Protecting raptors

Published on Tuesday 30 December 2008 20:32

It is good to see the RSPB calling for the same legal improvements for raptors (your report, 27 December) which Animal Concern has been seeking for more than a decade.

Landowners must be made legally responsible for the actions of their employees and penalties have to be increased and enforced.

I am sure the number of incidents of raptor persecution would fall dramatically if a few loutish lairds and their poisoning keepers got to share a cell at the Bar L.

The SNP government has said it wants to tackle wildlife crime. It is high time it backed up those words with an injection of enough hard cash to pay for several new full-time wildlife protection police officers.

JOHN F ROBINS

Animal Concern

PO Box 5178, Dumbarton

Those who poison raptors must be hit where it hurts – in this case publicity and fines for the landowners concerned.

Perhaps some of these grouse moors could be taken into national care and made available only to those who walk them without beaters or four-by-fours.

WILLIAM SPEIRS

Buccleuch Street

Innerleithen