URGENT action is needed to fight the "national disgrace" that has led to hundreds of birds of prey being killed, RSPB Scotland has warned.
The charity is calling for greater efforts and more funds to fight the crime that plagues Scotland's countryside and for the judiciary to get tougher when cases come to court. It also wants landowners for the first time to be held responsible for wha
t happens on their estates, rather than only gamekeepers being punished if they break the law.
The call comes as The Scotsman today reveals that there have been only 26 convictions for crimes against birds of prey in the past ten years.
And during that time not a single prison sentence has been handed out for the killing of the country's most treasured birds.
Duncan Orr-Ewing, the head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland, said: "It's hard to get convictions, and we have known that from bitter experience over the years. It's a blight on landowners' reputations and it's a blight on Scotland's reputation as well."
Figures obtained by The Scotsman show there were at least 428 crimes against birds of prey between 1998 and 2007. However, a mere 28 cases ended up in court, with just 26 resulting in guilty verdicts.
Of those, the majority resulted in no penalty, a community service order, or a fine of less than £500 – even when there were multiple charges.
This is despite the maximum possible sentence for crimes against birds of prey being a fine of £5,000 or six months in prison for each offence.
The Scotsman has been given details of every crime against bird of prey in Scotland over the past ten years.
The 428 confirmed incidents of bird-of-prey crimes have been described as the "tip of the iceberg".
Those incidents included 271 poisonings, all of which were confirmed by post-mortem examinations carried out by the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency.
AMONG those killed were 52 red kites, 14 golden eagles, three sea eagles and 187 buzzards.
In addition, there were 157 other crimes against birds of prey, such as shootings, the setting of illegal traps and destroying nests.
The average penalty for the charge of killing, taking or injuring a bird of prey – a crime once described as Scotland's "national disgrace" by the late former first minister, Donald Dewar – was £995 and for possessing an illegal pesticide was £112. The highest possible fine is £5,000.
Nobody has been prosecuted for any of the 37 confirmed crimes against birds of prey in 2007.
The statistics have led RSPB Scotland to call for more effort to be put into investigating and prosecuting crimes against birds of prey.
Mr Orr-Ewing believes there are not enough specialist police officers dedicated to wildlife crime and a lack of consistency in the penalties meted out by the courts.
He criticised the fact that a prison sentence had never been handed out for killing a bird of prey, even though it has been used for less damaging offences, such as collecting birds' eggs.
He said: "It really is difficult to get these cases through the court system. It's a function of inadequate resources being diverted to the whole system.
"The use of custodial sentences in the most serious cases would hand out a strong message and would be a considerable deterrent.
"There are many cases where we thought this could have been used. We are not saying it would be regularly used, but that in exceptional cases, where crimes are serious and very damaging to conservation, that the courts should use them."
Mr Orr-Ewing thinks another strong deterrent would be for wildlife crimes to become the responsibility of landowners – a legal position known as vicarious liability.
Currently, if a gamekeeper is found with illegal poison, he is prosecuted. Under a system of vicarious liability the landowner would instead be responsible.
Mr Orr-Ewing equated it to publicans being responsible if a staff member served alcohol to an under-age customer, and to managers of companies being liable if a staff member is injured.
He believes that, if the responsibility was passed to the landowners, it would free gamekeepers to speak out, which they are reluctant to do.
"We think there are people out there on the ground that want to do the right thing but, because of their employment conditions, they can't do that," Mr Orr-Ewing said.
However, it is an idea that has previously met with strong opposition from landowners.
THE RSPB has launched a new campaign calling for gamekeepers to phone a confidential hotline number with information about the persecution of birds of prey.
"It's not all landowners involved, but the actions of this minority, this hard core, that undermine the work of others," he said.
"It's time for the good people in the industry to stand up and get this stopped."
Mr Orr-Ewing believes the number of crimes against birds of prey recorded each year is just the tip of the iceberg.
"Given that most of these crimes take place in remote areas and are on private land, it's easier to conceal them than to find them," he said.
He estimates that, on some estates, hundreds, if not thousands, of birds of prey could be killed every year.
He said: "That might be a more extreme example, but even if people were killing hundreds a year, that would be very damaging."
The Scottish Government's "Natural Justice" report last spring set out 25 recommendations for improving action against wildlife crime.
These including establishing a full-time wildlife crime officer in every police force.
However, no deadline was set for the recommendations to be put into action, and most have not yet happened.
Michael Russell, the environment minister, said he was determined to stamp out wildlife crime.
"Wildlife crime continues to be a problem in Scotland, and the RSPB is quite right to be showing concern at the disparity between the number of crimes and the number of successful convictions," Mr Russell said. He added that he wanted to see the Natural Justice report become a "means to catching and punishing the cowardly perpetrators of these awful acts".
He said Scottish Natural Heritage would be making £220,000 available over three years to the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime.
"It doesn't matter if it's bird poisoning, hare coursing, badger baiting or any other deliberate action which causes harm to an animal," Mr Russell said.
"A crime against Scotland's natural heritage is a crime against Scotland itself, and this government is determined to stamp it out."
The life and slow death of a monarch of the skiesONE spring, a pair of sea eagles on Mull began incubating their eggs.
By April, one egg had hatched. The chick fledged in July. In September he flew over Salen Bay.
In November he was independent. The following April, he left Mull. By May, he was dead, aged one year and one month. He'd been poisoned. This isn't a tale from 1888 but 2008.
This is the story of a young eagle, White G…
He had an uncertain start in life. While still in the egg, his parents were spooked by something and left the nest unattended for two hours. We wondered if the egg would hatch.
Luck must have been shining down on him that day. The air was mild. It was dry. The early spring sunshine was warm. He carried on living inside his shell. He was a survivor.
Everything returned to normal and on the appointed day, 38 days from laying, he fought to break out of the egg.
Soon we could hear him calling whenever he spotted one of the adults returning with food. By four weeks old, his first feathers were coming through, he was sitting up on his own and just a week later he was beginning to try to feed himself.
Another two weeks on and we came face to face for the first time. It was ringing and wing tagging time. He was lowered to the ground and I lifted him carefully out of the bag. I remember him as one of the feisty ones.
Soon enough, the measurements, ringing and tagging were complete: white wing tags were the colour for 2007 and his letter was 'G'. White G was official.
And so safely back into his nest, a gift of mackerel left for him and away we went to leave them in peace once more.
For the next month, he grew into a fine, strong young sea eagle. Rich dark chocolate feathers, bright yellow feet, dark beak and eyes.
By three months old, he was ready to take his maiden flight.
By October, he was on his own for most of the time.
At the end of March this year, he was filmed by John and Janis Allen from the Ross of Mull. He was trying to pinch a fish from an otter in Loch Don. It's something sea eagles are well known for. It doesn't always work and it didn't on this occasion but the fact that White G had already learned to do this proved that his prospects for survival were good.
But that was the last time anyone saw him alive. What happened next we can never know for sure.
Like all young sea eagles, he had the wanderlust and began a long journey to the mainland and cross country eventually finding good, suitable habitat in the Angus glens. It was there that his luck ran out. One Sunday night in early May, the phone rang. White G had been found dead in woodland. A few days later a police and RSPB search of the area found over 30 poisoned baits positioned on the tops of fence posts to target birds of prey while on the ground was a dead mountain hare. It had been cut open and it too laced with a cocktail of illegal poisons. Maybe this is what White G had fed on.
The lethal ingredients in his contorted body in the brambles and bracken matched those on the baits.
And so the police investigation got underway and continues today. Many here on the island, across Scotland and the UK are horrified that we are still killing our birds of prey in 2008. Responsible landowners and gamekeepers, of which there are many, will feel as sickened as we all do. It is only a few who still resort to these lazy, indiscriminate tactics to protect their game but the actions of these few will tarnish the image of many.
White G struggled down the hill. I pray his end was swift but experience tells us that this is not always the case with the pesticides involved here.
Over ten years ago, Donald Dewar called the poisoning of raptors in Scotland "a national disgrace". It still is.
Shooting magazine refuses to carry RSPB adTHE country's leading game shooting magazine has refused to publish an advert calling for readers to turn in the culprits of crimes against birds of prey.
RSPB offered to pay Shooting Times more than £2,000 for two adverts with the slogan "A bad apple can spoil everything".
The advert, which had a picture of a rotten apple, encouraged gamekeepers to phone a confidential hotline to report wildlife crime.
However, Shooting Times said it could be offensive to their readers. Its deputy editor, Alastair Balmain, said: "We refused to allow this advertisement to be carried on the grounds that the copy implied that readers of Shooting Times are likely to have friends and associates taking part in criminal activity. Our readers would obviously find this offensive."
He added that Shooting Times condemns the illegal killing of protected birds, and has done so in print many times.
"A large proportion of the readership of our magazine is made up of gamekeepers,'' he said. "The RSPB's advertisement was for a 'gamekeeper hotline' as a means to report criminal activity (notably regarding persecution of birds of prey).
"Our stated position is that the proper channels to go through in the case of wildlife crime are the police or Crimestoppers."
A spokesman for RSPB Scotland said he thought it was "regrettable" that Shooting Times had taken that stance.
Shooting Times describes itself as the official magazine of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC). Colin Sheddon, director of BASC in Scotland, said this was a "historic" link. "It doesn't mean that we have got any editorial or any other control over shooting times," he said.
He added that he recognised bird of prey persecution was a problem in Scotland.
"Unlike some others, we are not in denial over the involvement of game keepers and other in wildlife crime," he said.
• The RSPB's confidential hotline number is 0845 4663636.
A decade of killing takes its toll on birds of prey in ScotlandTHE 26 convictions for killings of birds of prey over the past ten years (the dates refer to the final court hearing, not the date of the offence):
30 October, 1998: Gamekeeper convicted of poisoning birds of prey and illegal possession of poisons after police found the illegal pesticide carbofuran and a dead peregrine in a vehicle: fined £700 for four charges.
14 March, 2000: Falconer convicted of using a tethered pigeon in an attempt to trap a peregrine: fined £2,900 for six charges.
25 May, 2001: Gamekeeper convicted of shooting a hen harrier, after a film of the crime was found: fined £2,000 for one charge.
21 November, 2001: Gamekeeper convicted of using poison baits and killing a buzzard, after poisons were found in suspect's shed: fined £3,400 for five charges.
19 September, 2002: Pigeon racer convicted of shooting a peregrine. Fined £400 for one charge.
9 July, 2003: Individual convicted of illegal possession of poison and firearms offence, after poison found at premises: fined £350 for two charges.
12 November, 2003: Gamekeeper convicted of illegal possession of poison, possession of an unlawful trap and possession of a buzzard egg, after poison found on suspect's property: fined £250 for three charges.
4 December, 2003: Pigeon racer found guilty of illegal possession of poison: guilty on one charge and admonished.
24 March, 2004: Gamekeeper found guilty of removal of a peregrine chick from nest and firearms offences, after a film of the suspect removing the chick was found: guilty on two charges and fined £600.
13 April, 2004: Gamekeeper convicted of shooting a buzzard after being seen shooting the bird and burying the corpse: guilty on two charges and given absolute discharge.
25 August, 2004: Gamekeeper convicted of killing 22 buzzards and a goshawk and possession of illegal poison after poisoned baits and buzzards were found: guilty on five charges and fined £6,000.
15 December, 2004: Gamekeeper convicted of possession and insecure storage of pesticides after poisoned buzzards and illegal pesticides found on suspect's property: guilty on two charges and fined £1,200.
11 January, 2005: Individual convicted of firearms offences in follow-up investigation after a poisoned buzzard was found: guilty on two charges and admonished.
28 January, 2005: Gamekeeper convicted of possession and use of an illegal hawk trap, after trap was found with live pigeon decoys: guilty on two charges and fined £1,500. Conviction overturned on appeal.
10 June, 2005: Gamekeeper convicted of possession of illegal snares, illegal chemicals and insecure ammunition in follow-up investigation after a poisoned buzzard was found: guilty on four charges and fined £190.
1 August, 2005: Gamekeeper convicted of shooting a short-eared owl, after crime was seen by a witness: guilty on one charge and fined £500.
17 February, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of attempting to kill a hen harrier after being filmed attempting to shoot the bird: guilty on one charge and fined £500.
8 May, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of shooting two buzzards after suspect witnessed shooting: guilty on one charge and fined £2,000.
14 May, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of possession of illegal pesticides in follow-up investigation after a poisoned buzzard was found: guilty on one charge and fined £100.
14 May, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of possession of illegal pesticides and setting poison baits: guilty on two charges and fined £100.
29 June, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of taking and possession of common gull eggs, poisoning ravens, possession of illegal pesticides and firearms offences, after dead raven and poison baits found: guilty on three charges and fined £850.
26 July, 2006: Farmer convicted of possession of illegal pesticide and firearms offences after carbofuran was found in suspect's gun cabinet: guilty on two charges and fined £100.
16 November, 2006: Gamekeeper convicted of setting poison baits, possession of illegal pesticides and killing a buzzard, after poisoned buzzard and dead badgers found: guilty on five charges and then sentenced to 100 hours community service.
24 January, 2007: Gamekeeper convicted of poisoning four buzzards, use of poison baits, possession of illegal pesticides and electronic crow call decoys after poisoned buzzards found: guilty on two charges and fined £100.
30 April, 2007: Gamekeeper convicted of possession of illegal pesticides and firearms offences in follow-up investigation after a poisoned buzzard was found: guilty on four charges and fined £1,000.
4 June, 2007: Gamekeeper convicted of killing ravens, use of illegal traps and poison baits, possession of illegal pesticides and firearms offences after snares and pesticides found on suspect's premises: guilty on eight charges and sentenced to 220 hours' community service.
• The Scotsman is committed to helping the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals catch those responsible for killing birds of prey and other wildlife.
Information about raptor poisonings and other incidents of wildlife crime can be passed to police via the National Wildlife Crime Unit in North Berwick on 01620 893607.
The full article contains 2972 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
