Deliberate persection of Birds of Prey

Corio Raptor Care and Rehabilitation

www.raptor.org.uk

Persecution of Birds of Prey

Shooting This bird was a victim of lead-shot. You can see on the larger picture the small holes on the chest area.	Poisoning Poisoned bait is placed for the unwary bird, but this form of trapping is indiscriminating.
Trapping Fen traps are legal but in this instance, one has caused the death of a buzzard.	Egg Collecting Egg collecting puts stress on survival rates of all raptors. And remember each egg in the box represents a dead raptor.

A trapped Barn Owl

This magnificent bird lost its life when it decided to perch on a fence post, as owls often do to gain a vantage point.

Unfortunately a trap had been set on top of the post.

Larger raptors were first persecuted as a means of protecting domesticated animals, but such practices greatly intensified and spread to smaller species following the development of the breech-loading guns of the 1840s, and the subsequent growth in small game hunting. In Scotland, from a single estate at Glengarry, records were kept by staff on the number of raptors killed covering a period of four years from 1837-1840.

Killed on one estate in four years......
98	Peregrines
78	Merlins
462	Kestrels
285	Buzzards
3	Honey Buzzards
15	Golden Eagles
27	White-tailed Eagles
18	Ospreys
63	Goshawks
275	Red Kites
68	Harriers

The total number of raptors killed on just one estate over a four year period was 1,392.

Osprey became extinct in this country around the 1900s, and was not registered as a British breeding bird until 1955, a gap of over 50 years.

The white-tailed Sea Eagle after years of persecution through shooting, trapping, poisoning and egg collecting, eventually succumbed to this relentless pressure and became extinct in this country in 1916 when the very last Sea Eagle was shot in Scotland by a trophy hunter. It has only recently been re-introduced.

In 1928, two men stood proudly on a cliff top waiting to be photographed. At their feet lay a coil of climbing rope and a large pile of 64 peregrine eggs, which they had collected in just one year’s harvest from Dorset. Whole clutches of eggs are taken, complete generations of potential young destroyed.

Persecution is still a great threat to raptors in this country even today. Every year birds are illegally trapped, shot or poisoned. The latest figures from a national census compiled in 1997 have shown that there are 45 reported poisoning incidents, 67 involving trapping, sale and illegal possession and 143 reported incidents of shooting and destruction. This is only the tip of the iceberg as these are the reported incidents; many go by and are never detected.

Most raptors return to the same site each year, so it goes that thieves return and take more eggs, the rarer the species became, the more sought-after its eggs became/ In 1997 there were 77 reported cases of raptor nests being raided.

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