How low will they go? Caught in the act
The grouse shooting industry doesn’t like to talk about raptor (bird of prey) killing because it’s wildlife crime. It’s not good for an industry which supplies an expensive leisure activity to be underpinned by criminal activity. There are many reasons for wanting change (we’d say a ban) of driven grouse shooting and criminality is one of them.
Incidents of the illegal persecution of raptors on driven grouse moors are well documented and ongoing. They’re also woefully under-punished, with prosecutions few and far between, largely due to the difficulty of securing sufficient evidence and/or witnesses in remote locations. The cases that do make it through the courts are often stacked in favour of the defendant, who is represented by expensive senior lawyers (paid for by the grouse-shooting estate) up against the poorly-funded and under-resourced public prosecuting authority (CPS in England & Wales, COPFS in Scotland). Where a conviction is secured against these odds, strong sentencing options are available but are rarely applied consistently and often these cases result in the equivalent of a slap on the wrist for the offender, providing little deterrent for other would be raptor killers.
Driven grouse shooting is an industry with a problem. It seems many overseeing and working within the industry have a fixation; an urge that they can’t seem to fight, to eradicate raptors. This urge appears to be driving the perpetrators of raptor persecution to carry out shocking crimes against wildlife, as well as engage in acts of deception to cover up their crimes.
And so, in a series of blogs we will be asking the question – ‘How low will they go?’ Looking at case studies from a range of locations, affecting many species of raptors, we’ll look at the lengths that criminals will go to, either to kill birds of prey, or to hide the fact that they’ve done so.
Caught in the act
How low will they go?
Brazenly committing crime in the open, without considering they could be caught.
Species:
Short-eared Owl
Method:
Shooting and hiding bodies.
Date:
April 2017.
Location:
Whernside Estate, Yorkshire Dales National Park
Repercussions:
Gamekeeper convicted and fined £1,210.
The crime:
The illegal killing of raptors often takes place away from public view. Driven grouse moors are, by their very nature, remote, large areas and so the chances of a member of the public witnessing a wildlife crime there are quite slim.
The chances of three RSPB Investigators witnessing one are even slimmer. However, in April 2017 on the Whernside Estate in the Yorkshire Dales National Park,, a team from the RSPB was visiting the moor when, by chance, they witnessed the illegal killing of two Short-eared Owls.
From a distance the group watched a man first shoot one owl, before stamping on its body on the ground and then stuffing the corpse into a dry-stone wall to hide it. Shortly afterwards, another Short-eared Owl flew by and it, too, was shot. This bird was stamped on and the man appeared to tread the owl’s corpse in to the peat, presumably to hide the evidence of his crime.
Despite the horror of the scene in front of them, the quick-thinking witnesses acted efficiently, filming the incident to get evidence and calling the police to alert them of a crime in progress.
The man caught on camera was employed as a gamekeeper on the estate. In a dramatic moment captured on video, as he walked off the moor to reach his parked vehicle the gamekeeper encountered one of the RSPB’s team hidden behind a nearby wall. After being confronted about the shooting of the two owls, the gamekeeper turned on his heels and , took off running across the moor, being pursued by an RSPB investigator. Luckily, the police responded quickly to the RSPB’s call and arrived a short while later to handcuff and arrest the gamekeeper before he could leave the moor
During a search, police also discovered that this gamekeeper was in possession of a ‘calling device’, preloaded with the calls of several birds of prey, presumably to be used as a means of attracting birds in close for potential shooting/killing opportunities.
Following a frustratingly drawn-out court case, the gamekeeper eventually pleaded guilty. In one way this was a good outcome – successful convictions for the illegal killing of raptors are infuriatingly rare – but the sentence in this case did not reflect the seriousness of the crimes – the gamekeeper received a pathetic fine of £1,210.
Our view:
Even when undisputable evidence of a wildlife crime secures a conviction, the repercussions for those guilty of illegal raptor persecution are usually insignificant. Criminals within the driven grouse shooting industry are learning time and time again that they will likely get away with their crimes, and even when they don’t, the punishments they face are not severe enough to act as a deterrent to others.
Help us put a stop to this.
When an industry is underpinned by criminality, something needs to change. Those operating driven grouse moors have had plenty of opportunity to do so – but birds of prey continue to be illegally killed.
This is why, along with many other reasons, we at Wild Justice believe driven grouse shooting should be banned.
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