The county’s police force said feedback from both farmers and those caught hare coursing said it was the greatest deterrent. Traditionally offences start to rise in the autumn after crops have been harvested and continue until spring. Last season, 176 men were arrested or reported for summons. Source: BBC To read the full article click […]

A fisherman has been ordered to pay back more than £100,000 that he made from fishing illegally in Christchurch Harbour. Shane Barton, 42, from Plymouth, was handed the confiscation order, which totalled £104,147, at Bournemouth Crown Court on Friday, June 17. The order was the culmination of a multi-agency investigation following Barton’s arrest when he […]

A Tayside man caught hare coursing has been jailed for four months for taking part in the illegal bloodsport. Mark Reid, 45, Teviotdale Avenue, Dundee, was also banned from owning a dog for six years when sentenced at Perth Sheriff Court on Wednesday. Sheriff Lindsay Foulis heard that Reid, who was found guilty after a […]

“On 22 January 2016, John Michael Ginty, 25, and Marcus Owen Batey, 25, both from Middlesbrough, appeared at Northallerton Magistrates Court. Ginty pleaded guilty to killing a deer at night, under the Deer Act 1991, and hunting a wild mammal with dogs, under the Hunting Act 2004. He received a ten-week custodial sentence, suspended for […]

A joint wildlife crime operation took place in North Devon. On the 20 January 2016, officers from both Avon & Somerset and Devon & Cornwall Police along with staff from Devon and Somerset Trading Standards, Environmental Health and the National Wildlife Crime Unit visited nine premises in the Barnstaple area as part of a wildlife […]

Six former police officers with over 150 years of policing experience between them have been appointed by the Angling Trust to help in the fight against fisheries crime. The new Regional Enforcement Managers will advise anglers on the law, raise awareness that poaching and fish theft are criminal offences, and work with the police, Environment […]

A man caught hare coursing in East and Midlothian has received the first Anti Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) for the crime in Scotland. Keith Livingston, 54, was also fined £150 for two offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Friday. The conditions of the Asbo prevent him from entering […]

Police teams across Devon and Cornwall are asking for the public’s help to report poachers in rural areas of the region with the launch of the campaign ‘Stop Poaching’. The last few years have shown it is not about the lone poacher taking something home for his larder, but an organised operation where deer, fish […]

A man who poached a deer from a field in south London, took it home and slit its throat has been given a seven month suspended sentence. Mian Zeeshan Shahid, 32, from Kenley, south London, was convicted of taking a deer and causing it unnecessary suffering. He had boasted of the killing on a Facebook […]