What the RSPB don't wish to protest about. WHY? because they also
perform similar acts with and without their hunting partners.

Go on ask them, see how far you get. They dont like you asking where
your money is going.





http://www.league.uk.com/news/media_...sant_shoot.htm

11 February 2004 Revealed: how top Midlands pheasant shoot slaughtered
hundreds of wild animals in secret cull
Covert video exposes gamekeepers' illegal persecution of birds of prey

Click here for more images
http://www.league.uk.com/huddington/index.htm

Gamekeepers employed by a leading Midlands pheasant shoot are
responsible for secretly slaughtering hundreds of wild animals -
including birds of prey - in a brutal attempt to protect game bird
stocks, the League Against Cruel Sports can reveal.

An undercover investigation has revealed an unprecedented programme of
'predator control' by gamekeepers working on the Huddington shooting
estate near Worcester (1), involving the extermination of hundreds of
wild mammals and birds including foxes, weasels, stoats, squirrels,
mink, rabbits, magpies, crows, deer and buzzards.

Secretly filmed video taken inside wooded shooting coverts on the
Huddington Estate shows animals strung up on 'gibbet lines' (2),
dumped in ditches and strewn on the ground near to pens holding the
estates' game bird stocks. Many were freshly killed; others had
decomposed. The video also shows some of the traps and snares used to
kill the animals (2a).

The grim scenes were discovered after investigators received an
anonymous tip off from a member of the shooting community stating that
employees of the estate were devastating wildlife and persecuting
birds of prey. Three dead buzzards - a protected species - were
subsequently found on the estate, including one, recently killed,
carefully hidden amongst pheasant feed sacks.

A post mortem and toxicology test carried out on the buzzard on behalf
of the League established that the bird had been illegally poisoned.
It is an offence to target buzzards and information on the case has
been passed to officials from the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for further investigation.

Douglas Batchelor, Chief Executive of the League Against Cruel Sports,
said: "The findings at the Huddington Estate provide a disturbing
insight into the largely unreported persecution of wildlife by
gamekeepers and vividly expose as a nonsense the notion that shooting
is concerned with conservation."

He continued: "It is indefensible that these animals and birds have
been persecuted in the name of sport. If the public knew the scale of
the annual slaughter of wildlife by gamekeepers there would be an
outcry."

Research and investigations by the League Against Cruel Sports have
discovered that the UK's 2000 shooting estates are responsible for
killing around 4.5 million mammals and birds of prey annually in order
to protect the 35 million pheasants bred each year for shooting (3).

Gamekeepers use snares, traps, poisons and the gun in order to
exterminate the animals in what is the most secretive aspect of the
game bird shooting industry. Although wildlife persecution by
gamekeepers is mostly concentrated during the pheasant shooting
season, between October to February, gamekeepers carry out 'predator
control' programmes all year round as part of the complex process of
intensively rearing game birds and subsequently releasing them ready
for shooting.

- ends -

NOTES:

1. The Huddington Estate comprises of several hundred acres of land,
including three tenant farms, cantered around Huddington Court, near
to Worcester, the home of the Edmondson family on whose behalf the
pheasant shooting outfit is managed.

2. Gibbet lines are comprised of string, wire or rope strung up
between two posts with persecuted wildlife hung out to deter other
animals from approaching.

2a. Snares discovered on the Huddington Estate were set on non-static
wooden dragpoles in breach of the British Association of Shooting and
Conservation Code of Good Shooting Practice and subsequently contrary
to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Section 11 (3) (a), which
states that it is an offence to set snares where they are calculated
to cause bodily injury to any wildlife coming into contact with them.
The fact that the snares were unanchored means any animal could become
entwined in the snare, drag it off and thus render it impossible for
the gamekeeper to check the snare in every twenty four hour period, as
required by the code.

3. Statistics detailed in 'Killing For Sport: how gamekeepers are
devastating Britain's wildlife', an investigative report by the League
Against Cruel Sports and the National Anti-Snaring Campaign, published
in November 2003. The report documents the scale of persecution of
British wildlife by gamekeepers and details the variety of methods
employed to target wildlife, including the widespread use of snares,
many set illegally.

I used to be a tenant of a property on the Huddington Estate, and I believe the estate workers and/or owners were responsible for shooting my cat:

Heartless yobs are targeting our pets with guns (From Worcester News)
and
Wounds have healed but shot cat is not still not quite himself (From Worcester News)