Innocent Badger

In the last few weeks we have recieved confirmation that the people responsible for enforcing the rules and regulations with regards to the handling of dead badgers during the cull is the Animal Plant Health Agency (APHA).

We already knew a few people involved with APHA were monitoring the actual killing of badgers, most notably Ray Ridley who has been under close surveillance many times over the years, leading cull saboteurs straight to farms involved in killing.

Ray pictured above has done quite a lot of killing over the years, he frequently flies all over the world to kill whatever is seen as an “invasive species” you can read about his exploits killing yellow legged gulls in Gibralter here. Or his training of locals to kill feral livestock in Montseratt, a guide which he wrote himself and for some reason included photographs or dead people. The manual can be downloaded here.

We have dug through classified files leaked from Natural England and found that Ray Ridley’s little gang within APHA are called the “National Wildlife Management Team”, they not only travel the world killing animals, they also cull here in the UK, they currently have at least two licences.
One to kill the ruddy duck, the other to kill Monk Parakeets (AKA Quaker parrots)

Although Ray is clearly the top gun in the team, his boss is none other than a Dave Parrott his email was included in the application: dave.parrott@apha.gsi.gov.uk

This is the rest of the team who are on the application to kill the monk parakeets

Why do they kill monk parakeets? the explanation in the application is that
“they can cause severe local
damage to crops and their communal nests are often
built on utility structures (e.g. pylons and
substations where they can cause power outages. In
the USA the cost of nest removal alone to reduce the
risk of power outages was estimated to be $1.3m to
$4.7m over a 5 year period.”

This explanation is nonsense, we have an entirely different power supply and network to the USA and none of the monk parakeets we have in England have ever nested in pylons. We can see from other applications to kill these parakeets, the only reason they are considered a pest is because they bother farmers. A Mr. Kenneth Slaney in a seperate application to kill monk parakeets at Reeds Hill Farm, Benfleet, Essex, SS7 1PJ wrote that he wanted to shoot them because:
“Protection of cattle feed from contamination. Contamination of livestock living areas.”

We found that the licence didn’t only ask Natural England for permission to shoot these birds, but they also wanted to use “spring operated traps” and “Nest box traps” more on those traps in the application stated:
“During February and mid-March
2017, initial work on the development of a nest trap
will involve preparatory work in which components of
a trap (e.g. circular metal frame around the nest
hole entrance) will be attached to the nest, to
observe the parakeets response and willingness to
still enter the nest.”

The birds have had people out defending them, numerous newspaper articles have covered the killing, The Daily Mail pointed out that each bird was costing over £1,000 to kill, Back in 2011 the police even waded in and wrongly stated that it was illegal to photograph the APHA kill team. Astonishgly, it’s still entirely legal to import, rear and sell these birds, which doesn’t make any sense if the government are actually interested in stopping these birds from taking down our power stations, or whatever ridiculous reasons they have come up with.

We will continue to expose the people involved in the badger cull, something all these people should have been told when they went to work for the APHA. We have been threatened on numerous occassions by a number of different government departments to stop publishing the details of the people involved, we have completely ignored all those legal threats and will continue to ignore them.
You can support our work by buying us a cup of coffee, we have very low overheads and we are all volunteers, so all donations make a big difference to us, thank you.

In the last couple of weeks the revelation that Natural England has licenced three Scottish falconers to take Peregrine Falcons from the wild to be bred from has hit the news.
We have dug a bit deeper than the papers and can exclusively reveal the people involved and some of their history. Scroll to the bottom of the page for all their contact details.

We have extensive access into Natural England’s confidential databases, so that’s where our search began. One name kept coming up, Gary Wall. Not only did he apply to take wild Peregrines, but three other people who also applied named him in their applications. We will come back to them later on.

Gary Wall

Gary was kind enough to reveal himself on facebook as the person who had recieved the licence, he then took the unusual step of explaining himself in the comments on Mark Avery’s blog post:

Given that Gary has a history of breeding falcons for the middle eastern market where Peregrine Falcons can sell for upto £70,000 it was a surprise that when Mark Avery gave Gary the opportunity to explain himself, he skimmed over his recent past. You can read all of Gary’s post here, but this extract is very revealing:

Gary conveniently edits his own personal history, skimming over the fact that he set up a falcon breeding centre in Scotland for the Middle Eastern market. This article from 2011 shows that he had been breeding falcons for some 20 years, so he clearly hadn’t retired in the “Early 2000’s”, his breeding site did get planning permission.

Perhaps Gary’s memory isn’t very good, his idea of retiring in the early 2000’s just as exports were taking off seems particularly odd. As shortly after getting planning permission for a larger breeding facility in 2011 that he’d been operating for 20 years was sold just two years later, to guess who?

Gary insists that the birds will not be bred for commercial gain, that’s very difficult to believe given his history. It’s even harder to believe when we look at the next licence holder (they named Gary in their application) who run a travelling circus/zoo without the proper permits:

Alan Rothery & Debbie Rothery
the owners of Sky High Falconry.

How Natural England decided to give these people a license to take eggs from peregrines nests reveals exactly the state they are in. They couldn’t even manage to do a simple check on the business, which hasn’t registered itself for either a zoo licence or registered under the performing animals act.
Earlier this week Freedom for Animals posted:

“The company has continued to keep and exhibit their captive birds, meaning that it is believed to have been illegally operating for a considerable period of time.”

We looked through Alan’s and Debbie’s facebook pages to find out more about their connections and past. Unsurprisingly both of them have many connections to Abu Dhabi. A quick skim through Alan’s followers on fb shows he certainly is well connected to UAE.

Going back a few years on his profile pictures this came up from 2011:

and again more recently in 2014:

This is Peregrine Falcon racing, it has nothing to do with the conservation of a species and everything to do with money.

The Scottish Hawking Club facebook group that Alan runs with Debbie conveniently hadn’t locked down it’s members list. No doubt they’ll get round to it after reading this post, but we’ve already saved the page, along with all the other unsecured friends and followers lists.

It was in that Hawking club that we found another person we knew who had applied to take peregrines from the wild. A Dr. Karl Jennings. His application was not successful, but it also included Gary Wall’s name in the application.

Karl isn’t the brightest button, as this news article demonstrates, he had to enlist firefighters to remove the ring he’d placed on a bird, which then grew out of it.

The third person to be given a licence was a Mr. David Martin, we know very little about him other than the contact details he gave on his application to Natural England. He also named Gary Wall on his application.

We cannot understand how or why any of these people have been given a licence to take Peregrines from the wild. Please do contact Natural England chiefs at home and ask them why they have allowed this travesty to occur.

You can find their details here.

Don’t expect too much though, Head of NE and so called environmentalist said this to The Telegraph:

We had threatening legal letters from Natural England last year after revealing confidential information, they can carry on threatening us, their threats are music to our ears. We know when they get upset we are on the right path. If they don’t like it then they can stop licensing badger culls.

We run entirely on small donations and as we are voluntary have very low overheads, no staff wages, no office rent etc, what we do have is monthly bills to run a vehicle and phone/internet bills. We appreciate that this is a difficult time for everyone and many people cannot afford donations to charities. If you would like to buy us a cup of coffee, you can do so here.

Contact details for the nest robbers:
Gary Wall
Birch House, Kiltarlity, Beauly, Inverness-shire. IV4 7HT
email: falcoscot@hotmail.com
twitter: https://twitter.com/Falcoscott
Gary has now deleted his facebook profile.

Alan & Debbie Rothery
Skyhigh Falconry, Old Granton Cottage, Annan Water, Moffat, Dumfriesshire. DG10 9LT
tel: 01655 760333
mobile: 07711 730 579
email: alan@skyhighfalconry.com
private facebook for Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.rothery.5
private facebook for Debbie: https://www.facebook.com/debbie.rothery

David Martin
Easter Rynaballoch, Haughs of Cromdale Road, Cromdale, Grantown on Spey, Morayshire. PH26 3LW
telephone: 01807 510356
email: birdiemartin2@gmail.com

Dr. Karl Jennings (applied but failed to get license)
4, The Field, Long Lane, Telford, Shropshire, TF6 6HE
Mobile: 07803 580 633
email: karljennings@hotmail.com
email: karl.jenningsmrcvs@googlemail.com

A story in today’s mirror about a letter from Lord Gardiner covering the badger cull says:

“Cull companies are not businesses which have been mandated to close … Government guidance is clear that travel for work which cannot be done from home is permitted, and routine business and disease management activities respecting hygiene and social distancing, can continue.”

He insisted the “ability to deliver safe, effective and humane culling operations is paramount”.

This is simply not true, of all the elements of the badger cull there is one that cannot be done with social distancing and that is the free shooting of badgers. The reason it can’t be done is simple, shooters have to work in teams of two and very rarely come from the same household.

This means that the freeshooting element of the badger cull will force people into sharing vehicles, furthermore those teams of shooters change very frequently, so by the end of the badger cull the majority of a zones shooters could have Corona virus, some may even die.

Lord Gardiner probably couldn’t care less, he’s a notorious fox hunter, who was chairman of the Kimblewick hunt for many years. He mentions it along with the Countryside Alliance in his list of interests:

This particular hunt has been in the national press a couple of times in the last few years, many following the badger cull will remember the Kimblewick having to kill many of it’s hounds after they contracted bTB, no doubt spreading the disease across the country.

Last year two of the hunts members were caught releasing a trapped fox to hounds.

The district judge, Kamlesh Rana, said the fox was “trapped in the earth and was faced with drainage rods at one end and humans at the other” and that the defendants’ actions were “deliberate and premediated”. However, she recognised during their sentencing that they “were not the brains of the operation”.

You have to wonder who was?