Speaking of egg poaching

["Bruce W. Krucke" <bkrucke@awod.com>]

This is not strictly local birding, but it is interesting to any birder I
think.
Bruce Krucke, Yonges Island, SC

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Gurkhas Called Up in Fight Against Egg Poaching


LONDON (Reuters) - Bird conservationists have turned to one of the British
army's most fearsome regiments, the Gurkhas, to help in their fight against
egg thieves.

Inspectors from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) will
not actually wield the soldiers' famous kukri daggers, but they will be
trained in camouflage and surveillance by the Nepalese troops.

The Gurkhas' base in the south of England is ideally placed to help protect
rare birds like the Marsh Harrier, said RSPB spokesman Graham Madge Tuesday.

RSPB officers will hide in undergrowth and photograph potential thieves
passing near endangered birds' nests, using skills taught by the Gurkha
signals brigade, soldiers accustomed to operating way behind enemy lines.

"The sort of message that we want to give egg collectors is that we want to
stamp out this nefarious practice ... which is why we are going to the
Gurkhas," Madge said.

"The soldiers who are going to be doing the training have seen action in
East Timor, Bosnia and Sierra Leone. We couldn't have hoped to be trained by
anyone better."

Egg-collecting threatens to kill off several populations of endangered birds
in the UK, Madge said, adding that it was hard to understand the habit.

The RSPB says there is no significant market for stolen eggs, and that
thieves cannot display their trophies because taking endangered birds' eggs
is illegal in Britain.

British courts have cracked down on egg collectors in the past year, handing
out the first jail sentence for nest-raiding last September, but only two
weeks ago a pair of Osprey nests were robbed in Scotland.







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