Crime makes the headlines of our newspapers every day.
We love to read about grisly murders, brazen jewel thieves and binge drinking yobs. But it’s not just humans who are the victims of crime - often it is our most beautiful and fascinating wildlife.
The details are often just as sickening as the most gruesome tabloid court reports. Our stunning birds of prey shot, poisoned and caught in cruel traps. Badgers caught, tied down and attacked by dogs for a paying crowd of onlookers. The incredible upstream journey of the wild salmon making its way back to its spawning ground cut short by poachers releasing poison into the water, killing everything in the vicinity.
Unpleasant isn’t it?
But you won’t hear about any of this in the annual crime figures, for the simple reason that it isn’t recorded in the official statistics. Investigation of wildlife crime is patchy, full-time wildlife crime officers are far too few – and there isn’t even a national agreement on what constitutes a wildlife crime.
So that’s why the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts have called for an overhaul of the way crimes against wildlife are dealt with so that the perpetrators can no longer get off scott free.
Public outcry over the poisoning of a golden eagle has already led to a review in Scotland. That recommended proper national standards of investigation and more specialist officers. Why not a similar review for the rest of the UK?
If you want to add your name to the call for something to be done and you’re coming along to this year’s Birdfair at Rutland Water this weekend then you can sign a petition calling for Government action. Alternatively, you can join Leonardo DiCaprio and more than 140,000 others and sign the RSPB’s Bird of Prey pledge.
Are the steps that were taken in that 2008 review in Scotland generally thought to have been a success? Will further step now be taken following the recent poisoning of Alma? I had what must be called a positive reply from Roseanna Cunningham's office at Holyrood (the positive thing being that they know this is wrong and that the public cares). But the best news I have seen so far is that of the local outcry - as I have added after your July 31 blog, see www.brechinadvertiser.co.uk/.../Community-action-follows-death-of.5558572.jp I hope the RSPB will be offering full support.
I expect that the News Blog is aware of www.timesonline.co.uk/.../article6805779.ece Excellent writing as ever from Simon Barnes. I had previously asked various people at the RSPB to contact him in support of the campaign against the poisoning of raptors in Scotland. However, he seems still unaware of this on-going barbarism. In this article he singles out Scotland as the paragon of virtues. Can anyone at the RSPB contact him to write in support of the birds being poisoned in Scotland? It's not too late for him to write an update. Publicity from people like him is vitally important - it might help to bring the villains to justice at long last, and, who knows, it might just deter further poisonings of more eagles. Perhaps he could be reminded of the tragic tales of Alma the satellite-tagged golden eagle poisoned on a named estate in Angus, the golden eagle poisoned in Argyll, the buzzards being poisoned in various localities including Sutherland, not to mention White G., the little sea-eagle captured on a YouTube video playing with an otter on Mull shortly before it had a trip out - to an estate in Angus...