I’d like to tell you a story. The story is about a gamekeeper called Colin Burne. Colin is 64 and lives on Winters Park in Penrith Cumbria. I’ve known some good gamekeepers in my time; custodians of the countryside they can be in sympathy with our wildlife. Occasionally they will need to dispatch Crows or the like that interfere with the raising of their pheasants; not a practise with which I sympathise but never the less the copses maintained by landowners for pheasant rearing that would otherwise be cleared for agriculture are good habitat for other wildlife. There are always good sides to situations when you look hard enough. Colin caught a couple of Buzzards in his crow trap and the law says he should have released them but he … I’ll tell you what … a picture paints a thousand words. Take a look at this video released by the RSPB this week.
If the link above doesn’t work in your browser try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULBW0H2uqZ8
Colin was given no more than a slap on the wrists and told not to do it again by the court judge.
To me Colin’s actions seem routine; as though he does this almost every day.
Unless we pull together for this country’s wildlife we will lose it. Nature in Britain is in trouble it needs protection by the courts giving heavy jail sentences’ to people that don’t respect it.
Letter From Norfolk 