A GAMEKEEPER today escaped jail after admitting using an illegal trap and allowing another keeper to illegally catch birds of prey.

Roger Venton, 34, of Wheldrake Lane, Elvington, North Yorkshire, was handed a sentence of three months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, at Telford Magistrates Court.

The former head gamekeeper on the Kempton Estate in Shropshire pleaded guilty to using a spring trap and permitting assistant keeper Kyle Burden to use a cage trap to illegally catch birds of prey.

The charges, contrary to the Wildlife and Countryside Act, included allowing Burden to use a caged trap baited with a raven.

The court heard Venton was employed as head gamekeeper at the estate in March last year, where Burden, 19, of Kempton, already worked.

Geoffrey Dann, prosecuting, told the court the RSPB were contacted by two separate seasonal gamekeepers who reported the illegal killing of protected wildlife including buzzards and badgers.

Investigators went to the estate on July 16 last year where they found a cage trap.

The court heard Burden had already been sentenced to 26 weeks in prison, suspended for six months, as well as unpaid work.

He had pleaded guilty to several offences including traps, as well as killing both buzzards and badgers.

Mr Dann said: "The defendant admits that he allowed Kyle Burden to use a caged trap on May 15 and that Kyle Burden had baited the trap with a raven.

"The defendant does not accept that he knew how widespread Kyle Burdens use of traps was on the estate."

Sentencing Venton to the suspended sentence, as well as 250 hours of unpaid work and £2,000 costs, chairman of the magistrates Russell Thomas said: "You were in a position of authority and you failed to exercise that authority appropriately."