More than 7,000 wild animals were killed on the Windsor Estate during 2013, according to a Freedom of Information request by campaign group, Animal Aid.

While the figures for January were not recorded due to ‘a change in both staff and regime’, the number of animals killed throughout the rest of the year totalled 7,129.

The animals killed included:
• 3901 pigeons
• 1161 rabbits
• 772 jackdaws
• 325 squirrels
• 191 crows
• 159 foxes
• 56 roe deer
• 28 hares
• 9 moles

Animal Aid describes the killings as a ‘wildlife massacre’.

The Crown Estate claims that most of the animals killed (including the pigeons, rabbits and jackdaws) were at the request of the Crown Estate’s tenant farmers. The deer and squirrels were killed at the request of the foresters, while foxes were killed to ‘protect’ game birds (who are reared only to be shot for sport). Moles are killed to preserve the formal gardens and the sports ground.

Animal Aid objected to these claims, saying that it was ‘morally repugnant’ to kill wild animals just to ‘protect’ the lives of farmed pheasants, who would also be killed for sport or to keep lawns pristine. And that the mass destruction of corvids and pigeons was ‘unscrupulous and unnecessary’.

The Ranger of the Windsor Great Park is the Duke of Edinburgh.  The killing of 28 brown hares will upset many people who believe that hares are protected. Despite their numbers having declined significantly over the past century, and a Biodiversity Action Plan enacted to try to reverse that decline, hares are still legally hunted and shot.

Animal Aid maintains there are non-lethal solutions to many of the problems cited and that the key problem is a ‘culture of killing in the countryside’, whereby it is seen as acceptable to snuff out the life of any animal deemed not to be serving a useful purpose, and especially any that might pose a risk – however small – to agricultural, forestry and shooting profits.

Head of Campaigns at Animal Aid, Kate Fowler, said:  ‘The annual massacre at Windsor is without justification. Across the UK, wild animals are under great threat from industry, road and housing development, climate change, habitat loss, pesticide use and other man-made problems.

"Rather than looking for humane solutions, one of the richest estates in the country* – managed by individuals who are connected to blood sports – would rather reach for guns, traps and poisons and obliterate animals who get in its way. What about compassion? What about sharing the natural world with the other species who live here, even if that means taking a minor dent in its multimillion pound profits?"

* The Crown Estate’s net revenue surplus (profit) for the year that ended 31 March 2013 was £252.6 million.