Last week the Channel 4 News team broadcast covert video obtained by Protect the Wild and interviewed the organisation’s founder Rob Pownall, who pointed out the alarming breaches of environmental health regulations, alongside the cruel and distressing treatment of the birds on an industrial scale.
“They claim to be guardians, protectors of the countryside” Rob tells Channel 4 news reporter Alex Thomson. “Does this look like environmental stewardship?” he asks. “None of it does. This is an industry that for too long has been untouched, unlooked at, and it’s about time government action is taken.”
“You can’t defend the indefensible” commented Matthew Goodall from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, on being shown the footage, blaming it on a few rogue operators.
The programme goes on to look at grouse moors, which ‘continue to be plagued by what police sources describe as organised rural crime‘. Reporting on the spot from North Yorkshire, Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson tells us “year after year our rarest birds of prey are shot, poisoned, beaten to death by gamekeepers connected to intensive grouse shooting up on these moors.” Echoing Rob Pownall‘s sentiments, he concludes that the law just isn’t working. He notes that not one pair of Hen Harriers breed on the North York Moors.
The focus switches to Edinburgh, where one of Britain’s leading bird pathologists, Fiona Howie, talks about the most recent victim from Westerdale, a young female Marsh Harrier which had to be euthanised after sustaining shotgun injuries. “The second pellet sadly broke her wing and caused a wound with the bone poking through, so she was unable to fly and was starving when she was found”, she told Channel 4 News. She performs forensic investigation on about 60 dead birds each year, and roughly one in every six has been shot.
The programme concludes with an interview with RSPB Senior Investigations Officer Howard Jones, who laments the immunity from prosecution of those above the gamekeeper, the land managers and employers.
And the programme asks, “If shooting can police itself, how come the same criminality continues?” and concludes: “Crime statistics don’t lie and the government is serving notice that further action may be needed to guarantee the highest shooting standards to protect our already depleted wildlife.”
