Wildlife crime convictions below 2%, coalition report says

The tenth annual wildlife crime report from Wildlife and Countryside Link counts 2,149 reports of suspected wildlife crime in England in 2025, up from 2,019 the year before, against 41 convictions. The coalition, whose members include the RSPB and the RSPCA, says a conviction rate below 2% shows the law is failing.

What does the report count?

The figures are the coalition’s own tallies, compiled from its member organisations’ casework rather than from official statistics, because most wildlife offences are not notifiable and so generate no central record. That gap is itself the report’s central complaint.

Within the total, the report logs 625 suspected badger incidents with 15 convictions, and a rise in reports of illegal trapping from 188 in 2024 to 415 in 2025, the highest figure it has recorded since at least 2020.

A grouse moor conviction in its pages

The report highlights what it describes as the first conviction in England connected with hen harrier persecution: a gamekeeper who pleaded guilty in January 2026 to two offences at a hen harrier roost on a Yorkshire grouse moor in October 2024, on covert RSPB footage, and received a financial penalty of £1,520.

Richard Benwell, chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “This report exposes a horrifying catalogue of cruelty… When people can persecute wildlife with so little prospect of punishment, the law is failing the animals it is supposed to protect.”

Mark Thomas, the RSPB’s head of investigations, said: “Existing legislation is failing to protect our magnificent birds of prey. Without stronger deterrents, wildlife crime will continue, with eagles poisoned, Hen Harriers shot and Buzzards killed in traps.”

What does the coalition want?

The report’s asks include making 11 categories of wildlife crime notifiable so that police record them centrally, tougher sentencing, delivery of the ban on snares promised for England, and a tightening of the Hunting Act 2004.

Shooting and land management organisations had not responded publicly to the report when this story was filed. The claims it makes about driven grouse ground in particular will need a considered reply from the sector’s bodies.

What happens next

Wildlife and Countryside Link has sent its recommendations to Defra and the Home Office. The Government has yet to bring forward the promised ban on snares in England, having ruled out a ban on their sale in August, and no timetable for wider wildlife crime reform has been published. The full report can be read on the coalition’s website.