Farmer fined £800 for badger
drowning
30 Dec 2005 - Scottish Badgers
The first conviction under
the new legislation was obtained when Andrew Ballantyne, High
Lawside Farm, Glassford near Strathaven in South Lanarkshire
pleaded guilty to two charges under the Protection Of Badgers
Act 1992 as amended. Ballantyne appeared at Hamilton Sheriff
court on 24th November 2005 where he was fined a total of £800
by the Sheriff for attempting to kill a badger and interfering
with a sett.
This case was a particularly cynical and
premeditated crime where the accused had taken a slurry tanker
into a field and pumped liquid effluent into the sett in an
attempt to drown the badgers occupying it. Witnesses had to
stand helplessly by as Ballantyne carried out the operation
which he subsequently covered up by filling in the entrances
with a JCB. The police were alerted and although they attended
quickly it was all over before they arrived. Constable Phil
Briggs, Strathclyde Police, put together an operation and
subsequently served a warrant on the accused before excavating
the affected part of the sett.
The sett itself was on a
bank at the edge of two fields, one grass and the other
arable. Badgers, as they commonly do, had dug entrances in the
arable field and it was these that were targeted. Using a
small digger kindly provided by South Lanarkshire Council,
along with a driver, the sett was excavated and almost
immediately the damage within the sett was found with the
tunnel system and some chambers full of slurry.
It was
painstakingly slow work and the skill of the digger driver was
exceptional in that he was able to very slowly eat away at the
soil following the path of the tunnels. I am glad to say that
no dead badgers were found and it was more by luck than design
that none were killed. In fact the excavation came to a stop
when we found a live badger cowering in a chamber, Reluctant
to leave its nest it had to be coaxed out and made off across
the excavations before disappearing down the sett further up
the fence line.
The disappointment was the level of fine
this conviction attracted. The £500 fine for attempting to
kill in such a cruel manner and the type of interference which
resulted in a £300 penalty were well short of the mark and
quite honestly this man was lucky he did not go to
prison. For more information, please click the following link:
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