Modern poachers and the wildlife police who are trying to rein them in

​Modern-day poaching is no longer about taking one for the pot. Increasingly, it's carried out by gangsters with links to organised crime for money or just for the sick thrill

Fox cub in a trap

The infrared camera strapped to the underside of the helicopter picks out the fleeing herd as it scatters to avoid the supercharged 4x4 careering towards it over the rough terrain below. Car doors swing open. Two snarling hounds are dropped out. Pumped full of blood and aggression, their bodies glow white on the video screen in the cockpit as they set off in pursuit of one terrified animal, separated from the rest. When the first dogs tire, two more are released. The speeding vehicle corrals the stranded prey, keeping it in open ground. It makes for easy pickings for the dogs as it stumbles with exhaustion. The chopper camera catches the moment the pack brings it down.

This is the terrifying world of “psycho” poaching, where powerful dogs are used to inflict unimaginable cruelty on wildlife. Shockingly, the footage wasn't shot from a helicopter hovering over the plains of the Serengeti. The prey was deer and the scene was filmed by a police helicopter flying over fields in Northamptonshire. Three men were convicted of offences including pursuing deer with the intent to take, kill or injure, as a result of the footage.

Modern-day poaching is a big, nasty business with links to organised crime. The days when poachers took one for the pot from the landed gentry, as epitomised by the bungling Claude Greengrass, the lovable rogue in television's Heartbeat, are long gone. Modern-day poachers are sadists and gangsters. Some are in it purely for the horror and the sick thrill of watching animals suffer. They hang out in gangs and revel in carnage. They swap mobile-phone footage of the suffering inflicted and gain status with their peers by having the most aggressive dog. Others are in it for the money, exploiting British wildlife for easy profit. They operate in towns, cities and the countryside. They stalk parks and fields and intimidate anyone in their way. They empty lakes, cashing in on a black-market trade in fish in which some carp can fetch up to £12,000. They use poison, illegal traps and powerful weapons. They take swans and wildfowl from ponds and canals and barbecue them on the banks, leaving dismembered heads and legs behind. They can make up to £30,000 on illegal betting.

PC Nick Willey, of the National Wildlife Crime Unit

PC Nick Willey, of Lincolnshire Police, is assigned to the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) and fights on one front of the battle against this crime wave. He scans the remote, rain-lashed landscape with his binoculars searching for a needle in a haystack. Somewhere in the endless expanse of ploughed fields there will be a gang of men in a 4x4 or a beaten-up van with a pack of powerful dogs. Willey is one of the UK's small band of dedicated wildlife crime officers who are fighting poaching in all its guises. In Lincolnshire it's hare-coursing season and every day, gangs descend on farms, intimidate farmers and set their dogs on the local wildlife.

Hare coursing was banned in 2004, but the underground scene is thriving. Dogs compete against each other while their owners bet on a range of factors including how many times their dogs can turn a terrified hare as it is chased down and ripped to pieces. Champion dogs change hands for up to £50,000.

“Mostly, these men are nasty pieces of work,” Willey says. And of coursing, he says: “It is rife. The record is 59 reported incidents in one day. One year, we prosecuted 186 people. Only one of them didn't have previous convictions.”

Last year, Willey and other officers attached to the anti-poaching Operation Galileo arrested Shane Fury, a relative of the heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury, thought to be his brother. Along with two friends, he'd driven to Lincolnshire from his home in Manchester to poach. He was found guilty of trespassing in pursuit of game and disqualified from driving for six months, fined £400 and ordered to pay costs of £200. The Fury family has traveller heritage, and it is an unavoidable fact that members of the traveller community form a large percentage of hare coursers, with insiders claiming the “sport” is worth millions in the traveller economy. PC Willey is careful to point out that coursers come from a range of backgrounds and professions.

“They are very organised,” he explains. “Meetings are arranged over the phone or on social media. Coursing is done for betting and sport, the hares are torn apart and left. Other poaching, such as deer poaching, can be done for sport or to sell the carcass for food. A decent-sized deer carcass can fetch £100.”

Wildlife crime officers have a range of hi-tech gadgets at their disposal. In Willey's Mitsubishi patrol truck, an Automatic Number Plate Recognition system scans passing cars and cross-references them against a national database. “It's usually obvious when you get a group of lads in a car with dogs what they are up to. They are not out to walk the dogs,” he says.

Willey shares information with Cliff Harrison, an investigator with the RSPCA's special-operations unit. Harrison is shocked by the increasing levels of wanton cruelty. “Poachers aren't men with rabbits in the inner pockets of their coats any more. I don't even like calling it poaching because it diminishes the level of cruelty that goes on.”

He explains that social media fuel the worrying trend. Footage of suffering is posted on forums and networking sites and shared around. There are also reports of screenings of videos of poaching attacks in back rooms in pubs.

“These are individuals and gangs with powerful lurcher bull dogs, which they set on to deer,” he continues. “The dogs chase the deer down and then take considerable time to kill it while it is struggling and crying out. It is utterly cruel. Usually, they will be a group of lads from a town who, on a typical night, will set their dogs on a cat and film them ripping it apart while they laugh their heads off. They will then carry on into the fields, where they will kill anything that moves.

“The dogs can and do get injured in these fights to the death. With these people, it's not about money or betting. It is all about the dogs and what they can do. It's about who has the most powerful dog. It's about bragging rights. It is absolutely shocking. They like to see the horror and hear the squeals and cries.”

Harrison's unit was involved in the prosecution of sadist Richard Atkins, who was jailed for 24 weeks in 2012 for nine counts including causing animals to fight, keeping dogs for the purpose of animal fighting, and causing unnecessary suffering. RSPCA officers described his actions as “incredibly malicious and sadistic cruelty to animals”.

Atkins, from Newhall in Derbyshire, kept graphic footage on his phone of his bull lurcher and terrier carrying out attacks on wildlife. He could be heard laughing in the background as his dogs, who also suffered sickening injuries, tore wildlife to pieces.

While psycho-poachers cause carnage for the sake of it, others make money from catching and killing wildlife. As Willey explains: “Hare coursing is a business. It's about gangs and violence. People are scared. When five or six people in cars arrive on your land with six or seven dogs it is not pleasant. Fish poachers can make thousands, too.”

While Nick tackles poachers in the countryside, city forces are increasingly being called on to deal with urban poaching. Earlier this year, in a case described by one senior wildlife crime officer as one of the most horrific they had seen, amateur poacher Mian Zeeshan Shahid, 32, managed to down a deer in Croydon, south London, with an air rifle. He took the injured animal back to his home, where he slit its throat, butchered it and posted the footage on Facebook. He boasted it had “made a good meal for 10”. Horrified people who viewed the material tipped off police, and in September, magistrates in Croydon sentenced Shahid to four months in prison for causing a deer unnecessary suffering and three months for taking a deer, to run concurrently and suspended for two years.

The animal-welfare organisation World Animal Protection (WAP) campaigns against cruelty and helps law enforcement. Alyx Elliott is WAP's head of programmes and campaigns. She explains: “The reality of wildlife crime in urban centres like London is mind-boggling. Swans are a serious target, not only for people who want to eat them but also from a cruelty perspective. They seem to be targeted more than any other species.

“Fish are taken from the Royal Parks. A single carp, which you can buy in France for €300 [£210], can be worth about £12,000 in the UK because they are not bred commercially over here.”

While Eastern European migrants often get the blame for fish poaching and have been the subject of a national education initiative designed to teach them that they are not allowed to fish without permits or take fish from ponds to eat, the reality is that people from all backgrounds are involved.

“Poaching is on the increase and it is still misunderstood, largely,” Elliott says. “People see wildlife as something to exploit for a profit in the same way they do with drugs, and anything else that can be traded illegally to make money. We have even heard about criminals planning to take out rhinos in zoos and safari parks because rhino horn is worth more than gold.”

She is critical of the penalties available to prosecutors for poaching crime. “They are pitifully low. If you can make £12,000 on a single fish, a £300 fine is not going to deter you,” she says.

Meanwhile, it is often left up to charities to try to save the animals that survive.

The Wildlife Aid Foundation is based in Leatherhead, Surrey, where it runs a rescue and rehabilitation centre. Staff and volunteers there deal with around 20,000 incidents a year and its founder, Simon Cowell (not that one), says that poaching is increasingly encroaching into the Home Counties and the suburbs.

He explains: “We have had swans which have been shot with air rifles and crossbows, deer which have been attacked by dogs and, worryingly, we are seeing more injuries caused by snares which have been left out to trap animals. People think poaching is something that happens in remote rural areas, but that is not the case. Wherever there is wildlife, there will be people who exploit it.”

It can cost thousands to treat and care for animals caught up in illegal traps. The Wildlife Aid Foundation relies on the goodwill of vets and public generosity to keep going.

The Government is committed to tackling the illegal wildlife trade. In 2014, it signed the London Declaration with 45 other countries and 11 UN organisations. The document outlined the steps that need to be taken to stop animal poaching, which signatories agreed needs to be treated as a serious crime. Ministers have long relied upon the NWCU to justify their commitment to tackling the illegal wildlife trade. It is the focal point for all police wildlife crime intelligence and investigation in the UK. Yet currently, the funding for it, which is provided jointly by the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, remains in doubt.

The NWCU's head, Chief Inspector Martin Sims, has stated that “if we don't secure funding, the unit will fold”. If this happens, it truly will be open season for the nation's wild animals.

Poachers: in their own words

Brian Tovey, 51, from Wickwar in Gloucestershire, co-author of 'The Last English Poachers'

“I still poach. I do it most days and I am not bothered about being prosecuted because they have to catch me first. I poach everything from rabbits to geese, ducks, pigeons and pheasants. I poach for food, for fun and to stick my fingers up at the Establishment: the lords and dukes.

“I set nets, I lamp pheasants, I snare and I trap. I used to keep dogs, too, and would course rabbits and hares.

“I've been in trouble twice. I was fined £50 in the Seventies, and in the Eighties I was sent to a detention centre for six months for taking game without a licence and assaulting a lord.

“Poaching is a way of life. I did it with my father from when I was a boy. I enjoy hunting and outwitting the animal. The kind of people who poach now are a different breed. They go in gangs, threaten farmers, beat people up and intimidate them. They are sick. They are city boys – cowboys who don't know how to hunt an animal properly. They even shoot out of cars. They should be locked up and made to eat the animals they kill. They give traditional poaching for food a bad name. They kill for the sake of it. I hunt and have fun hunting. What I do is very different. I am not cruel; I kill humanely.”

John O'Donagh is a 35-year-old traveller and hare courser from Kent

“For travellers, coursing is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, since the days we lived in tents, before wagons and caravans. It's in our folklore.

“For a traveller, having a good dog is like having a thoroughbred horse. The betting and money changing hands has blown out of all proportion. A good dog can earn a man hundreds of thousands. Star dogs are worth between £30,000 and £50,000 and I've heard of people making £500,000 in a year on betting.

“There are cars, vans and trailers bet on it. You'll even bet your wife on it. A good dog is more important to a traveller than a wife and a traveller will kill you for his dog.

“Travellers will never show the outside world inside hare coursing. It's organised over the phone and by word of mouth. You'll get lads in vans because too many cars look suspicious. There will be a referee along to make sure it's done fairly. Each man will carry £100 cash. Bets are honoured. If you don't pay, it is a disgrace on you and your family name.

“A good hare can run a dog until the dog has a heart attack because the dog won't stop. The cruelty of it is that if the dog is no good it is left there. The farmers can usually do nothing because there can be up to 20 boys involved. It was banned but that makes no difference – travellers will do it anyway. It's in our blood.”