Buzzard poisoner guilty

A gamekeeper who admitted poisoning four buzzards using the banned pesticide Alphacloralose will be sentenced at Lanark Sheriff Court on 5 January next year.

David Alexander Whitefield, aged 45, admitted killing the birds while employed as a gamekeeper on a partridge and pheasant shoot at Culter Allers estate in South Lanarkshire in 2009. Several buzzard carcases were found during a raid by police and Scottish SPCA officers on 11 November 2009. At first, Whitefield told offi cers that the landowner was unaware of his actions. After he later lost his job, however, he told officers that he had been asked to reduce the number of buzzards in any way he saw fit, though he had not been specifically told to kill them.

The rest of this article appears in the 14th December issue of Shooting Times.

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