Workers cleared of killing fish eagle

Two casual workers have been acquitted on charges of beating a fish eagle to death in front of foreign tourists at the Lake St Lucia world heritage park.

The decision came after a disciplinary inquiry by the provincial nature conservation agency Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife into widely publicised reports of the death of a juvenile fish eagle at Charter's Creek on March 29.

Two Coastcare workers hired by the department of environmental affairs and tourism were alleged to have beaten the eagle to death.

According to email correspondence and reports posted on the Sabirdnet website by local bird fundi Hugh Chittenden, two German tourists said they saw the bird being beaten over the head with a stick by one of the Coastcare workers.

However, according to a press statement issued by KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife and the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Authority, both men had been cleared of any wrongdoing after an inquiry held in Durban with an independent firm of attorneys last month.

The two casual workers, who were not named in the statement, were charged with hunting illegally inside a protected area and acting in a "manner prejudicial to the Board of Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife".

Neither of the two German tourists who reported the incident was available to testify at the hearing.

But according to evidence presented by KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife staff members, the bird appeared to have been dead for some time - contradicting Chittenden's report that the bird had been seen alive just minutes earlier, struggling to reach the shore after its feathers became soaked while trying to catch a fish.

The KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife statement said: "It smelled, feathers pulled away from the skin when touched, and there were small insects crawling on it. The damage to the bird did not seem consistent with repeated blows with a stick."

The statement also suggested that the incident occurred in near-darkness, and that there had been a language or communication breakdown between the casual workers and the tourists.

"The two accused said in their defence that on that evening they had seen something floating on the water, walked towards it and saw it was a bird. They struck the water about 5m away with a fishing rod to determine if it was alive. Realising it was dead, they waded in, collected it and threw it out of the water. They were then approached by a man who verbally abused them and told them to hold the dead bird while he took photographs.

"After being accused of killing the bird, they told the men they had not killed the bird but were just doing their job, which was to clean the coastline."

KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife said that according to a veterinary report based on photographs taken at the scene, the wounds to the bird were not consistent with allegations of being struck.

However, the statements of the two German tourists could not be tested under cross-examination because they had left the country already.

Chittenden could not be reached for comment on Monday.