RSPB vows to crackdown on wild bird shooting after gamekeeper found guilty of killing owls

The RSPB have vowed to crackdown on illegal wild bird shooting after a gamekeeper is found guilty of killing two owls.

Timothy Cowin was caught by RSPB officers shooting two short-eared owls on Whernside Moor in Cumbria last April.

Cowin attempted to hide the body of the wild birds, but they were found by RSPB officers on the moors.

Police officers were called to the scene where they pursued Cowin on foot. He was later arrested.

Officers believed Cowin, 44, was using a device to attract the birds to the area in order to shoot them.

Cowin pleaded guilty to three charges concerning the killing of the owls. He also pleaded guilty to one charge relating to the possession of items capable of being used to commit offences against wild birds.

On Tuesday, Cowin appeared at Yorkshire Magistrates' Court. He was fined £400 for each of the two birds and £200 for possession of the device. As well as this, he was ordered to pay £170 costs and £40 victim surcharge - a total of £1,210.

Last updated Wed 29 Aug 2018

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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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Video: Gamekeeper jailed for ensnaring and killing birds of prey thanks to RSPB video monitoring

Video: Gamekeeper jailed for ensnaring and killing birds of prey thanks to RSPB video monitoring

Jan 13, 2015 13:55

By Record Reporter

GEORGE Mutch was sentenced to four months in jail for laying illegal traps and bludgeoning a goshawk to death with a stick.

George Mutch, 48, was sentenced to four months at Aberdeen Sheriff Court after he was convicted of laying illegal traps and killing a goshawk by hitting it with a stick.

It is understood to be the first custodial sentence for a wildlife crime in Scotland.

Mutch was caught following video monitoring by RSPB officials on the Kildrummy estate near Alford in Aberdeenshire in August 2012.

The footage showed that a jay had been used as a lure in a cage-style trap which had caught a rare goshawk.

Mutch was seen killing the distinctive bird by repeatedly striking it with a stick, the court head.

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Gamekeeper found guilty of poisoning eleven birds of prey

A Norfolk gamekeeper was found guilty on 1st October 2014 for the poisoning of at least eleven birds, including 10 buzzards and one sparrowhawk. 

A sparrowhawk was among the birds

 found to have been poisoned

Allen Lambert, 65, previously a gamekeeper on Stody Estate near Holt, was also found guilty of the possession of pesticides and other items capable of being used to prepare poison baits. Earlier in the trial at Norwich Magistrates Court he had pleaded guilty to five other charges, including three offences of illegal storage and use of pesticides, and the unlawful possession of nine dead buzzards. 

Suspicion of the poisoning was raised when, on 4th April 2013, the remains of five buzzards, a sparrowhawk, and a tawny owl were found apparently dumped in a wood on Stody Estate. Analysis of the birds confirmed that cause of death in at least one buzzard and the sparrowhawk had been due to poisoning from the pesticide mevinphos, which is a former agricultural pesticide banned from use in 1993. 

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GAMEKEEPER FINED AFTER OWL'S DEATH

By PRESS ASSOCIATION

PUBLISHED: 14:30, 31 July 2014 | UPDATED: 14:30, 31 July 2014

An experienced gamekeeper, who works on the estate of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, has been fined £700 for incorrectly setting a trap which killed a protected tawny owl.

Mark Stevens pleaded guilty at Basingstoke Magistrates' Court to two charges of using spring traps without failing to prevent non-target species being caught.

As well as the fine, the 42-year-old, who is self employed, was ordered to pay £650 court costs and a £50 victim surcharge.

The traps had not been set on the Sydmonton Court Estate which is owned by Sir Andrew, Richard Atkins, Stevens' solicitor said after the case.

Mark Gammon, prosecuting, told the court that a member of the public, Ed McBride, was walking in the Ecchinswell area of Kingsclere, on August 19 last year when he found the tawny owl caught in the trap which had been set on a pole next to a pheasant pen.

Mr Gammon said: "As he walked along he heard a flapping sound and saw an owl caught in one of these traps, the owl was hanging upside down as the trap had been secured to the post by a line of blue washing line."

He added that the spring trap was an approved trap but had not been set properly with a cage to prevent unintended animals and birds from getting caught.

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RSPB disappointed with outcome of case, but defence says gamekeeper was demonised

A GAMEKEEPER on an expensive shooting estate has been fined after admitting setting a trap which could injure wild birds.

Harrogate Magistrates Court heard the RSPB and two expert witnesses were convinced Ryan Waite, who maintained the Swinton estate 10,000-acre grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales, had intended to target birds of prey.

RSPB investigators covertly filmed Waite, of Healey, near Ripon, resetting a spring-loaded pole trap on top of a six foot tree stump in June last year.

Kim Coley, prosecuting, said Waite was also filmed removing the trap when officials visited the area over a separate matter.

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Rare buzzards beaten to death by gamekeeper

With four brutal blows, Colin Burne smashes the protected bird of prey until its life ebbs away.

Seconds later, he repeats the outrage, grabbing another trapped buzzard and pummelling the bird to death with a wooden stake.

In a final act of defilement for one of the countryside’s most beautiful creatures, the 64-year-old gamekeeper hurls the lifeless birds into a bucket.

Unknown to Burne, each graphic moment of the 90-second onslaught was being captured by a covert camera set up to watch a bird-trap on land managed by a private shooting syndicate in Whinfell Forest, near Penrith, Cumbria. RSPB investigators had begun the surveillance operation after a tip-off and were left stunned at the brazen way Burne killed the protected birds. When officers from Cumbria Police and the RSPB later searched the site they found the remains of several other buzzards.

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Only 70 days jail sentence?  Suspended for a year due to ill-health?  Oh come on.......

Bird of prey poisoner given fine

A gamekeeper who poisoned a bird of prey and owned illegal pesticides has been fined £4,450.

The common buzzard died after eating the carcass of a pheasant that Peter Bell laced with highly toxic pesticide carbofuran.

The 62-year-old left the bait in a field on Glasserton Home Farm near Whithorn, Dumfries and Galloway, on December 23 last year.

The full-time gamekeeper is responsible for rearing pheasants and organising shooting on Glasserton and Phsygill Estates which includes land on the farm.

The illegal poisonous substances carbofuran, strychnine and alphachloralose were found in his tool shed and home during a search on March 5.

Bell, of Whithorn, Newton Stewart, pleaded guilty at Stranraer Sheriff Court to one charge of killing a wild bird and three of having illegal pesticides under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Craig Harris, wildlife and environment procurator fiscal, said: "The killing of this buzzard was considered and deliberate criminality. The laying of bait laced with carbofuran was shockingly irresponsible conduct.

"It was compounded by the stocks of other illegal poisons that were kept.

"The law protects wild birds and those who seek to poison them, or continue to possess stocks of illegal poison, can fully expect to be brought before the courts."

A spokesman for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association said the organisation condemns illegal poisoning.

http://icscotland.icnetwork.co.uk/news/scottish/tm_headline=bird-of-prey-poisoner-given-fine%26method=full%26objectid=33492809%26siteid=50141-name_page.html#story_continue

Gamekeeper trapped rare birds of prey using illegal cages

A game keeper set out to protect his pheasants by trapping some of Britain's rarest birds of prey using illegal cages baited with live pigeons, a court heard yesterday.

Shaun Allanson, 37, subsidised his income from working on the Blansby Park near Pickering, North Yorkshire, by breeding and selling game birds to shooting parties.

Goshawks, so rare they were once declared extinct, were a known predator on the estate but protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Natural England officer Justine Clark was carrying out a survey at Blansby Park when she stumbled across one of Allanson's illegal cages, the court heard.

It was inside a pheasant pen on the estate which was surrounded by a six foot high electric fence, Scarborough Magistrates were told. She found a wire cage "letter box trap" - with a slot just big enough for a bird to get in but not out again.

"Inside was a buzzard eating what appeared to be a freshly killed pigeon," said Sarah Tyrer, prosecuting for the CPS. "Her immediate thought was that this was an illegal trap. Looking inside she could see food, water, and a perch.

"She released the buzzard and reported the matter to police."

In follow up visits by police, a pigeon skull was found in the bottom of the cage, and a second small trap was discovered hidden in the pen 100ft from the bigger one.

The officer also arranged logs in front of the gate to the pen and when he returned they had been rearranged, showing someone had been inside again.

The court heard such cages were not illegal but were only supposed to be used for catching crows at certain times and not baited with live pigeons.

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‘Vicious’ gamekeeper convicted of poisoning buzzards

Buzzards are still being persecuted in some areas.

Carbofuran poison used again
January 2013. A Lincolnshire gamekeeper has been convicted of killing two buzzards and possessing a quantity of an illegally-held poison, which the RSPB says would have been enough to destroy all the birds of prey in Lincolnshire.

Carbofuran
71-year-old Robert William Hebblewhite, of Appleby, Scunthorpe, was fined a total £1950 after he was convicted of killing two buzzards and possessing Carbofuran, a banned poison. The buzzards were found dead on land at Blyton, where he works as a gamekeeper. Toxicology tests revealed the birds had died from Carbofuran poisoning after the poison was laced on pheasant carcasses which the buzzards tried to feed on.

‘Vicious' methods
In court Hebblewhite heard the judge describe him as an ‘old-fashioned' gamekeeper who resorted to ‘vicious' methods. The judge regretted the death of the two buzzards but added that it was ‘lucky' that no other creature or human had discovered the poisoned baits first.

Hebblewhite had pleaded guilty to possessing Carbofuran at an earlier hearing on 15 October, 2012.

The RSPB's Mark Thomas, who was at Lincoln Magistrates Court for the conviction, said: "The possession and use of Carbofuran is illegal, and yet birds of prey are still being killed by this poison. This conviction shows this poison is still in circulation in quantities sufficient to kill huge numbers of birds of prey. A few grains of the poison will kill a bird of prey; a jar is enough to kill all the birds of prey in a county. With yet another gamekeeper convicted of poisoning birds of prey, it is time for this illegal and indiscriminate practise to be consigned to the pages of history."

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/gamekeeper-carbofuran.html