A WILDLIFE campaigner who was prosecuted after claiming he had drowned a grey squirrel as a challenge to the RSPCA had the case against him dismissed yesterday.
Norris Atthey – founder of the Morpeth Red Squirrels group – gave interviews last year saying he killed the grey squirrel by submerging it in water.
He claimed he had drowned the animal as a challenge to the RSPCA, after the charity prosecuted another man for the same offence.
Mr Atthey, 67, of the Forge Estate in Ulgham near Morpeth, was later arrested by police at his home and charged by the RSPCA with an offence of cruelty under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.
In November he entered a formal not guilty plea to the charge of causing unnecessary suffering to a grey squirrel by drowning it while in a cage trap.
Yesterday District Judge Stephen Earl, sitting at Bedlington Magistrates’ Court, was due to set a date for a two-day trial.
However, following legal submissions by Mr Atthey’s solicitor, Granville Rooley, the RSPCA announced it would not be taking the matter any further.
Judge Earl formally dismissed the case, but turned down an application for Mr Atthey’s legal costs to be met from central funds.
He said: “Mr Atthey brought this matter upon himself by inviting the RSPCA to prosecute him, so he will have to pay the costs.”
Mr Rooley had earlier told the court the only evidence Mr Atthey had drowned the grey squirrel was his comments made to local newspapers in August last year. “He doesn’t dispute that he said it, but it is a question of whether he actually did it. This is a case of Mr Atthey saying to the RSPCA – you prove it.”
After the hearing Mr Atthey said: “I’m not sure how to react because I was expecting this to go to a full trial. I didn’t expect the RSPCA to back down.
“They are not prepared to take it to trial because they have got no evidence apart from my statements. I am not going to say today whether I drowned a grey squirrel or whether I didn’t, because the onus is on the RSPCA to prove it.
“I made a statement to challenge the RSPCA and they fell for it. They should not have brought the case in the first place.” Judith Curry, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said: “We were prosecuting this case on the basis that he drowned the squirrel, but now he is saying he didn’t do it and that he lied about it. On that basis we don’t feel it is in the public interest to pursue it any further.
“The RSPCA’s position is very clear however: it is illegal to drown a squirrel and cause it suffering.”
Last August Mr Atthey gave Press interviews in which he claimed to have drowned the grey squirrel as a challenge to the RSPCA following its prosecution of Burton window cleaner Raymond Elliott the previous month.
Burton magistrates gave Elliott a conditional discharge, but ordered he pay £1,547 costs to the RSPCA, after he admitted causing unnecessary suffering by drowning a grey squirrel in a water butt.
Mr Atthey, who thinks grey squirrels should be killed to protect England’s native red species, claimed in interviews that he was incensed by the prosecution. The former military policeman claimed he carried out the copycat culling to show that drowning was a humane method.
