Bob Berzins continues his series of posts on the darker side of Britain’s Uplands
According to the Government’s Justice Inspectorate an Organised Crime Group (OCG) is:
“a group of people working together on a continual basis to plan and co-ordinate criminal behaviour and conduct. Their motivation is often, but not always, financial gain.”
And every Saturday through the hunting season sab groups see co-ordinated criminal activity from dozens of people chasing and killing foxes. An equal co-ordinated effort goes into killing every creature that might have an impact on moorland grouse populations – very clearly illustrated by this RSPB investigation where three gamekeepers work together to kill roosting hen harriers – a bird of prey that’s been persecuted almost to extinction.

Yet Police Forces can’t do enough for their local Hunts and it’s the same story for those pillars of the rural community who own grouse moors. And that in-built bias of policing is underpinned by the Government who responded to 10,000 signatures on the petition to ban grouse shooting with a statement that looked like it had been written by the shooting industry, including the usual biased and inaccurate claims of the rarity of heather moorland here.
Criminal activities on grouse moors take place in remote areas when there is nobody around. So, here’s some information and tips about how to find out what these criminals are up to. Gamekeepers never walk any distance, so this type of off-road vehicle track is a common sight:

Why would a gamekeeper repeatedly drive a quad bike across a moor in such extreme conditions? Follow the tracks and you might find something like this in the nearest woodland copse:

It sometimes seems grouse moors are full of rotting corpses. The natural balance of nature has been removed with scavengers or predators – birds and mammals – killed. Any dead creatures you find have been left deliberately as bait. Sometimes so a gamekeeper can see if there are predators new to the area, when further bait is put down surrounded by traps such as snares and sometimes the bait itself is the trap – when poisons have been used.
Use of poisons is not restricted to grouse moors, there is heavy use at pheasant shoots as well, uncovered by the Hunt Investigation Team in Northumberland where birds of prey and a badger were poisoned by brodifacoum a type of rat poison categorised as an SGAR (Second Generation Anti-coagulant Rodenticide). Brodifacoum is not illegal, but use is restricted to in and around buildings – sufficiently vague to ensure no prosecutions in Northumberland. Use of these poisons is governed by a voluntary code the Rodenticide Stewardship Scheme which fails to protect red kites and buzzards from ingesting large amounts of poison – see this recent Wild Justice report.
A number of dead animals or birds spread across a small area is a good indicator of poisoning but sometimes it’s difficult to tell when poisons have been used. This pheasant was freshly sliced open and exposed on a grouse moor with a history of nearby poisoning:

The pheasant was tested by the Government’s Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme (WIIS) and on this occasion no poison was found. WIIS is another example of a government body which all too often fails to protect the environment and protect wildlife. It usually takes six months to test a sample and by that time it’s too late to search premises or gather evidence and many cases where poison is found are categorised as misuse (a mistake) rather than the criminal abuse.
However, this raven (a protected corvid) found on the neighbouring grouse moor was sent to a Laboratory in Scotland which determined poisoning by Aldicarb – a banned poison.

Even with such a serious poisoning there was no real sign South Yorkshire Police investigated. Eventually RSPB, the Wildlife Trust and local MP met the Chief Constable and this open letter was published but wildlife crime continues.
The way our countryside is managed revolves around a continuous battle to kill predators, pests and vermin where use of guns, traps, rodenticides and other poisons is not questioned. But why is that management necessary? – It’s creating an unnatural environment. The default needs to be a rewilded, natural ecosystem where all that killing isn’t needed because nature has found its own balance just as it did for thousands of years before we intervened. I recently posted this photo of a large rat killed in a spring trap:

One comment said it was a better death than being poisoned – I would say rodents have a place in nature and what we need as well is a healthy population of foxes, owls and other predators. But they’ve all been killed and the area is littered with pheasant grain. To maintain this skewed, unnatural, unhealthy vision of the countryside needs a level of killing only organised crime can provide.