Recreational hunter shoots protected birds
A 73-year-old recreational hunter from the canton of Bern was convicted after shooting, among other things, a protected golden eagle.
Police in the canton of Bern caught a poacher in their net in March 2019.
The 73-year-old has now been convicted by the Bernese court — in part because he had shot a golden eagle.
In the Gantrisch area, next to his holiday home at the edge of the forest, the sheep farmer maintains numerous nesting boxes for birds. However, “foreign” birds — including protected species in particular — are shot by the man without hesitation. In addition to many crows, a common buzzard, a common raven and at least two red kites, the man also has a golden eagle on his conscience. Nor was he particularly scrupulous about following the law in other respects.
All of these shootings were unlawful: the Regional Court of Bern-Mittelland convicted the poacher on Tuesday, 4 August 2020, sentencing him to a suspended fine as well as a penalty. He must also pay the canton of Bern compensation for the birds he shot. According to the «Berner Zeitung» the shooting of the eagle carries the greatest weight: for this he must reimburse the canton of Bern 10,000 francs.
Killed bird was equipped with a GPS transmitter
But how did investigators get on the trail of the 73-year-old poacher in the first place? The trigger was the shooting of a red kite in March 2019. The bird was part of a monitoring project run by the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach and had therefore been fitted with a GPS transmitter. When a concerned staff member of the institute tried to locate the bird in the Gantrisch area at the end of March using GPS data, he found himself confronted with a bird graveyard.
In the field he finds a few feathers from a kite, but nothing more. In the forest, however, he comes across feathers from a common buzzard, a common raven and at least two red kites in one spot. “That could not have been a coincidence», said the man. Then he sees a bird's foot protruding from a compost heap. He pulls on it. A dead golden eagle. «I thought something really serious was going on here, this is poaching.» He calls the game warden and the police.
A police officer subsequently alerted reports, according to the «Berner Zeitung», of a gruesome scene. Dead wild animals and feathers had been lying scattered all over the ground around the man's holiday home. In the 73-year-old's holiday home, police also found weapons and silencers. And the sheep carcass in the meadow — without legs, without a head, gutted and without its hide. This animal, says the police officer, he simply let «perish».
When he kills a badger, he does not report it to the game warden. He burns leaves in the forest without a permit. He stores veterinary medicines — but not in the manner required. He owns several small-calibre rifles, including a shortened, prohibited accessory; the weapons are partly stored loaded in the house or car.
According to the defence counsel, the man is a «farmer, self-sufficient smallholder, hunter, butcher, nature lover, bird enthusiast, hiker». He had had to learn how brutal nature is. Nevertheless, the Bernese court regards the man's actions as offences — and he must now answer for them.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
