Convictions
There are now many successes to show for the investigations into reports of wildlife crime and the prosecutions that follow. For instance, in 2005 Strathclyde Police became aware that a badger sett had been filled with slurry. Working with partners Scottish Badgers and North Lanarkshire Council, the sett was slowly excavated. As the slurry ran out during the dig, so did a badger which would otherwise have been condemned to death through starvation or suffocation. The police traced the person responsible and he was eventually fined £800.
In a case the following year in Lothian and Borders, staff from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) helped police to trace a man with a mist net who was trapping finches. More birds that had been taken from the wild were found in the man’s aviary, which resulted in him being charged and fined £1,000. The man also had an address in England and, after investigations there, a case was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service. On this occasion, the man received a conditional discharge from the court but had to pay costs of £11,750.
3
The worst threat faced by badgers is badger baiting, where people send dogs down badger setts and gamble on which animal will survive the fight that follows.
4
In Shetland a fisherman clubbed grey seal pups to death in 2008 with a wooden fence post. He was jailed for 80 days.
4 In 2006, in the first conviction of its kind in the UK, a man was fined £500
after recklessly disturbing dolphins in the Moray Firth. He was seen speeding on a jet-ski right through a school of bottlenose dolphins, then executing a number of rapid turns back through the school again. Much of this evidence was caught on digital camera. More recently – and again a first UK conviction of its kind – a man was jailed for 80 days in 2008 after clubbing to death 21 grey seal pups on the island of East Linga in Shetland. There are also a number of ongoing cases relating to the poisoning of birds of prey. It’s not yet perfect, but the work of police wildlife crime officers – mostly carried out with help and advice from our partner agencies – and the increased awareness of all operational officers of wildlife crime issues, is beginning to make a difference.
www.snh.gr voog.uk
51 7
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68