Rural landowners face prosecution if they fail to control the actions of staff, a judge has warned, sentencing a rogue gamekeeper yesterday.
Allan Lambert, former gamekeeper at Stody Hall Estate near Holt in Norfolk, poisoned 11 birds of prey and kept their carcasses stuffd in a bag at his home. But district judge Peter Veits said that “those who employ gamekeepers have a strict duty to know what is being done in their name and on their property”.
He added that in other industries the employer would also be deemed culpable and that this should be “a wake-up call to all who run estates as to their duties”.
Meanwhile, the gardener at a Hampshire estate has died after being poisoned by a wolfsbane plant.
Daily Telegraph, 3
Times, 5, 34
