The RSPB Birdcrime Report

The RSPB Birdcrime Report as published by the Countryside Alliance

In July we reported that the RSPB's Birdcrime 2009 report was imminent. Now we have it we can report that, as in previous years, there are aspects of the report that are misleading.

The report should be a worthwhile and meaningful document, enabling resources to be targeted where they are most needed to prevent acts of illegal persecution. Instead, a half story emerges which is clearly pursuing an unbalanced agenda on birds of prey.

The RSPB took the inexplicable decision in 2009 to cease recording certain categories of incidents, such as the shooting and destruction of non bird of prey species. Therefore the 682 crimes against non birds of prey reported in 2008, an increase of 480% over the previous five years, are effectively sidelined by the Society. The RSPB does acknowledge that the figures supplied in this year's report fail to give a total figure for bird crime in the UK, rendering the report's title a misnomer.

The report is firmly focused on birds of prey and plays down the decrease in the number of incidents of illegal persecution against them. In the report's introduction, it states that the degree of overlap between the killing of birds of prey and driven grouse moor management in the uplands of England and Scotland is striking. Yet in 2009, of the 268 reported incidents of shooting and destruction of birds of prey, only 38 were confirmed, 16 of which were in the North of England. None have been directly linked to grouse moors. An RSPB spokesman's statement that conflict through the management of upland grouse shooting moors and estates in the North of England is the main problem for birds of prey is therefore totally unfounded.

The gulf between "reported" and "confirmed" cases is stark: 32 reported incidents of bird of prey persecution in Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire in 2009. Number of confirmed cases? Two. There is a notable lack of evidence available; anyone can report an incident, however inaccurate, and it will be included in the report, giving a skewed picture of the truth. If hardly any of those cases are confirmed, well, why get in the way of some scare statistics?

The inclusion of figures which showed that since 1990, Northumbria has been one of the highest areas for reported bird of prey persecution in England, carefully omitted to point out that in 2009 there were only two confirmed incidents; a significant reduction on the average numbers over the previous 19 years, and something to be welcomed . As far as prosecutions are concerned, the report provides the details of 23 individual wild bird related prosecutions in 2009, involving a total of 74 charges of which 51 were proven. All but one of those concerned non bird of prey species, and that was not even in England.

Dodgy data or not, we can agree that all organisations need to work together to put an end to wildlife crime. The formation of the National Wildlife Crime Unit is a significant step on the way to achieving that. Although the RSPB claims to want to work with land managers, it is going an extremely odd way about doing so, and the fact is that, unlike in the past, there are many that will understandably no longer have anything to do with the organisation.

The RSPB needs its support more than the other way round, and it needs to be careful in its scare-story attitude and approach if real progress is to be achieved.