We at OneKind are very proud today of our investigations and field research officer, who played a pivotal role in securing the conviction of a gamekeeper who set out poisoned bait on the Leadhills shooting estate in South Lanarkshire.
Lewis Whitham pled guilty at Lanark Sheriff Court to the offence, a breach of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and was fined £800. Sentencing Whitham, the Sheriff acknowledged that the challenges facing anyone who discovered an apparent wildlife crime were significant.
The OneKind field research officer witnessed Whitham laying out a poisoned carcass of an animal in a field, within a quarter of a mile of a public caravan park.The poison used was carbofuran, which has been banned in the UK since 2001, and even minimal contact can prove fatal to both animal and human life.
Carbofuran is a highly toxic organophosphate and animals that either inhale or ingest the substance will suffer agonizing pain and death within a few minutes.
This case gives a shocking insight into the continued use of illegal poison in Scotland’s countryside. Whitham told the court that he was trying to impress his employers, and he was fully aware that poison should not be used.
This story demonstrates clearly why employers must be made more responsible for wildlife offences committed on their estates, and why MSPs should support the Scottish Government’s proposal for a vicarious liability offence.
OneKind believes there is no other way of bringing this responsibility home to those who benefit from the illegal behaviour of gamekeepers, whether they are party to it or not.
The Leadhills location has been named in numerous confirmed bird poisoning incidents over the last eight years. Evidence also continues to emerge of illegal trapping on the estate and the widespread indiscriminate use of snares, resulting in the deaths of foxes, rabbits, badgers and deer.
The OneKind field research officer informed the police in his statement that he had seen the gamekeeper arrive on his quad bike at a spot where he had discovered a rabbit poisoned with carbofuran less than a month before.
“He took the rabbit out of the box [...] I saw him bend over for a moment and then he returned to the bike without the rabbit [...] Once he was gone from sight I immediately made my way into the field where I discovered the rabbit [...] It had been staked down to the ground by its back leg using a piece of thick metal wire, in exactly the same way as the previous poisoned rabbit I had found in the same field.
“The stomach to the rabbit had been cut open. I carefully opened the rabbit and instantly noticed that the internal area was thick with blue/black granules. I recognised the granules as those I had found on the other rabbit which had been confirmed as the extremely toxic poison, carbofuran.”
Over several months, the OneKind investigations and field research officer has found three live badgers caught in snares on the Leadhills estate, two of which had to be put down due to their injuries. In addition to numerous apparently illegal snares he has also found four dead foxes in legal snares, and dead buzzards buried in shallow graves.
This summer we sent a file of incidents at Leadhills to the Minister for the Environment, in an attempt to have some firmer action taken to bring an end to this killing of wildlife.