A teenage gamekeeper who clubbed badgers to death and killed two buzzards on a Shropshire country estate has been given a 26-week suspended jail sentence.
Kyle Burden, 19, committed the offences to protect game birds being prepared for shoots on the 6,000-acre Kempton estate, near Bishop’s Castle, magistrates in Telford heard.
Burden was only the second person in the UK to receive a jail sentence – suspended for six months – for killing birds of prey.
The teenager, of Kempton, Aston on Clun, near Craven Arms, had previously admitted a total of nine offences.
They related to him killing two common buzzards and attempting to kill two others, killing two badgers, setting eight spring traps and possessing a shotgun in May and July last year.
He had asked for six other similar offences to be taken into consideration.
Sentencing Burden, who was also given 150 hours of community service and ordered to pay £200 costs, magistrate Claire Brentnall said the bench had taken into account the defendant’s remorse and his youth.
Mr Phil Mason, prosecuting yesterday, said: “This is an unusual case in that it came to light as a result of information received from two other gamekeepers.
“One of the witnesses saw Mr Burden shoot a number of buzzards and also club to death a number of badgers.”
Mr Mason said RSPB officials had found a book kept by Burden, who has now been sacked, in which he had kept a tally of animals which had been killed.
Mr Huw Williams, for Burden, said: “He did it to help other birds – that’s the paradox of this case.”
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