Tag: egg thief

Wildlife Crime | Yet more lenient sentencing

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“A man found with a collection of almost 200 eggs has been sentenced today at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court. Terrance Potter, 63, was given a 12-week sentence, suspended for 12 months, for offences relating to the taking and possession of wild birds’ eggs.” The RSPB Investigations Team are incredibly hard-working individuals. They do a difficult job because they love birds and want to do what they can to protect them. How frustrating must it be to prosecute a repeat egg thief like Terence Potter, who was caught with hundreds of bird eggs from a number of different protected bird species, many targeted precisely because of their rarity, to see him given a laughable 12-week sentence, suspended for 12 months and a paltry fine of £120 costs and £128 victim surcharge. Could our wildlife charities not ask their huge membership to campaign for change, to make sure that politicians understand that we want our wildlife protected from kleptomaniacs and serial law breakers. And if we can help in any way, please ask…

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Operation Easter | Targetting egg thieves

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While the number of egg thieves has dwindled away to almost nothing, the idiots who continue to raid nests have become extremely ‘professional’, obsessive to the point of compulsion, and can have a disproportionate impact by specifically targetting rare breeding birds – in some instances virtually removing an entire generation of rare or recently-established species by stealing their eggs. A s recently as May 2018 over 5,000 wild bird eggs were seized from a property in Norfolk belonging to a Daniel Lingham. The eggs were from 298 different species, including rare and declining birds such as Nightingales, Nightjars, and Turtle Doves. The RSPB’s Mark Thomas described Lingham at the time as a “one-man crime wave in terms of rare birds in Norfolk” whose actions had an “incredible impact on birds both regionally and nationally”. Helping stop egg thieves is something that we can all do though…

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Egg thief Jeffrey Lendrum denied early release

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Following the press-release last week that Peregrine eggs had been taken from three sites in the Peak District during lockdown, some better news for the UK’s nesting birds: Jeffrey Lendrum, perhaps the world’s most notorious egg thief, has lost a bid to be released from a UK prison after serving part of a 37-month sentence for trying to smuggle nineteen eggs and two live chicks (worth up to £8,000 each on the black market) into Britain for export to the Middle East.

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