with what Charles Nodder (National Gamekeepers’ Org) said….that Mike Wood was considering an appeal (of his latest conviction). It’s also odd that Mike Wood didn’t think his earlier seven convictions (from 2011) merited his resignation.

We wonder if he will/has also resigned from his position of Chair of the Game Farmers’ Association?

Talking of the National Gamekeepers’ Org – we blogged recently about contacting the PAW secretariat to ask them to justify the NGO’s continued presence as a member of the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (see here). The PAW secretariat has now responded and we’ll be blogging about that, probably tomorrow.

Leadhills Estate confirmed as member of Scottish Land & Estates

The Leadhills (Hopetoun) Estate in south Lanarkshire has featured regularly on this blog (see here).

Since 2003, 46 confirmed incidents of wildlife crime have been discovered either on or near to the estate, but only resulting in two successful convictions (2004 – gamekeeper convicted of shooting a short-eared owl; 2009 – gamekeeper convicted of laying out a poisoned rabbit bait). Here’s the list:

2003 April: hen harrier shot [prosecution failed – inadmissible evidence]

2003 April: hen harrier eggs destroyed [prosecution failed – inadmissible evidence]

2004 May: buzzard shot [no prosecution]

2004 May: short-eared owl shot [gamekeeper convicted]

2004 June: buzzard poisoned (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2004 June: 4 x poisoned rabbit baits (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2004 June: crow poisoned (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2004 July: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2004 July: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2005 February: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2005 April: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2005 June: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2005 June: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 February: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 March: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 March: poisoned pigeon bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 April: dead buzzard (persecution method unknown) [no prosecution]

2006 May: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 May: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 May: poisoned egg baits (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 June: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 June: poisoned raven (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 June: 6 x poisoned rabbit baits (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 June: poisoned egg bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 September: 5 x poisoned buzzards (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 September: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2006 September: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2007 March: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2007 April: poisoned red kite (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2007 May: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2008 October: poisoned buzzard (Carbofuran) [listed as ‘Nr Leadhills’] [no prosecution]

2008 October: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [listed as ‘Nr Leadhills’] [no prosecution]

2008 November: 3 x poisoned ravens (Carbofuran) [listed as ‘Nr Leadhills’] [no prosecution]

2009 March: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2009 March: poisoned raven (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2009 April: poisoned rabbit bait (Carbofuran) [gamekeeper convicted]

2009 April: poisoned magpie (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2009 April: poisoned raven (Carbofuran) [no prosecution]

2010 October: short-eared owl shot [no prosecution]

2011 March: illegally-set clam trap [no prosecution]

2011 December: buzzard shot [no prosecution]

2012 October: golden eagle shot (just over boundary with Buccleuch Estate) [no prosecution]

2013 May: shot otter found on estate [no prosecution]

2013 June: significant cache of pre-prepared poisoned baits found on estate [no prosecution]

2013 August: red kite found shot and critically-injured in Leadhills village [no prosecution]

2014 February: poisoned peregrine (Carbofuran) [‘Nr Leadhills’] [no prosecution]

For a long time, we’ve been trying to find out whether this estate is a member of the landowners’ organisation Scottish Land and Estates – an organisation that regularly claims to be fighting hard against raptor persecution. All our attempts to find out have been met with a wall of silence. We knew that Lord Hopetoun served on the SLE Board, so it was quite likely that his estate would be a member of SLE, but we weren’t able to find definitive evidence.

Well, we have now. Leadhills Estate has launched its own website (see here). It’s a spectacular example of how to conduct a public relations charm offensive – lots of info about how the estate is supporting the local community: providing a new home for the volunteer fire crew, lending a hand on Gala Day, engaging in a village clean-up for Christmas, and providing support for the Leadhills Miners Library. It brings a tear to the eye. There’s also plenty of encouragement for walkers to keep to the tracks so as not to disturb the wildlife – because Leadhills Estate really cares about wildlife.

Of most interest to us is a statement on the web site’s home page:

‘Leadhills Estate is a member of Scottish Land and Estates – an organisation which promotes the work of landowners and rural businesses undertake [sic] for the benefit of rural Scotland’.

Amazing. We’d love to hear how SLE justifies the membership of Leadhills Estate in their wildlife-crime-fighting organisation.

The Leadhills Estate website also includes a gallery showing images that visitors can expect to see when they visit this most welcoming of estates. Here’s another one for them – taken at one of many stink pits hidden away on Leadhills Estate (far from the tracks that visitors are encouraged to stick to). For those who don’t know, stink pits are used (legally) by gamekeepers in which to dump the rotting carcasses and entrails of dead wildlife. They set snares around the edge of the stink pit to catch (and then kill) any animals that may be attracted to the stench of death (typically foxes). This particular stink pit includes a few fox carcasses oh, and a cat. Nice, eh? Welcome to Leadhills Estate.

Leadhills dead cat stinkpit - Copy