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Are you breaking the law when you take photographs of wildlife?

1 November 2018

You don’t need to be a professional to take stunning wildlife photographs. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Speaking on Out of Doors, nature photographer Laurie Campbell explained that, due to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, restrictions now cover over one hundred species — from golden eagles and ospreys to kingfishers and barn owls.

“For all of these species, you need a licence if you want to photograph them at or near their nest with dependent young,” said Laurie.

“Even after the young have left the nest, they’re still dependent of the parents for food. It’s an offence to disturb them at that point through getting too close to take pictures.”

When photographers put wildlife at risk

Nature photographer Laurie Campbell on how social media poses a problem to wildlife.

Problems caused by social media

Social media has aided the explosion of nature photography by allowing photographers to share their pictures widely, and to alert others to the presence of rare wildlife. According to Laurie, however, this can also cause problems.

“When I started out, we’d find nest sites, share them with one or two friends and that was the end of it.

“Now, with social media, the dissemination of information can mean in a very short time many people will congregate on the one spot. There’s only ever going to be one loser — and that’s the subject.

“Also, when I started out a lot of the nature photographers were interested in nature first and photography second. We had that background of knowing where subjects were and how to approach them.

“We need an education programme to get more information out there about the need to be careful around rarer species.”