Nature News from RSPB Scotland

Episode 30 Birdcrime Report Special

• RSPB Scotland

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This week the RSPB releases its latest Birdcrime Report detailing the shocking ongoing illegal killing of birds of prey.

In a special episode of RSPB Scotland’s Nature News podcast host Stephen Magee talks to RSPB Scotland Head of Investigations Ian Thomson.

They discuss the latest findings as well as the new legislation introduced in Scotland that sets out to tackle this criminality.

You can find out more about the Birdcrime Report here https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/birdcrime

Stephen Magee:

This is Nature News from RSPB Scotland and this is a special episode looking at the bird crime report and the ongoing issue of the illegal killing of birds of prey.

Ian Thomson:

This is Nature News from RSPB Scotland.

Stephen Magee:

So I am at our Loch Leven Nature Reserve and I have Ian Thompson, head of Investigations for RSPB Scotland, with me. Hello, ian, morning Stephen. I suppose we should start, actually, maybe, with some of the language around this right. So we're talking about the illegal killing of birds of prey, often referred to as raptor persecution, correct yep. What are we talking about?

Ian Thomson:

when we talk about that. All our birds of prey are protected by law. They have been largely since 1954. Sparrowhawk was an exception. It didn't come on board until 1961. So species that our Parliament, whether it's the Westminster Parliament or the Scottish Parliament, have created legislation to protect, and every species of bird of prey in Scotland is protected, from golden eagles to buzzards, to kestrels to red kites. The issue that we are dealing with is the illegal killing of those species, invariably deliberate, by shooting, by the use of poisons, by the illegal use of traps and by the destruction of their nests and it's probably worth explaining to people that this is a practice with very deep historical roots.

Ian Thomson:

Certainly, at least the last 150 to 200 years, birds of prey have been perceived as a threat either to potentially to livestock or maybe in more modern times and by modern I mean the last 150 years as a threat to game bird stocks. And those attitudes, particularly with regard to the latter, have persisted.

Stephen Magee:

But the reason we're talking about it now is that this week the RSPB released its bird crime report, which looks at the time frame 2009 to 2023.

Ian Thomson:

Indeed.

Stephen Magee:

So obviously this is a practice that many people might think and you might hope would be a historical practice, but it is not. What does the report tell us about the very recent past?

Ian Thomson:

Well, far from it. This is a review of 15 years and what it tells us is that, at the very least, there were 1,500 confirmed incidents of raptor persecution across the UK during that time period. And I say at the very least, because these are crimes that are really very, very difficult to detect. As most people will know, birds of prey tend to not be like other species. They don't tend to live in close association with man in our towns and in our cities. They tend to be species that inhabit the wilder parts of our countryside. They tend to be species that, because of history, are actually quite shy of humans. They tend to stay away from us as far as possible, so those wishing to do them harm have to put in some effort to get to them.

Ian Thomson:

But it is also because of the locations where these crimes are happening it's actually very easy to dispose of the evidence. For example, if I was to shoot a red kite or a buzzard, I'm going to bury it, I'm going to burn it, I'm going to get rid of the evidence. Raptor persecution isn't like crimes that affect humans. There isn't a person to report the crime. If somebody puts a brick through your living room window, you report that crime if somebody kills a raptor, who's there to see it?

Stephen Magee:

and it the other thing that makes these crimes very challenging, first of all to detect simply to know that they've happened, never mind successfully prosecute is that there is a really sophisticated, organised level of criminality surrounding. Some of this tell people about the lengths that people will go to to disguise their criminality. I mean particularly the story that we have talked about in the particularly you know the story that we have talked about in the past, you know, about satellite tagging.

Ian Thomson:

Absolutely, absolutely so. Satellite tagging is technology that really came to the fore probably around about 15 years ago, where conservationists have been deploying tags, have been deploying tags trackers essentially to birds of prey, in order to get a better understanding of their movements, which sort of habitats they're favouring For example, are they avoiding renewables developments, are they avoiding afforestation, their migration patterns, areas that are important roost sites, feeding sites, etc. They've been an absolutely fantastic tool and told us some incredible stories about birds. I mean, for example, hen harriers that we've been tagging for for a number of years now. We now know that some of Scotland's hen harriers are spending the winter in France or in northern Spain. We'd never have known that before. And the good thing about tagging is you can monitor it. Rather than it being intrusive to the birds, having to go out with a radio tracker or something. You can monitor it from your desk. As the data downloads, you can see where these birds are. The other side of the coin, of course, is that satellite tagging is increasingly telling us where these birds are dying or, more to the point, being illegally killed, and in the last 10 years it's been increasingly obvious that the patterns where these birds are dying and being killed are far from random. They're being very much concentrated in areas of our uplands particularly managed for intensive driven grouse shooting.

Ian Thomson:

Back in 2016, rspb put out a press release regarding the disappearance of a young satellite-tagged golden eagle called Brodie, and Brodie vanished in Monalidths just south-east of Inverness. And while that was bad enough in itself the fact that this bird, fitted with a very reliable piece of equipment, suddenly inexplicably disappeared the real worry was that this was the eighth young golden eagle to disappear in an identical fashion in just a five-year period, so clearly this was more than coincidence. In response to that press release, the Scottish government then commissioned a review of the fates of satellite Tad Golden Eagles, and it was carried out by a couple of academics, peer reviewed, and when that report was published in May 2017, the results were as unequivocal as they were damning. A third of Tad Golden Eagles were disappearing, suspiciously presumed illegally killed in areas of Scotland, being intensely managed for grouse moors. And although it was shocking, it was no surprise because we kind of expected those results anyway from our own experience. But that has really changed the game in making these crimes more detectable.

Stephen Magee:

Yes, and also the other key thing the satellite tagging data, along with other scientific data, helps us understand where these birds are missing from. So there are these things which have come to be called black holes, areas where the habitat is right, where there should be birds like hen, harriers or golden eagles or white-tailed eagles or other raptors, and they're not present.

Stephen Magee:

And that tells a story that tells a story and and that, together with the evidence um about, you know the the, the huge wealth of evidence about illegal killing led to the scottish parliament taking that research evidence, looking at it, doing a whole review process a where-to-review process going through the legislative process and introducing legislation to license grouse moors because, at least in part because of this connection?

Ian Thomson:

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the problems, one of the reasons stop these crimes. So, in other words, if you perceive a bird of prey to be a risk to your game bird stocks, you're going to kill it because the chance of you facing any comeback are slim. Even when we find the bodies which we know, we're only finding a small proportion of getting a sufficiency of admissible evidence to link an individual to that crime and then to see it successfully prosecuted. The chances are minuscule.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, so it carried on Particularly when people will go to the lengths of doing things like, for example, you know you have investigated a situation where a satellite tag was discovered wrapped up in lead and dumped in a river right.

Ian Thomson:

Correct, Absolutely.

Stephen Magee:

It is obvious that if people are engaged in acts that they know are criminal, that they will attempt to cover up that criminality.

Ian Thomson:

Absolutely.

Stephen Magee:

It goes with the territory Absolutely and particularly when it's an organised level of criminal, you know, a consistent organised level of criminality Very much so. So the idea, as I understand it, behind the licensing approaches, which is what this new legislation which we have in Scotland has brought in, is that it is meant to address the fact that we know that these practices have continued to occur despite the fact that they were illegal. What is it? What's the hope that? What kind of difference do we hope licensing might make to this problem?

Ian Thomson:

What licensing does. Just to sort of explain the rationale behind this as things stood, you needed a criminal burden of evidence to be able to impose any sanction on an individual and, as discussed, being able to get that in the wild open spaces of Scotland's countryside were well nigh impossible. The police knew it, the government knew it and, perhaps more importantly, so did the people killing birds of prey did it, so it carried on. The hope around licensing is that there would be a realistic and meaningful deterrent to those committing wildlife crime, where the right to shoot would really depend on acting within the law place before. While we've had vicarious liability legislation in Scotland since the beginning of 2012, it has been virtually impossible to enforce and, frankly, hasn't worked. There have been two prosecutions under VL legislation in 12 years.

Stephen Magee:

And just to fill in for people, vicarious liability was the idea where a landowner would be responsible for things that happened on their land but it has turned out to be very, very hard to.

Ian Thomson:

It has because it depended on the criminal burden of proof yeah this ability to get this sufficiency of admissible evidence to link incident a with person b and, as said, when this is happening behind a hill five miles from the nearest road, at three o'clock in the morning, where the bird is killed and the perpetrator tidies up all the evidence.

Stephen Magee:

And, crucially, the perpetrator knows that they're doing something which is a crime. Of course they do, so there's an obvious incentive to cover up. So the lion's thing is different, because the idea is that you're taking the right to shoot and making that dependent upon being a good citizen, essentially.

Ian Thomson:

Yes, basically, what we want people to do now is when they lift that gun to shoot that buzzard, or they put down that poison bait or set that illegal trap, when they're in the process of doing that, they're thinking okay, the chances are I'm not going to get seen. But if I am seen, then my employer could be in for a world of hurt, and what that could actually mean is I could lose my job, so I'm not going to risk it. That's a game changer as far as we're concerned.

Stephen Magee:

And, to be clear, scotland has made progress on this in a way that other countries in the UK haven't, and part of the report that was issued this week, the Bird Crime Report, is the RSPB across the UK saying that other people should be looking at this model, learning from it, adapting it and implementing stuff. Absolutely, but, as ever with legislation, legislation's great, but we've already spoken about precarious liability right, yes indeed, we've spoken about the fact that it has been a crime for a long time.

Stephen Magee:

You know the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act and other previous legislation right making it illegal, yet the problem has persisted, indeed. So it's not presumably simply a matter of passing the legislation, sitting back, giving ourselves a pat on the back and walking away right Indeed.

Ian Thomson:

It has to work. It absolutely has to work. We have very good legislation in Scotland. We have had for many years, but we've still had killing of birds of prey. We're in a situation now where we are on the cusp of something good that should make a real difference, but it's still dependent on robust enforcement and that is Police Scotland and partners, including RSPB, who assist Police Scotland, but also the licensing authority Nature Scot, and when the evidence is considered, they need to be robust about this. If somebody, if an estate, is proven to be involved in the killings of bird of prey, they should lose their right to shoot grouse, because it is grouse shooting that is the driver of these crimes. Simple as that.

Stephen Magee:

And if you're listening to this and you're a member or a supporter of the rspb, first of all, thank you very much. Second of all, you should rest assured that you and the investigations team, but also people who work for us in policy and people in other organizations that are allied, will be looking very carefully at the implementation of this law as well, not just at the enforcement, but because, inevitably, the difference between a bit of statute in the statute book and then its implementation in the real world can be a big thing right. So we will be looking very closely at this and we will keep people up to date with how it's going and whether it's going in the right direction. And I think the crucial thing for people to remember and and you saw this happen because I know you went to parliament and you you- gave evidence, I gave a couple of occasions and you went, you watched the debates and stuff.

Stephen Magee:

This is the settled will of the parliament, you know. I mean this isn't like some hobby, right? The Parliament has said this has to happen, absolutely. How important was it for you to see the Parliament take that view?

Ian Thomson:

I think the fact that the final vote at stage three of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill as it went through, it felt like for me personally that I'd achieved something in my career. Yeah, and I'm not the only person who thought that there's so many people who've worked so long for that.

Ian Thomson:

There are hundreds, and hundreds of people, people who've retired, people who are no longer with us, raptor workers who've been monitoring golden eagles hen harriers for 30, 40 years, year after year, seeing those nests being destroyed or birds disappearing. For them, as much as for me, that was a really, really important day and it's absolutely critical that this final brilliant opportunity to rid Scotland of the scourge of raptor persecution is grabbed with both hands and isn't watered down and isn't bypassed or anything like that. Yes, people will challenge this. They've been challenging it since day one.

Ian Thomson:

Every press release RSPB has put out about raptor persecution to persecution is challenged by spurious arguments and denials and conspiracy theories. Nobody believes that stuff anymore. We are in a fantastic position now to make golden eagles hen harriers birds that are accessible to everybody, instead of restricted to the back and beyond, where very few privileged people know where they are and have the ability to see them. There should be three times more hen harriers breeding in Scotland than there are now. They should be within a few miles of the centre of Edinburgh, for example, or the hills above Glasgow.

Ian Thomson:

It would be great to get to that place. It would Do you ago.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, it'd be great to get to that place, it would. Do you, looking at where we've got to with this two things, really, do you think things are better or worse than when you started looking at this stuff? And how do you feel about the future, about this next stage of it?

Ian Thomson:

They're undoubtedly better because of this legislation, with the caveat that we haven't had. You know, it will take a few months maybe for cases to work their way through the system and for us to have an idea about how well this legislation is going to work. But I started in RSPB investigations in 2006 and I think we had something like 30 or 40 poisoning incidents that year or the following years and that was utterly horrendous. We've seen, thankfully largely through the increasing use of satellite transmitters. We've seen poisoning really diminish considerably to a handful of incidents every year Still happening, but it's much rarer than it used to be.

Ian Thomson:

In terms of the other stuff the trapping, the shooting that's more difficult to detect. It's difficult to get a handle exactly on trains in that we do know, as I say, there should be a lot more hen harriers than there are. Golden eagles numbers are starting to improve in places like northeast Scotland, which is encouraging, but we still have a hell of a long way to go. Um, but yeah, I have to be optimistic. I do this work because I am optimistic and, yes, it's challenging when I or, more so, my colleagues are dealing with some absolutely grim situations day in, day out People utterly abusing our wildlife for financial gain. It's absolutely disgusting that Victorian attitudes towards some of our most magnificent species persist in the 21st century.

Stephen Magee:

It is Well, unfortunately, I'm sure we will talk about this stuff again. Thank you very much for taking the time. In the show notes of the podcast, I will put links to the Bird Crime Report itself and to some of the other resources that RSPB has online and other places. If you want to know more and I guess the other thing to say to people is, you know, we may well, as we have done in the past, need to call upon people's support to make sure that the right people do the right things, and we're immensely grateful to members and supporters for their help with that in the past. We we may be asking you again, but for now, ian, thank you very much. Thanks, steve, you.