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Gamekeeper failed to prevent trapping
A GAMEKEEPER who used an illegal trap and allowed another keeper to illegally catch birds of prey has avoided a prison sentence today.
Roger Venton, a former head gamekeeper on the Kempton Estate in Shropshire, pleaded guilty to using a spring trap and permitting assistant keeper Kyle Burden to use a cage trap to illegally catch birds of prey.
The charges, contrary to the Wildlife and Countryside Act, included allowing Burden to use a caged trap baited with a raven.
Venton, of Wheldrake Lane, Elvington, North Yorkshire, was handed a sentence of three months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, at Telford Magistrates' Court.
The court heard the 34-year-old was employed as head gamekeeper at the estate in March last year, where Burden, 19, of Kempton, already worked.
The 6,000-acre estate is home to a pheasant and partridge shoot, with around 40,000 pheasants and 20,000 partridges.
Two other seasonal gamekeepers at Kempton contacted the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) separately to report the illegal killing of protected wildlife including buzzards and badgers.
Investigators went to the estate on July 16 last year where they found a cage trap.
Cage traps are allowed in some circumstances, providing the bait is well looked after, and should not be used where they could trap birds of prey.
Further RSPB investigations found a pole trap - a spring trap placed on top of a tall pole, which were made illegal in 1904 as they can attract birds of prey.
The court today was told Burden had already been sentenced to 26 weeks in prison, suspended for six months, as well as unpaid work after he pleaded guilty to several offences including setting traps, and killing both buzzards and badgers. The teenager had clubbed badgers to death and even kept a diary of the killing on the estate.
Venton admitted he had seen the pole trap that had been erected by Burden and told him to take it down, but it had not been taken down.
Geoffrey Dann, prosecuting, said although Venton was not directly responsible for setting some of the traps, as head gamekeeper he was responsible.
Sentencing Venton today to the suspended sentence, as well as 250 hours of unpaid work and 2,000 costs, chairman of the magistrates Russell Thomas said: "You were in a position of authority and you failed to exercise that authority appropriately.
"We are entirely satisfied that you had adequate knowledge of these matters and you failed to intervene to prevent them."
Huw Williams, defending Venton, told the court the 34-year-old was "petrified" and knew he was unlikely to ever work as a gamekeeper again.
Venton has moved to Yorkshire with his wife and young baby and now plans to be an HGV driver, the court heard.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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