{"id":490745,"date":"2026-03-23T10:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490745\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T10:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:19:07","slug":"dales-charity-urges-tougher-sentences-for-killing-birds-of-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490745\/","title":{"rendered":"Dales charity urges tougher sentences for killing birds of prey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mark Thomas, head of investigations at the RSPB, said: &#8220;One of the many issues here is illegal bird of prey persecution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A significant proportion of these incidents happen on or near land associated with gamebird shooting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This level of illegal persecution is unacceptable and highlights the urgent need for tighter controls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Introducing a licensing system in England would be a long-overdue step.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Friends of the Dales&#8217; petition, which is addressed to the minister for nature, states: &#8220;Introducing sentencing guidelines with meaningful fines and ensuring the appropriate use of custodial sentences would send a clear message that the criminal killing of birds of prey is being treated as a serious crime.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The petition also wants a national database of wildlife crime to be created which the group said would &#8220;enable police forces, land managers and conservation bodies to identify trends, focus resources and coordinate action across regions&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Thomas, head of investigations at the RSPB, said: &#8220;One of the many issues here is illegal bird&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-490745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}