Police crackdown on Lakes poachers
Last updated at 15:26, Tuesday, 06 January 2009
I HOP from the back of a police car at an unidentified location somewhere deep in the heart of Grizedale Forest.
It is pitch black, rain is bulleting down and I haven’t a clue where I am.
My colleague tries in vain to pin down our whereabouts using his hi-tech sat-nav mobile phone, but the police officer says our location is on a “need to know basis”. Clearly, we do not need to know.
We are part of an undercover operation designed to catch illegal deer poachers.
We cannot identify any locations, names or times, because that would only play into the poachers’ hands.
If they knew where and when these operations were happening, they might never be caught.
Poaching is a huge problem nationwide. Some 50,000 deer are hunted down per year and their venison meat is coveted even more at Christmas.
The anti-poaching operation is carried out by 20 volunteers in conjunction with Cumbria police, the Forestry Commission, South Lakes Deer Management Group and local gamekeepers and landowners.
Each volunteer identifies a patch of land to cover and is given a list of vehicle registration numbers to look out for.
Each vehicle on the list is driven by a potential suspect who has been linked to poaching by police intelligence.
One volunteer explains the plan: “We take in registration numbers and call the police officer’s mobile if we see any of them. They will then rush to the scene.
“Obviously, we watch out for lamps and listen for shouting. But we need to rely on police to have any chance of a conviction. More often than not there’s more than one poacher and you’re not doing yourself a favour by getting involved. Very often these are not nice people that you’re talking about.”
The volunteers drive off to cover about 100 square miles, carefully watching for lamps flashing, or any sign of distressed deer or abnormal behaviour that might indicate a poacher at work. We get back in the car with wildlife crime officer PC John Baldwin and special constable Tom Huck. They say they are “playing the waiting game”, but we, too, patrol an area. We stop at every car park we pass, and scrutinise every number plate.
The roads are practically empty and the weather is foul – but that’s no deterrent to a poacher.
PC Baldwin says: “There’s not a lot that puts them off, apart from the fear of getting caught. The weather doesn’t matter to them – they think that the volunteers will be put off. There is still a bit of a romantic image to poaching – ‘one for the pot’ and all that. I’m sure there are some that may take one or two deer a year. But there are some doing it almost on a business scale. Fifty thousand deer a year illegally poached – imagine if that were cattle or sheep, there would be a massive outcry.”
Special Constable Huck explains that the operation is mainly about prevention.
He says: “Once poachers know we’re onto them they will go somewhere else, but that’s the problem – they will go somewhere else.”
To combat that problem, the anti-poaching operations are always held at different times, targeting different areas. PC Baldwin says he once caught a poacher at 3am. On our search we leave no stone unturned, driving along roads that resemble dirt tracks and using the car’s high-beam sidelights to check on deer as we pass – but they all instantly run away. And that’s little wonder, when you consider what poachers can and will do to them.
A volunteer, and member of South Lakes Deer Management Group, says: “Poachers do not just strike with rifles. Many others use long dogs, which are a cross between a greyhound and an Irish wolfhound. They are bred especially to hunt game and are able to hold deer down with brute force until the hunter is able to catch up and finish it off. It’s quite barbaric. The red deer in Furness is part of our heritage and it deserves to be protected.”
Eventually the volunteers call PC Baldwin to sign off. No poachers were spotted, which shows the operations are working.
First published at 09:30, Tuesday, 06 January 2009
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk
In reference to your article reported in the evening mail 13th Feb 2009 crackdown on poaching.
It beggars belief that at least 10 officers were involved in an operation to arrest one individual in millom for the taking of a few wild animals, (see pictures of briefing at millom police station published on page 2 of the evening mail.) that belong to no one. We live in a town that has gangs of youths walking the streets terrorising people, damage to vehicles, vandalism of property, assault and muggings etc. Pensioners are scared to go out after dark, properties are broken into, gardens are robbed and vandalised etc. If the police had been doing there normal day job of policing the town and put as much effort and resource into it as they did on the so called poacher , then they might have been able to stop the 5K damage to buildings in millom park the night before as reported in the mail 12th Feb . As a tax payer I would prefer my money was spent protecting the town rather than a few wild animals.View all 6 comments on this article
Have your say
Nowadays the poachers are almost invariably criminal though. The same guys are looking for stuff to steal from farms and households as the same time - like the article said, they are not just your local "one for the pot" types. The deer usualy die badly and slowly as well as these guys are not countrymen, but just out and out criminals who don't care less. there is horrendous cruelty involved when compared to legitimate deer control.
Posted by John Harworth on 28 February 2009 at 17:17