Wildlife crime is a real crime and a serious problem
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The recent shooting of a rare white-tailed eagle is a reminder that wildlife crime remains a serious problem.
Ornithologist Allan Mee, who was involved in the reintroduction of the bird in 2007, has calculated that 60 white-tailed eagles have been found dead here since then. While it is not always possible to ascertain a cause of death, Mee’s data show that a quarter are known to have been poisoned. 7% were shot. There has only been one prosecution in relation to any of these deaths, in 2009, when a conviction was secured under the Control of Dogs Act (for leaving carcasses where dogs could scavenge).
At the end of 2019, 23 buzzards died in a mass poisoning event near Timoleague, County Cork after ingesting the banned toxin carbofuran. No one has been prosecuted for this crime either.
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— Allan Mee🇵🇸🍉🇮🇪 (@KerryeagleMee) March 18, 2024
Grim reading but this brings to 60 the no of WTEs found dead here since reintros began in 2007. Shooting is particularly heinous but rel rare (7%) while poisoning is the no 1 killer (25%)
Rare white-tailed eagle found dead in Co Roscommon https://t.co/KQBpGetiEX pic.twitter.com/VBychkn28Q
Another egregious example of wildlife crime came from a 2020 report from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) which found that a rare type of marine reef was completely destroyed by a scallop dredger within a Special Area of Conservation in County Mayo. There was no investigation, never mind a prosecution.
Last month, Sinn Féin senator Lynn Boylan raised the issue in the Seanad, where she pointed out that between 1977 and 1987 the State was averaging 75 wildlife crime prosecutions per year. However, since 2000 that has averaged only 39 — a drop of 48%. The most recent figure, for 2023, shows a welcome increase to 43, but this number is still low. It’s not as if the crimes are not happening. These include: cutting hedges and felling trees during the bird nesting season, lamping of deer, trapping of song-birds, setting fires to bogs and hillsides, badger baiting, persecution of birds of prey, carrying out prohibited activities in protected areas (eg. turf extraction, land drainage or using harmful fishing gear on sensitive marine habitats) and so on. It also includes domestic and international trade in endangered or prohibited species.
Kudos to IWT. We need a zero tolerance approach to wildlife crime. https://t.co/M8Ak3Oayz6
— Lynn Boylan 🍷📖🐾 (@LNBDublin) March 14, 2024
Crimes related to fisheries, such as poaching or pollution leading to fish kills, are investigated by Inland Fisheries Ireland. In 2023 they initiated 77 prosecutions under the Fisheries Acts, nearly twice the number taken by NPWS despite the substantially narrower remit.
Figures released to Boylan also show that there are significant geographical differences in the locations of prosecutions taken by the NPWS. Between 2019 and 2023 none at all occurred in County Sligo. In contrast, County Galway had 23. Counties Leitrim, Monaghan, Roscommon, and Meath only had one each during this period. In any given year, a substantial number of counties have no prosecutions, 16 in all in 2019. Last year, 12 had none. County Kerry managed only three over the five-year period.
Since taking the reins as the responsible minster in 2020, the Green Party’s Malcolm Noonan has placed a new emphasis on wildlife crime, with more wildlife rangers on the ground and the announcement of a joint protocol between the NPWS and the Gardaí. In 2020 he announced that a dedicated Wildlife Crime Unit, to be modelled on the one in Britain, would be created. It was to have been set up in 2021 — however, this did not happen and talk of the unit has been dropped.
Britain's National Wildlife Crime Unit is a division of the police force supported by a senior intelligence officer and a senior analyst along with administrators and on-the-ground investigators. The unit sets national priorities, standardises investigations and provides technical back up, including forensic support to local law enforcement. Their head, Kevin Kelly, was in Ireland last September for the Wildlife Crime & Conservation Conference organised by Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland. In his presentation, he was clear that wildlife crime is, contrary to what many might think, an actual crime. Many people who are involved in wildlife crime, he pointed out, are also involved in other kinds of crime. Britain has its issues, particularly around the persecution of birds of prey on driven grouse moors, but their level of organisation appears infinitely more professional and serious than our own.
It is not known why Minister Noonan backtracked on his initiative to create a Wildlife Crime Unit. In December 2023, the Joint Oireachtas Committee recommended the creation of such a unit as part of their report into the biodiversity crisis. It is badly needed.
Bringing a prosecution is a difficult and time-consuming business. Getting a conviction is a vindication of this work, when it occurs. However, the recent case of a badger family being ‘entombed’ by an unscrupulous developer who escaped a criminal conviction in favour of a donation to the poor box, highlights another issue. The data received by Lynn Boylan, which also showed the outcomes of prosecutions, highlights the sentences wildlife criminals can expect:
- €300 for removal of hedgerow vegetation during the nesting season
- €600 for burning a hillside
- €250 for illegal bird trapping
- €75 for unlawful hare coursing
- €300 for poisoning a grey heron.
These are not meaningful deterrents.
Contrast with Spain where in 2020 a hunter was fined €24,000 in addition to a six-month custodial sentence for killing a protected wolf; or with England where a farmer was last year sentenced to a year in jail and slapped with £1.2 million in fines and costs for clearing trees from a protected stretch of river.
The Wildlife Act dates to 1976 and was last amended in 2000. It’s a weak law that needs updating, something the Government itself has acknowledged. But even these weak regulations are barely enforced, notwithstanding the valiant efforts of some local NPWS rangers. And even when they are enforced, perpetrators are near guaranteed to walk away without a criminal conviction and no more than a few hundred euro to be thrown in the 'poor box'. It does not suggest that we have even started to treat crimes against nature as the crimes that they truly are.