Liz's Experience: "It really haunted me"

I started volunteering with the Greenwich Wildlife Network in August 2022 and very early on became aware of the problem of catapulting when going to rescue animals from a particular park (Priory Gardens, Orpington) where they had had a long standing problem. Park users and other volunteers were having many encounters with young perpetrators and we were finding birds with eye injuries, leg and wings hurt and also dead animals, including squirrels.

I was also called to another park (Swanley Park) on a very cold day in December where finders had observed a poor pigeon whose leg had been blasted off by a catapult attack. Sadly, I was unable to catch the poor bird and it flew off to probably live out a very painful few days or weeks before succumbing to infection and death.

The pigeon shot in Swanley park.

It really haunted me and I returned the following day in the hope of finding the bird but to no avail.

I first encountered perpetrators in the act of attacking birds in my own local park (The Tarn, SE9), last year. There were a couple of occasions when I just happened upon a group of 3 young males using catapults and, although the logical approach would have been to video them, I was alone on each occasion and I reacted instinctively by shouting and in fact on both occasions, they ran away.

On 5th January this year I rescued a wood pigeon from my park who had been shot, resulting in a broken wing. He has survived his ordeal although he can never be released as he cannot fly anymore.

The perpetrators I have encountered were somewhere in the 10 years to 18 years old age range, and in a small group.

The problem with the parks is they have little or no security and it is easy to get in and out of them at any time, even when the park is officially closed. Even where locals are aware of the problem and very vigilant, it is impossible to predict when the attacks will take place. It is very much a “hit and run" crime. The perpetrators are often also quite confident that they will not get into much trouble even if caught and are sometimes prepared to catapult those challenging them.

The birds and other animals are only occasionally killed outright. More often they are cruelly maimed and they may subsequently drown if attacked on water, or crawl out of sight to die. Only a relative few are observed, reported to us and rescued. When I have spoken to park users to make them aware most people are very shocked and also angry. Park users love their parks and cherish the life within them and they , like me , feel angry that the actions of a very few should cause pain and fear, and destroy the peace of these places that should be sanctuaries for our beleaguered wildlife.