Morning:
8°c
'Immigrant was cooking swan amid bird bodies'
Valentine Low, Evening Standard6 Mar 2008
When David Gibson stumbled upon the disturbing scene he could scarcely believe his eyes.
In a squalid makeshift campsite by a north London waterway, a man was cooking his evening meal - surrounded by the bodies of slaughtered swans.
Mr Gibson did not need to look in the pot to know what it contained: the piles of feathers and stripped carcasses were evidence enough.
By the time he had alerted the authorities, the man - believed to be an East European immigrant - had packed up his tent and fled. Now police are trying to find who is behind the illegal swan slaughter on the banks of the River Lea at Paddock Community Nature Park, near Tottenham Hale.
Mr Gibson, 42, an angler and regular user of the river, said: "It's absolutely outrageous. Swans are the most elegant, beautiful birds - and so tame."
Under an ancient charter, swans are the property of the Crown and anyone who kills or mistreats one risks six months in jail or a £5,000 fine.
Several migrants use the park as a home, pitching their tents there by night and working locally by day.
"I saw this man in his forties," said Mr Gibson, from Palmers Green. "He had thick stubble. He was cooking and next to him was a stack of swan wings. There was a bin bag with a swan on top of that. By the river there was another swan on top of a bag. The swan was picked bare. The whole of the backbone was stripped.
"I was disgusted. I don't care what nationality these people are. It's just appalling. If we let this carry on there will be no swans left."
He said he found two young Polish men living in another tent nearby.
They told him: "We don't eat the swans. We just stay here at night and we work during the day."
The authorities he alerted did not turn up until the next day. Mr Gibson said: "By the time they came down the bloke had gone. He must have thrown the carcasses away. There were bits of bone and some feathers but there were no bones left." The scene was visited later by Kevin Garten, a volunteer from Shepperton Swan Sanctuary.
He said: "Those carcasses were not stripped by animals. I know what foxes do. These were meticulously stripped and the head and neck were still attached - a fox would have had it straight off.
"I cannot definitely say it was human but I can definitely say it was no animal."
When the Evening Standard visited the park yesterday, we found a tent surrounded by rubbish, including discarded bottles, old shoes and a Romanian bible. Inside the tent was a neatly laid out sleeping bag. Several of the campsites were littered with dozens of old car batteries but it was not clear what use these were being put to.
Mr Gibson said: "Maybe they are stripping them apart for the lead, or perhaps they are tipping the acid in the water to kill the fish.
"Unless we catch someone it could be one of a number of things."
Last month, Mr Garton and his colleagues rescued 39 swans from the area which had become fouled with oil and sewage. He said: "It's just a filthy area - it always has been."
