Every year the Tory party hosts a lavish Black & White fundraising ball for wealthy donors, with a range of opulent prizes on offer in an auction.
We’ve blogged about this event before (see here) when in 2015 one of those auction prizes – an opportunity to shoot 500 pheasants and partridge at the Maristow and Bickleigh Estate in Devon – reportedly sold for £110,000.
This year’s ball took place on Monday evening and one of the auction lots was ‘a fantastic grouse shoot for 8’ at the Westerdale and Rosedale Estate in the North York Moors National Park.
Would this be the same grouse moor where an horrifically injured buzzard with a severed leg and gunshot wounds was found last summer?
It’s not known on whose land this buzzard was shot and trapped, nor the identity of the perpetrator(s), just that the critically injured bird was picked up on a Westerdale grouse moor within the North York Moors National Park. It didn’t survive.
Raptor Persecution UK 
The bidders no doubt included some of the sick and deluded lot who use the website at this link:
http://www.onlinehuntingauction.com
As if the Tory lot will give a sh!t about that Buzzard.
This blog needs to make the main news on a daily basis.
Once the greater part of society know about such then we will see a drop off in raptor crimes.
For example, today I replied to a post on the Yorkshire Birders facebook page, a post sharing one of RPUK’s blogs, in this case the blog about Hen Harrier ‘Mick’.
The post was entitled ‘Perhaps a timely reminder why we don’t post locations on our photos of this species….another one gone…how many untagged disappear?’
This is my reply:
“Would it not be a good idea to publicise the recent locations of sat-tagged birds; the public would then know there was a bird in a particular area, the perpetrators would know that everyone else knows, and the chance of the bird surviving would be higher than if everything was kept secret to just a handful of people?
Gamekeepers are getting away with their crimes on a daily basis because they have our wildlife to themselves.
It appears to me that once the public are aware of such crimes then they are likely to defend the victim, Mark Avery’s petition for example, and the recent Badger petition.
Let everyone know what is going on and the criminals will back off (perhaps), knowing they are likely being watched by a lot of people.
It’s the same with Badgers; the diggers know where all the setts are but the public don’t.
I may well be wrong here but the public could be the saviours of our persecuted wildlife.
The criminals need to know that they are being watched – on a grand scale.
It is plainly obvious to me that the present system of wildlife protection is not robust enough to deter the nasty brigade.”
What the nasty party support the nasty brigade, next they will be holding hands with the devil. Oh God I just remembered!
They are doing that already – witness May and ‘The Fart’ during her recent visit to the U.S.!
Just sickening. What is wrong with our country! All the people that signed the last ban DGS petition should now march on Hollyrood and Westminster!