Humberside Police press release (12 September 2019)
WILDLIFE CRIME: BUZZARD SHOT AND INJURED – APPEAL FOR INFORMATION
East Riding of Yorkshire
We are appealing for information in relation to the shooting of a female buzzard.
On the 16 August the bird was found injured on the B1246 between Kilnwick Percy Hill top and Warter village near Pocklington in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The bird was still alive and when x-rayed was found to have two shotgun pellets within its body. The injuries were fresh indicating that the bird had been recently shot.
Fortunately the injuries were such that the bird has been nursed back to good health and has now been released. The exact location of where the shooting of this bird took place is not confirmed. What is known is that the bird had been shot on or close to the date it was found (16 August).
Buzzards and other birds of prey are protected from persecution by Section One of the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 which makes it an offence to intentionally kill, injure such a bird. The penalty for these offences are a term of six months imprisonment and or an unlimited fine.
Chief Inspector Paul Butler the wildlife & rural crime lead for Humberside Police said, “This type of criminal behaviour towards our birds of prey sadly continues. This is now the sixth confirmed persecution incident involving seven birds of prey in the last two years across our force area.
The persecution of birds of prey is a national wildlife crime priority and Humberside Police takes this issue very seriously.
We have now adopted Operation Owl which is a national initiative to raise awareness of the problem and to tackle and prevent this type of criminality.
A large number of our wildlife crime officers have also received specific training in identifying and dealing with these offences.
I would encourage anyone with information about anyone involved in this type of offence in our area to come forward with this information which will be treated in confidence”
If you have any information which could assist the investigation of the above incident please contact PC 1708 Ward on 101 quoting investigation number 16/100243/19.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
“A large number of our wildlife crime officers have also received specific training in identifying and dealing with these offences.” Superb. I’ll be on to my MP. We have zip Wildlife Crime Officers in our area. My local officers don’t seem to know much about wildlife law and, even when I’ve read the law out to them, I’ve had the phone put down on me! A bit of knowledge might go a long way.
Well done Humberside Police. Well done Operation Owl.
DGS should be banned and all other shooting licensed.
Banning DGS does nothing to stop all the other killings. This area in the Vale of Pickering seems to be a place where Buzzard are getting shot regularly. Even licensing won’t stop it completely, so maybe the whole bloody lot should be banned. Nobody, apart from the shooters can say they didn’t bring it on themselves.
Why did a month have to elapse before a public appeal was made ? That is so inefficient.
I assume that the bird was found injured, but the cause was probably unknown. I cannot imagine it took very long for a vet to x-ray the buzzard then make a call to the police when the picture was examined.
In these days of near instant communication on social media an alert could have gone out. A quick broadcast of the known details is far more likely to produce a result than trundling out the same old bland statements with the usual idle threats about the theoretical penalties for crimes that are only resolved once in a blue moon.
Is it really too much to expect better performance.
[Ed: comment deleted. We’ve been over this so many times. Your constant, lazy generalisations about wildlife crime police officers are tedious and unacceptable. I’m no longer prepared to waste any more of my time moderating your nasty snide remarks. You were warned: your comments are no longer welcome here]
Yet another Buzzard and yet another wildlife crime in Yorkshire. Buzzard killing is probably rife where ever there are Buzzards and game shooting. It is not only illegal, despite a culprit rarely being found to prosecute it is pointless most Buzzards do not take game birds, I’ve watched two or three Buzzards here earth worming or vole hunting surrounded by stupid pheasant poults yet those poults are left well alone. Its a different story if those poults are already dead, killed by flying into a fence ( common here!), by the local farmer fed up with them eating a new drill( yes he knows they are out of season, so he shoots and leaves), disease or traffic, then they are consumed very quickly by Kites, Buzzards, Crows and Ravens. Yes DGS should be banned and I would severely limit the release of non- native game birds but neither might prevent such pointless illegal killing of Buzzards but it would help.
The area around the village of Warter is home to pheasant shoots and came up on these pages not long ago when a buzzard was found shot near there. The area that time was described as the western edge of the East Riding. Why the vagueness?
So very pleased it was a good ending for the buzzard but just wish people would start to pay for these crimes