Innocent Badger

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