Scottish gamekeeper banned over alleged goshawk persecution

Three-year restriction on unnamed keeper on Philip Astor’s estate after incident with baited trap

Severin CarrellScotland editor

Mon 2 Apr 2018 17.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 2 Apr 2018 22.00 BST

A head keeper employed on one of Scotland’s most illustrious grouse moors, Tillypronie in Royal Deeside, has been banned from controlling birds for three years over an alleged wildlife crime incident.

He worked on an estate owned by Philip Astor, a member of the famous Anglo-American dynasty and vice-chairman of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, an influential campaigning body which advised Astor on his pheasant shoots.

The Guardian has established that the conservation agency Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) imposed the ban on the head gamekeeper on 15 September last year, after an incident in March 2014 involving a baited trap near a goshawk nest on Astor’s estate. But neither he nor the estate involved were named.

The incident was filmed by a covert camera placed near the nest by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds as part of a wider investigation into illegal persecution of goshawks across the surrounding area.

Astor sold Tillypronie – a 50 sq km estate near Balmoral which boasts grouse and pheasant shoots, deer stalking, tenant farms, and salmon and trout fishing on the river Don – in various lots last year. It went on the market for offers over £10.5m.

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