When a hunter discovered the carcass of a female sea eagle in the Hahnbach area of Upper Palatinate in March 2023, there was great consternation in the region. The strictly protected bird of prey belonged to the tiny population of the strictly protected bird of prey species in the Upper Palatinate. The female had only settled in the Amberg-Sulzbach district a few years ago and bred there repeatedly. Initially, experts thought it had hit an obstacle in flight or some other fatal accident. However, the autopsy revealed a fatal dose of rat poison. It has not been determined whether the female sea eagle was deliberately poisoned or whether it ate from the carcass of another animal that had previously died from poison. The perpetrator could not be identified either.
The poisoned female sea eagle is one case of a total of 25 relevant nature conservation crimes that the top species conservationist in the State Association for Bird Protection (LBV), Andreas von Lindeiner, counted in Bavaria this year. The biologist coordinates the “Tatort Natur” project, in which the LBV and the Gregor Louisoder Environmental Foundation have been documenting all cases of poisoned or shot strictly protected birds that they become aware of since 2019. This year, according to Lindeiner, 19 owls or birds of prey were poisoned across Bavaria, and another six protected birds were shot. A white stork, a gray heron and a kestrel were discovered in time, their injuries were treated and they survived the attacks. According to Lindeiner, these statistics are only the “tip of the iceberg; the vast majority of nature conservation crimes are not even reported.”
But in none of the known cases could the perpetrator or perpetrators be identified or even punished. “That’s what particularly affects us,” says Lindeiner. “Poisoning or shooting strictly protected animal species is a criminal offense. But the perpetrators can still assume that they will get away with impunity.” According to Lindeiner, the police and public prosecutors have significantly increased their investigations into this type of crime in recent years. The environment in which these crimes are committed is also known quite well. “These are individual hunters who want to protect hares, partridges and other small game from predators,” says Lindeiner. “Or chicken or pigeon breeders who are concerned about their poultry populations.”
The perpetrators’ practices are astonishingly brutal. Lindeiner, for example, reports on so-called kamikaze pigeons. “These are pigeons that are weak, old or for some other reason uninteresting in terms of breeding,” says the biologist. “The perpetrator smears their backs with a poison and lets them soar in a place where he can expect them to be discovered by a bird of prey.” If he hits the “kamikaze pigeon” and eats from it, he gets the fatal poisoning. Of course, it can also happen that birds of prey become “collateral victims,” so to speak. This is when the perpetrators target foxes or other small predators with their poison bait and a hawk or owl happens to eat it. The baits are particularly often prepared with carbofuran. The neurotoxin has been banned throughout Europe since 2007 and can be dangerous to people even through skin contact.
By the way, the regional leader in crimes is the Upper Palatinate – especially the Regensburg region. But birds of prey that have been poisoned or shot at are also repeatedly reported in the other administrative districts of the Free State. Lindeiner expressly praises the police and public prosecutors. “The investigators have caught up a lot in recent years.” The documentation and other processes in suspected cases have long since been professionalized and standardized; there are information events and training courses, now also for employees of the nature conservation authorities at the district offices.