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MONTH: November/December 2007

Prince Harry dodges the bullet as suspect in harrier shootings

 

LONDON--Prince Harry of Britain and two companions on November 6, 2007 escaped prosecution for allegedly killing two hen harriers, but the shotgun blasts suspected to have been fired by the royal hunting party helped to blow the cover off the pretense by shooting estate operators that they practice wildlife conservation.

"Norfolk Crown Prosecution Service has advised Norfolk Police there is insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone over the shooting of two hen harrier birds, a protected species, at Sandringham on October 24, 2007," a Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said in a prepared statement.

"The bodies of the hen harriers have not been found and there is no forensic or ballistic evidence. Witnesses also heard unexplained shooting in the area before the three suspects said they were present at the scene, so other people cannot be ruled out," the CPS spokesperson added. "The three suspects, who were interviewed by police, all denied that the birds were killed by them."

Reported Jack Malvern of The Times of London, "The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds," whose royal patron is Prince Harry's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, "said the shooting was reported by a conservation warden monitoring harriers. The unnamed warden saw the birds being hit but did not see the shooter, the society said."

Elaborated Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent for The Guardian, "The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, had been interviewed as an official suspect by police, along with William van Cutsem, 28, a family friend, and David Clarke, 58, a Sandringham gamekeeper. The investigation was launched after a warden at Dersingham Bog nature reserve, which is run by the conservation agency Natural England on the edge of Sandringham estate, and two members of the public, said they saw the hen harriers shot.

"Sandringham officials later admitted to the Guardian that the prince and his two companions were the only people out shooting on the 20,000-acre estate, hunting duck and pigeon close to the Natural England wildlife reserve. But Marcus O'Lone, the Queen's estate manager, claimed the failure to find the birds' bodies suggested they had never actually been shot."

Sandringham is actually much closer to London than to Scotland, but The Guardian assigned Carrell to cover the case because of his past experience in covering related topics.

"A conviction for killing a hen harrier carries a six-month prison sentence or a £5,000 fine," Carrell wrote. "There have been 35 confirmed persecution incidents against birds of prey in England this year, compared with 25 last year," and 19 in 2005.

Said Royal Society for the Protection of Birds representatives, "We regard the persecution of hen harriers as one of the most serious wildlife crimes. There are 20 pairs in England and it is one of the country's rarest birds of prey. We do obviously appreciate the efforts Norfolk Constabulary has gone to in this very difficult case, but we remain concerned that no one has been prosecuted. We have no doubt that a crime was committed. That no bodies could be found is extremely disappointing. We are concerned, but not surprised, that no evidence could be found."

Natural England chair Sir Martin Doughty called shooting hen harriers "the greatest threat" to their survival in Britain as a species. "Every year hen harriers are killed illegally," Doughty told Carrell, "but successful prosecutions are incredibly rare."

But Doughty stopped short of actually criticizing shooting estate management practices, which seek to inflate populations of "game" birds well beyond the natural carrying capacity of the habitat--a goal which can only be achieved by suppressing predation.

"We want to try to find ways to bring back hen harriers while having viable countryside pursuits," Doughty said.

Dersingham Bog site manager Ash Murray told The Times that the incident was the first shooting of hen harriers in the vicinity since his tenure began in 1998. But other birds of prey have been killed under questionable circumstances at Sandringham. In November 2006, for instance, Sandringham gamekeeper Dean Wright, 26, was fined £500 for allegedly setting a rat trap almost a year earlier, in December 2005, that snared a tawny owl.

Wright's explanation that the owl was caught by accident reportedly did not fully convince King's Lynn Magistrates' Court district judge Philip Browning. As Browning pointed out while pronouncing sentence, a trap baited for rats would normally not be placed where birds of prey might interfere with it, or would be covered, in part so that rats could take the bait without fear of being swooped upon by raptors while feeding.

"O'Lone said Wright had been internally disciplined," reported Carrell, "and insisted the estate followed rigorous environmental policies."

The hunting practices of the British royal family, especially at Sandringham, have stirred controversy for more than 40 years. Prince Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, reportedly killed 15,500 captive-raised birds at Sandringham in a five-week spree coinciding with the distribution of one of the first fundraising appeals that he signed as a founding patron of the World Wildlife Fund.

During a six-week spree at Christmas 1987, after Philip became titular head of the World Wildlife Fund, he and his sons Charles [father of Harry], Andrew, and Edward broke Philip's previous record for sustained bloodshed by shooting nearly 18,000 captive-raised pigeons, pheasants, partridges, ducks, geese, and rabbits at Sandringham.

Introducing Harry and his brother William to hunting at the ages of seven and 10, respectively, against the wishes of their late mother Princess Diana, Prince Charles and friends reportedly shot 12,000 pheasants at Sandringham at Christmas 1991.

In October 2001 the royals began offering bagged partridge and pheasant shot by family members for sale at the Windsor Castle gift shop.

The Queen herself was photographed in the act of clubbing a wounded pheasant to death with her walking stick at a Sandringham shoot in January 2004. Later in the year Philip and several friends blasted birds at Sandringham in front of children from a nearby school, many of whom belonged to the school bird-watching club.

Members of the royal family and their retinue have been investigated many times for cruelty in connection with hunting and maintaining animals to be hunted. The Scottish SPCA, for example, in February 1996 questioned staff at the Queen's Balmoral and Dalnadamph estates about allegations that they illegally culled deer by chasing them into pens with off-road vehicles.

The Royal SPCA in January 2007 reportedly investigated an incident at Sandringham in which members of a hunting party that Philip led first shot and then bludgeoned a fox.

While that case filled the Fleet Street tabloids, Prince Harry's then-girlfriend Chelsea Davy promoted her father's Zimbabwean hunting concession at the annual convention of Safari Club International in Las Vegas.

Other members of the royal entourage have demonstrated cavalier attitudes toward wildlife, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music, who in March 2005 offered a dish of cooked swan to two police officers who visited his home to question him about the death of the swan. Davies got off with a warning after claiming that the swan was killed by flying into a power line.

Plebians use poison

The case of Prince Harry and the allegedly shot hen harriers varied from the usual in that raptors killed in the vicinity of shooting estates are most often poisoned.

For instance, the pesticide carbofuran, banned in Britain since 2001, was used to kill a female golden eagle in the Scottish Borders in early August 2007. Her remains were found on the opening day of the grouse shooting season.

"Scotland has lost half of the only breeding pair in the Borders," said Mike Flynn of the Scottish SPCA. "This could ultimately result in a second tragedy, as it is unclear if the chick will survive."

Carbofuran has been the poison preferred by gamekeepers in recent years, used in 22 of the 24 cases of poisoned raptors that police investigated in Scotland in 2005.

The August 2007 poisoning came two months after gamekeeper George Aitken, 56, of Blythe Farm near Lauder, "admitted using live pigeons as bait and lacing pheasant carcasses with poison," according to the BBC, and was sentenced to serve 220 hours of community service. "The gamekeeper was caught in a joint operation," the BBC said, which "involved the Scottish SPCA, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Lothian and Borders Police."

Aitken was at least the fifth gamekeeper in six months to be prosecuted for killing raptors, and the seventh in a year. Most prominently, the Aberdeen Sheriff Court in June 2006 won a guilty plea from Hector McNeil, 56, a 30-year gamekeeper at the Glenbuchat Estate in Strathdon for 30 years. McNeil admitted poisoning a raven, of whom only two breeding pair remained in the region, and keeping 118 common gull's eggs [apparently used as bait] plus carbufuran. But McNeil was fined just £350.

"Ornithologists fear that up to 40% of Scotland's red kites have been poisoned," summarized Carrell of The Guardian, "victims of a concerted campaign by gamekeepers and grouse moor owners."

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds estimated that "more than 300 of the 395 red kites that bred in Scot-land between 1999 and 2003 have disappeared," Carrell continued. "Up to 185 of those, the RSPB alleges, were probably illegally poisoned with controlled pesticides, snared, or shot.

"Ironically," explained Carrell, "red kites are rarely targeted by gamekeepers because, unlike birds such as the hen harrier, they do not prey directly on grouse. But as voracious scavengers the birds are at high risk of eating poisoned meat. The RSPB says the scale of the problem is underscored by unpublished data which shows that the number of proven poisoning cases in Scotland rose from 19 in 2005 to nearly 40 in 2006, the highest total since the late 1990s. The victims included two golden eagles, hen harriers, peregrines, buzzards and tawny owls."

From 1995 through 2006, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds documented 1,113 cases of birds of prey being poisoned, mostly in the vicinity of hunting estates in Scotland, and mostly in officially unsolved cases.

Setting out poisoned baits for game predators has been illegal in Britain since 1912, but the first conviction for poisoning a raptor reportedly was not won until 2001, when the RSPB videotaped a Scottish gamekeeper in the act of putting out poison that killed a hen harrier.

The present penalty for poisoning predators is up to six months in prison and a fine of £5,000, but the law essentially requires catching poisoners in the act. "If landowners or shooting syndicate members risked prison sentences if their gamekeepers are found to even be in the possession of banned poisons or traps, I am sure there would be a great reduction in the persecution of birds of prey," observes Animal Concern Scotland secretary John F. Robins.

The royals and other "old money" shooting estate proprietors have traditionally sought to hush up scandals about their activities, but Oxfordshire land agent Mark Osborne, 54, counterattacked after police raids in June and September 2006 on some of his 130,000 acres of grouse moor in Britain and Scotland.

"Osborne is at the centre of a police investigation of unprecedented scale into the illegal poisoning of protected birds of prey," reported London Times Scotland correspondent David Lister in November 2006. "Osborne told The Times that he is considering legal action against police over anti-terrorist-style dawn raids on his estates and alleged behaviour that bordered on 'harassment.'

"Some 14 of his gamekeepers have been arrested and questioned by police on suspicion of poisoning rare birds of prey," Lister recounted. "More than 150 officers, some drafted in from drug squads, searched the grounds and buildings of his estates at Angus and Leadhills for illegal poisons after arriving in dozens of vehicles. They sifted through filing cabinets, children's toy boxes, and even women's underwear drawers.

"One of his keepers has been charged over the alleged use of illegal traps," Lister wrote, but Osborne insists that these are commonly used on estates to catch small predators such as stoats. No other charges have been brought."

Said Osborne, "If I found evidence that any of my keepers were killing birds of prey, they would be dismissed."

ANIMAL PEOPLE has found no published follow-up about either the investigation or Osborne's threatened legal response.

The Scottish Gamekeepers' Association has argued for relaxing protection of raptors to keep grouse plentiful, citing an experiment at Langholm Moor, Dumfriesshire, in which all bird shooting was stopped from 1992 to 1997.

First the hen harrier population boomed, then grouse vanished, and then the harrier population crashed as well, possibly because the harriers had become abnormally dependent on grouse.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Scottish Natural Heritage in September 2007 initiated a 10-year study at Langholm Moor, expected to cost £8 million, hoping for different results.

"The project will manage Langholm for grouse, for hen harriers, and for the heather habitat," Colin Galbreath of Scottish Natural Heritage told BBC News. "We will try to feed the harriers so that they don't take grouse chicks all the time, and we believe that may work. We will look at the overall management of the moor to make sure we get a viable grouse harvest alongside the harriers."

Operating under royal patronage via the RSPBA, project representatives have not questioned whether a "viable grouse harvest" is either an ethical or ecological goal.