Who murdered the eagle?
By Jouni Kemppainen
The forest comes to an abrupt stop, and the autumn sun glares straight into one’s eyes; the bright rays come from a low angle. The journey continues along the swamp, which gives a smacking sound with every step of the boot. The young man walking ahead stops.
"It was there, under that fir tree", he says laconically, hopping to the spot showing the remnants of a camp fire, and takes off his backpack and his gun.
There is little to see under that tree. The blood has already soaked into the moss, and the police have cleared up the scene of the crime.
A broken branch lies on the ground. Cut by the bullet, perhaps? Did the killer come from the south along the swamp, or over the hill? There is no indication of the trajectory of the bullet.
"They’ll never find the bullet. It just passed right on through", the young man says. "The eagle was lying there with its wings spread out, as if it had fallen out of a tree."
"My brother found it. He shouted at me to come over and look. I said that it looked like an eagle. I wasn’t quite sure."
It was an eagle. A golden eagle - Aquila chrysaetos.
The brothers found the corpse on Monday, September 20 at about noon. The young man called the police, packed the bird in his pack, and brought it to the Hyrynsalmi police. A couple of days later he guided a police officer to the scene of the crime.
A coffee pot on the end of a stick starts to boil over the camp fire. The young man’s younger brother appears from the forest, as if attracted by the smell, carrying a gun.
It was a tough break for the killer that the dead bird was found by the two brothers. Not every man in that forest would have reported the crime. Many would have just let the forest cover up the tracks.
We drink the coffee. On the way back to the car the young man shows a picture. He is standing holding the dead eagle, with its large wings spread out, looking like a wrinkled angel.
"You can publish the picture, but don’t show my face. And I don’t want my name splashed around either", he grins.
Shyness? Or is the young man afraid that there might be some repercussions?
The case is a devilishly difficult one. But at least the crime has been reported. There are estimates that only ten percent of violations of the laws on hunting and nature protection ever come to light. Catching the perpetrators is rarer still. When a wild animal is killed illegally, there are no plaintiffs, and family members ask no questions.
Best to start with the body.
Animals that are killed in the area are examined at the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute in Oulu. Answering the phone is a lively female voice, veterinarian Marja Isomursu. I ask if they have a dead golden eagle that was found in Hyrynsalmi.
"We did, but it’s been cremated."
Already?
"We have rather little refrigerated space here. The case was unusually cut and dried. The cause of death was gunshot. The bird had been sitting in a low place with its wings folded. The bullet pierced the lungs from behind and crushed the wing bone."
What kind of a bird was it?
"A young male golden eagle. It had bands around its leg. We kept them here."
What kind of shape was the body in?
"It was easy to study. Rarely do I get such a healthy animal in such good condition on my examination table."
What have the police found out so far? Hyrynsalmi is part of the Suomussalmi police precinct. The only officer in the village itself is constable Kauko Seppänen.
Seppänen is a man of few words. He says that the case is being investigated as a nature conservation crime, and that more details will be given by the head of investigations, an inspector Piippo in Suomussalmi.
Piippo says on the phone that the police have hardly anything to go on, adding that in hunting and conservation violations they depend almost completely on tipoffs from the public. Quite a few hunting crimes have been reported this autumn. They take place in secret, without eyewitnesses, and he says that the public at large generally do not feel that they are very serious and therefore rarely cooperate.
But wait a minute!
The veterinarian said that the bird was ringed: it had a band around its leg. So in addition to the shooter, at least one other person had seen the eagle alive.
The man who put the bands on the leg of the eagle walks in from the rain into the restaurant of a hotel in Kajaani. The short man with thin hair nevertheless has a military posture. No wonder: Jouni Ruuskanen is a former army lieutenant who retired from active duty ten years ago.
"I put a band on the eagle chick in Enonkylä in Vaala on the afternoon of July 9th, 2003", Ruuskanen says.
"July 9th, 2003 was a hot summer day. The nest was in a huge tree - the kind that is frightening to climb. The bird was about ten weeks old - almost old enough to fly. Putting on the band was easy. All I had to do was to cover its eyes. It calmed down right away."
Ruuskanen put the bird in a sack and came down. The young eagle got two rings on its legs, an orange band indicating the year, and an aluminium one with the number E 18662.
"There were three crane’s legs in the nest, and a few scattered remains of rabbits and those of a marten", Ruuskanen recalls.
Ruuskanen carried the young eagle back to the branch of the tree where the nest was. It was the last time that he saw it alive.
"You always hope that the birds that you mark will live long. It isn’t a long life for an eagle - just over a year", Ruuskanen sighs.
He has had much to feel sad about as far as eagles are concerned. Last autumn near the nest in Vaala he found an eagle’s leg band on the swamp. "The only way that it will come off an eagle’s is if the leg is severed."
Another nest in Utajärvi was constantly interfered with, and several times one of the partners in a nesting pair would mysteriously disappear.
The outwardly calm man gets a bit agitated. "There are hunting maniacs around here. Hostility toward predators runs deep, and the feelings are whipped up all the time. The hunters dictate what is allowed in the wilds of Kainuu. People down south certainly do not realise what the situation is like."
Ruuskanen puts his cap on his head. "And you can be sure that the killer of the eagle will not be found", he says before he disappears into the darkness.
You can’t miss Hyrynsalmi if you remember to turn west on Highway 5 at the crossing where there is an old Russian-made helicopter outside the filling station.
Hyrynsalmi is one of those heart-rending villages in Kainuu that seems to have been abandoned by life, the EU, and the decision-makers in the south. There are only about 3,000 residents. Just 40 years ago there were twice as many. More than a third of the population are over the age of 60, and one in four are unemployed.
The most visible sign of action in the centre of the village is that the electrical appliance store is getting a new display window.
There are few people and lots of space in Hyrynsalmi - 1400 square kilometres of space. One might imagine that there would be enough room for both people and predators.
Every second resident is a hunter. There are 1,500 holders of hunting licences, and it can easily be seen. In almost every yard there is an enclosure with a hunting dog.
The sales girl at the coffee bar at the Teboil filling station has a theory of who the killer might be: "Some idiot".
Two groups comprise the main suspects: hunters and reindeer-herders - in other words half of the residents - in addition to 6,000 outsiders who get licences to hunt on state-owned land.
As there is unrestricted hunting in the provinces of Oulu and Finnish Lapland, any resident with a licence can hunt freely in the eagle’s territory. And nobody has any idea about who may have been moving around in the area on September 10th - 20th.
One person who might be able to shed some light on it is Jukka Keränen, head game manager of the Kainuu game management district.
Keränen answers his mobile phone in the forest. One can almost hear the crackle of his campfire. He has a theory:
"According to the papers, the eagle had been shot from behind. One might easily imagine that the hunter thought that it was a grouse of some kind, and when he noticed that it was an eagle, he took fright and fled the scene."
Isn’t there hostility toward eagles in Kainuu?
"Naturally the local people are a bit angry about the number of wolves, but I have not noticed any hostility toward eagles. Bird enthusiasts put their speculations forward, and they get into national newspapers with them, but there should be some evidence that people go out and shoot them", Keränen explains in a voice oozing with suspicion.
But this was not the only hunting infraction in the Kainuu region this autumn. In addition to the eagle, there was a case in which a mother bear was shot, even though it had cubs, and in another, a mother bear’s cubs were shot.
"All of these are isolated cases. There’s no broader conspiracy behind it. Organised hunters are against crime and want more supervision", Keränen insists. "Shooting an eagle sounds like something a crazy person would do. I don’t know if there is any way to influence a person like that."
Keränen promises to let me know if he hears anything more about the matter. And naturally, he will also tell the police.
Would the reindeer herders be any more helpful? The eagle was shot within the reindeer-herding area of Halla. A few years ago the reindeer herders of the area arranged a huge massacre of wolves, defiantly flaunting the carcasses in front of the television cameras.
Reindeer-herder Hannu Kaartinen is not surprised about the call. His voice sounds downcast:
"It was in our area that the eagle was shot, but it is my impression that reindeer herders have no interest in killing eagles. Here in Kainuu, eagles haven’t caused any harm to reindeer. Some might have an old long-standing thing about hunting, but not today’s reindeer men. These other large predators are much worse: wolves, bears, lynxes, and wolverines. Wolves are a very big problem. They could bring this business to an end."
The man’s voice gathers strength.
"It looks like it is too late to do anything. Everything is being destroyed. They want to set up a predators’ reservation."
How many reindeer do the predators kill?
"Last year we found 200 carcasses, but the real figure is in the thousands."
Thousands? How many reindeer do you have?
"There are 2,700, and the calves on top of that."
The cold night air has turned the windows of the cars white with frost. This does not slow the people of Hyrynsalmi down at all. The Teboil station is crowded already at nine in the morning.
At the pumps, people willingly swap stories about what things used to be like.
When someone was caught poaching, the catch and the gun were confiscated and sold at a public auction. It was the local custom that the poacher himself would give a low bid for the meat and the gun. Other villagers knew better than to bid against him.
But this eagle. Nobody seems to know anything about it.
In the bar, a crowd of men put money into a fruit machine, giving their support to public health - the main beneficiary of legal gambling in Finland. One courageous man, Aale Saarilampi, is willing to talk.
"Why don’t you write about the contractor who embezzled municipal funds?" Saarilampi asks. Nevertheless, he agrees to talk about the shooting of the eagle in a hushed voice.
"There’s no guesswork about it, although I’m not 100 percent sure..."
My heart skips a beat. Is this the bold Hyrynsalmi resident who will reveal the killer?
No.
"This is such a small inward-looking village. Anyone who says who did it will be ostracised forever."
I still can taste the disappointment 80 kilometres further south.
It doesn’t look like the perpetrator will ever be found. If only someone would explain why the eagle had to die.
The last hope lives in a sleepy residential area in a red-brick house in the Variskangas area of the city of Kajaani.
A large but gentle man opens the door. He knows the eagles of Kainuu. For 40 years, nature photographer Pekka Helo has been an official eagle nest inspector under the authority of the Finnish Forests Administration.
"The persecution of eagles is not as conspicuous in Kainuu as it was 20 years ago. It has been pushed into the depths of the forests, and from time to time, a fragment pops out."
Eagle-haters are silent, but not passive, and it shows.
"There was a clear change in the success rate of nesting for eagles at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. In other areas the number of eagle chicks that have hatched has grown, but in Kainuu it has declined."
As recently as the late 1980s, between four and six young eagles would hatch in Kainuu each year. Now it is between three and zero. At the same time the number of nests has increased from about five to about ten.
Sounds odd. What is happening?
"There is no natural reason. The secret is in the hidden persecution."
And the proof?
"You can see it. Whenever there is a year in which no eggs hatch, either one or both birds at the nest have changed."
The pattern emerges. There are no free sexually mature eagles in the wilderness. Whenever one of the two disappears, it is replaced by a young bird which is not yet capable of having young.
"There is no other explanation than persecution", Helo repeats himself. Eagles can easily live to be 30 years old. However, when new birds appear at the nests at two-year intervals, the only explanation is that someone is killing them.
"I don’t blame all hunters. A small group is at it, but that is all that is needed to destroy the population. The eagles are shot during hunting season far away from the nest. It is easy to shoot an eagle inconspicuously at an animal carcass, and the illegal practice of using carcasses to lure bears and shoot them is quite common over here."
Helo continues in a calm voice:
"I have inspected eagles’ nests for forty years, and I have never seen an inhabited eagle’s nest in Kainuu in a reindeer husbandry area."
This sounds bad. And strange.
The state pays compensation to the reindeer-herding associations if there is a population of eagles in the area. The amount of money increases if the nest produces chicks. The system has almost brought the killing of eagles to an end in Finnish Lapland, and even the Koillismaa area, where it used to be very difficult to keep eagles alive. Right next to Kainuu, in the reindeer herding area of Kuusamo, there are about ten eagle’s nests.
Don’t people like the conservation money?
Helo has a bizarre explanation:
"I think that it is possible that people do business with the protected animals."
Exactly. When a game meat wholesaler in Iisalmi was caught for running an extensive poaching racket, protected birds were found in the company’s freezer.
"I suspect that dead eagles are sold to private collections outside Finland."
But who are these killers?
"Whenever a way is found to earn money, there will be those who want to try it. This is what elk and bear poaching is all about", Helo says. "On the other hand, some hunters feel that predators are to blame for the reduction in game populations. Eagles and chicken hawks are seen as the main culprits, and they are shot."
But why in Kainuu?
"The illegal activities seem to have focused on southern Kainuu, North Savo, and North Karelia. Kainuu has the strongest traditions of resistance to the protection of predators."
Back to the hotel. The rain just continues, but it is dry in the well-lit lobby bar.
I take a look at the local newspaper Ylä-Kainuu, which contains an interview with Tapani Pääkkönen, chairman of the board of the Kainuu game management association. In the interview he vents his anger at environmentalists.
"...at least in the media, predators and their protectors have taken a stranglehold over ordinary people and hunters".
He also wonders about the high membership dues of hunters’ associations. "Few ten-year-olds have that kind of money in their back pockets."
Ten-year-olds?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.10.2004
JOUNI K. KEMPPAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jouni.kemppainen@hs.fi
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| 12.10.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 Who murdered the eagle? |
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