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Driven OUT! Scottish estate linked to wildlife crime goes on sale

http://tinyurl.com/3qohfb

Scottish estate linked to wildlife crime goes on sale

Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk, Friday April 18

A Scottish grouse moor at the centre of allegations of bird of prey
persecution is being put on the market four years after its current
owners took control of the estate.

Leadhills estate in south-west Scotland is regarded as one of the best
grouse moors in the UK and has seen record grouse numbers since it was
taken over in 2003 by a company linked to two leading figures in the
shooting industry, Mark Osborne and Sir Edward Dashwood.

But shooting rights at the 18,000-acre estate have now been put up for
sale for offers over £2.5m after a series of police operations on
estates run by Osborne, including a dawn raid at Leadhills in
September 2006 by roughly 80 police and wildlife crime investigators.

The estate had been at the centre of allegations that birds of prey
were being illegally persecuted by estate staff. In 2004, one of its
keepers was fined £500 for shooting and killing a short-eared owl, a
protected species.

Another former keeper at Leadhills accused of poison offences is due
to stand trial later this year in connection with the 2006 raid, which
took place shortly after another grouse moor managed by Osborne north
of Dundee was raided by police. Last month, a third estate he manages
in Scotland, near Grantown-on-Spey in the Cairngorms, was raided.

The alleged breaches of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which make
it an offence punishable by a fine of up to £5,000 or six months in
jail to target or kill birds of prey, put their company at risk of
breaching its lease from the estate's owner, the Marquess of
Linlithgow. The lease required their company to observe the act.

It is understood these incidents led civil servants in the Scottish
executive to consider cutting the agricultural subsidies paid to
Hopetoun estate – a measure which was eventually dropped because the
Hopetoun family did not run the grouse moor.

Osborne, an Oxfordshire-based land manager, resigned from the company
three months after the raid but is a joint agent in the sale of
Leadhills' sporting rights with Savills estate agents. Dashwood told
the Guardian his decision to sell was "entirely unconnected" with the
police raids, and said he wanted to concentrate on his other estates.
His decision "was taken as a result of buying another estate in Wales
last autumn", he said.

However, William Duckworth-Chad, from Savills, denied there was any
link between the sales and the police operations. He said Dashwood
"has probably got too much on his plate and he's probably spending a
lot of time driving up to Scotland, and that probably exhausts him".

Duckworth-Chad added that Hopetoun estates were in the early stages of
a large windfarm development at Leadhills – a prime hill site close to
other major windfarms near the M74 corridor, but said this would not
directly affect grouse shooting.