Following the recent article published in The Sunday Times titled 'Royal Society for the Protection of (some) Birds. Not you, crow – you must die in agony', the Countryside Alliance wrote a letter to the paper explaining that it is actually a criminal offence to tamper with a Larsen trap.
The following letter was published in The Sunday Times on 19th August and can also be found online here:
The UK's crow density is the highest in Europe, owing to all the human food waste that inflates their populations — and all those crows kill a lot of songbirds, ground-nesting birds and farmland birds that are in real difficulty.
While we rather doubt your columnist has ever really released a crow from a trap, doing so constitutes aggravated trespass and, if the trap is damaged, criminal damage. If you spot a Larsen trap, simply reflect on the good it is doing for our songbirds and leave it be.
Liam Stokes, head of campaigns, Countryside Alliance
If you know of any illegal activity taking place then please report this to the police.