Two council pest control officers have been jailed for four months and fined £7,000 each for poisoning wildlife at a London park. The two men, Terrence Webb, 28, of Ilford, and Mark Page, 35, of Romford, have already been sacked from their jobs at Newham Council. The men laced bread with a powerful pesticide before leaving it at Wanstead Flats park killing 90 birds and a pet dog.
Pc David Flint, of the Wildlife Crime Unit at Scotland Yard, said the men “showed a complete disregard for public safety with the indiscriminate use of dangerous chemicals. They derived personal amusement from the death of birds and caused the death of a pet dog.” He added “It is small consolation following the destruction caused that these men were brought to justice.”
Webb, of Peregrine Road, Ilford, and Page, of White Hart Lane, Romford, admitted two counts of misuse of pesticides and two counts of theft. Charges relating to the storing of pesticide and the theft of a sprayer were dropped by the prosecution.
Judge Simon Wilkinson said: “I am satisfied that on March 8 you both saw birds fall out of the trees and you realised just how toxic this pesticide was. What passes belief is that you should return and do exactly the same thing.”
The police investigated the case after the owner of the dog that had died alerted park wardens to the deaths of birds the day after her dog had been poisoned. Experts said their reckless actions also put children playing around the lake in danger of being poisoned. The poisoning caused a major public health scare which resulted in the lake being closed off while testing was undertaken to find the cause of the deaths.
Apart from the crows and the pet dog – a german shepherd – that died, other wild birds including geese, moor hens, ducks and coots also succumbed to the poison and died.
Wanstead Flats is an important recreational and wildlife area. It is in the southern most part of Epping Forest in East London and some people still have common grazing rights in the park though cattle grazing finally ended during the BSE crisis of 1996. Alexandra Lake is the largest of the three lakes in the park. The copses of trees found within the park make the Wanstead Flats a popular area for birdwatching. The park was formed from part of a royal forest and has a wide range of wildlife and plants with an active website for Wanstead Flats ecology.
Photo credit: AndyRob
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