Moy Estate raid update and Skibo Castle Estate worker fined

Moy Estate - see post of 4 June 2010 'Moy Estate raided'.

When police raided the estate last June they found an estate worker with a dead red kite which, he said, he'd found in a trap set for stoats and weasels. The bird had not been poisoned but the worker had put the bird a Land Rover and did not tell his manager, the RSPB or police. The former apprentice gamekeeper has been fined £1500 at Inverness Sheriff Court.

Also at Inverness Sheriff court this week, an estate worker at the exclusive Skibo Castle estate has been fined £3300 for possession of the banned insecticide Carbofuran. He had 10kg, enough to "wipe out the entire Scottish golden eagle and red kite populations several times over" according to the RSPB. It was accepted that the worker had no part in the deaths of two golden eagles and a sparrow hawk found on the estate in May 2010, otherwise the Sheriff would have imprisoned him.

Neither Moy nor Skibo Estates appear to have been held accountable for the actions of their employees. At least I can find no reports saying so.

What with landowners in the Highlands queuing up to allow wind power station developments and reports such as the above, it is all very depressing.

Source: BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter Steven McKenzie