It’s April 2024, and I am bent over a bleeding pigeon. Beneath one wing, hidden in the soft downy feathers, is a mound of congealed blood. I know what’s beneath that—a crater-like hole, torn open by the impact of a metal projectile fired at speed. Despite the wound, the size of a 50-pence piece, the pigeon is alert, his eyes wide with terror. I hope the pain relief from the vet kicks in soon.
I am in a box-sized industrial unit, the small but vital base of Greenwich Wildlife Network, the animal rescue charity I founded in 2018 to rehabilitate injured wildlife. The bird sprawled on the table is just one of many. He was shot with a catapult just hours ago.
While I work, volunteers are at Priory Gardens in Orpington, where local youths have been on a catapult-fuelled killing spree. The park, usually a quiet, green spot in Bromley, is littered with the bodies of animals. A dead coot floats in the lake, a few feet from a nest he’d been meticulously building with his mate just days before.
This pigeon was one of the lucky ones—five animals dead, ten more wounded in this latest spree. Among them is a mallard whose lower beak has been blown off by the force of a catapult. He cannot eat or drink and, though our volunteers try to rescue him, he vanishes. His body appears a few days later, floating in the lake.
This has become our daily reality at the charity: it’s now rare for us to get through a week without hearing of an animal being maimed or killed by a catapult in our area of Greenwich and Bexley. Those behind this death and suffering are often children — groups of youths aged anywhere between eight and 18.
Many of their victims die outright, their skulls shattered by the force of a projectile—usually a ball bearing, a marble, or even nuts and bolts; we find empty packets of these scattered in the grass at Priory Gardens. But for those who survive, like the mallard with the missing beak, sometimes the outcome is no better: lost eyes, severed limbs, broken bones and severe concussions that leave them stumbling and disoriented.
Once injured, these animals instinctively retreat and become elusive. This makes it all the more challenging for our volunteers to catch them, which they need to do to address their injuries. Imagine trying to capture a bird that can still fly. From the birds’ point of view, we’re just more humans who mean them harm. Thus, they may go for days or weeks without treatment, suffering and disabled. Many will succumb to their injuries before we can rescue them. Others may have to be euthanised or kept in captivity for the rest of their days.
When their parents are killed, young animals like ducklings are orphaned and left to fend for themselves. Geese and swans, species that often share the same mate for life, are left bereft when their partners of many years are killed, calling out for them in the days that follow.
It’s also agonising for our volunteers to witness. No amount of effort, no amount of care or kindness, can undo the harm done. There’s fury and disgust, but overwhelmingly a sense of powerlessness in the face of cruelty.
We are not alone in these experiences. The world of animal rescue is tightly interconnected, and we know that organisations across the country are facing the same daily cycle of death and destruction caused by youths. The Swan Sanctuary, South Essex Wildlife Hospital, the Fox Project, Kent Wildlife Rescue—no region seems untouched, and no species is spared. While geese and swans, being large and slow-moving, are often the easiest targets, other animals—foxes, birds of prey, squirrels, pets, horses, deer, and pigeons—have all fallen victim, too. And while in recent years we’ve had sporadic reports of animal cruelty, it has never been this incessant. Every few weeks has become every other day.
Causing unnecessary suffering to an animal is a crime under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and the Wildlife and Countryside Act makes it illegal to intentionally kill, injure, or capture any wild bird in the UK.
Some comfort might be found if the perpetrators were held accountable, but despite countless police reports, we rarely receive any updates or see results. It has reached a point where the faces of the culprits are well-known to locals. They kill and maim, we file our reports, and a few days later, they’re back to do it all over again.
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At Priory Gardens, the site of this latest massacre, birds have been regularly targeted for years. The community group that manages the park feeds the birds daily, and they know each one so well they’ve given them names—like Lady Grey, a beloved greylag who was shot in the head and killed last year, or Reggie, a goose who was nearly blinded and was later moved to a sanctuary. Local councillors, Safer Neighbourhood Teams and police forces have all taken an interest. It has made no difference to the number of killings.
We pride ourselves on being a nation where animal cruelty is no longer tolerated. But right now, it is being tolerated—the culprits are torturing and killing animals with impunity.
The investigation of wildlife crime has long been underfunded and undervalued. In 2024, the Metropolitan Police’s wildlife crime unit, already operating with limited resources, was completely shut down—just as rescue centres like ours were witnessing a wildlife crime explosion. Catapults, which have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to animals, people, and property, remain completely unregulated. There is no age restriction on their sale, nor any law that prohibits carrying them in public.
The link between violence towards animals and the escalation of violence towards humans is well-documented. It is a dangerous message to send to young offenders that they can commit crimes in broad daylight, repeatedly, and face no consequences.
So, are our current animal protection laws truly adequate? Can they address the growing crisis of wildlife crime? The answer to that question is clear to anyone working on the front lines of wildlife rescue: these laws are not enough. Until they change, animals will continue to suffer, and the cycle of violence will persist.
The shot pigeon, by the way, made a full recovery, despite a fractured wing and large wound. He was released back out into London, but right now, ours is not a city where he or any other animal is safe.
