After the first shot, they saw one of the rare birds of prey “immediately fold up and drop out of sight.” About 30 seconds later they heard a second explosion – and another horse-drawn carriage fell from the sky. The footage appeared to come from inside Sandringham, the Queen’s country retreat which borders the retreat – where Prince Harry, then 23, and a close friend were out shooting ducks that night. Within minutes, the ranger had alerted Natural England, which manages the reserve. Shocked officials called the police and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which attempted to investigate. It is a criminal offense to injure chickens, one of the UK’s rarest and most persecuted birds, punishable by six months in prison or a £5,000 fine. According to internal Physical England documents obtained by the Guardian, their urgency was in vain. To their surprise, they were told by Norfolk Police that immediate action was not possible: the police said they had to ask Sandringham officials for permission to go to the estate. A note from Natural England says its officials had pressed for an immediate investigation that night, but a Norfolk officer told them his chief inspector had “advised to contact the Royal Sandringham Estate and request entry in the morning”.

Successive investigations

A Guardian investigation has revealed that dozens of UK laws state police are barred from entering any of the Queen’s private properties without her consent to investigate crimes ranging from wildlife offenses to environmental pollution – a unique privilege not granted to any other private landowner in the United Kingdom. In fact, a year before the shooting incident in the Sandringham area, UK wildlife legislation was updated. The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 included amendments to a number of laws for England – one of which sets out the Queen’s personal immunity from prosecution for wildlife offenses and denies wildlife inspectors the power to enter private of estates to investigate alleged crimes. But internal documents from Natural England, obtained by the Guardian, reveal that Sandringham has been the focus of successive police and regulatory investigations.

Sandringham has been investigated for wildlife and pesticide offenses against legally protected birds of prey at least six times between 2005 and 2016. As well as the two hens shot in 2007, police and Natural England have investigated the deaths of a goshawk, a sparrow, a red kite, a tawny owl and a barn owl on the Sandringham estate and the land it owns nearby, with only one prosecution . . In 2009, the estate received an official warning about the mishandling and illegal storage of highly toxic chemicals after the sparrow poisoning. In 2016, Sandringham admitted destroying the body of a goshawk found dead near Sandringham House before it was examined by police, which meant the cause of death could not be determined.

Buckingham Palace did not comment. Prince Harry’s representatives did not respond when asked for comment on the 2007 incident.

Old files were destroyed

In November 2006, Sandringham briefly came under public scrutiny for its practices after one of its wardens, Dean Wright, was fined £500 and ordered to pay £470 in costs after pleading guilty that he maimed a tawny owl in a steel rat trap. The owl was euthanized due to the severity of its injuries. Wright was initially charged with four offences, including setting the trap, causing unnecessary harm and using rat poison. These three charges were dropped. According to a previously unpublished internal memo, Natural England officials later said there were “flaws in the way the case was investigated prior to our involvement”. It is not clear from the memo what those defects were. Norfolk Police refused to confirm or deny that they gave advance notice to the Sandringham estate for a police search in October 2007. Photo: David Goddard/Getty Images In the memo, written on October 25, 2007, the day after the two woodpeckers were shot dead, a senior Natural England official claimed to other agency officials that Sandringham was, in fact, a known wildlife crime hotspot. The note reads: “You will be aware that there have been a number of serious wildlife ‘incidents’ at this location”, involving investigations by Norfolk Police or Natural England. The official list lists poisoning, pole trapping – a form of trap for live birds or mammals – and a possible case involving rat poison. The same official also revealed two other suspicious incidents involving the death of protected birds of prey on Sandringham-owned land near the royal estate that have not been reported to date: a case of bird poisoning with a red kite, which is said to have occurred at Sandringham in 2006; and the death of a helicopter gunner who was reportedly found in 2007 “right on the border of this particular piece of land.” Contacted for comment, Natural England said it no longer holds any records relating to these two incidents as it regularly destroys old records in line with government records management rules. The Norfolk Police Department declined to comment on these cases, so it remains unclear whether a formal investigation was conducted.

Police say incidents are being investigated in a transparent manner

When two Norfolk Police wildlife crime officers and two RSPB investigators arrived at Sandringham shortly after dawn on the morning of 25 October 2007, they found a flurry of activity at the site where the hen house incident was believed to have taken place the night before. People were already searching the site. RSPB wildlife crime investigator Mark Thomas wrote in a blog at the time: “Some people were already present: a man and a woman in a Land Rover and eight dogs working hard on the ground. Speaking to people, they were there at the estate’s request to retrieve the ducks that had been shot the night before.’ Several days after the chicken trucks were shot, Prince Harry, William van Kutchem and David Clarke, Sandringham’s then chief gamekeeper, were interviewed by Norfolk police but not prosecuted. They denied knowing the hens were shot. The estates’ vehicles were also examined by police and swabs were taken for traces of blood, but no forensic scientific evidence linking the hens was found. Allegations that lead shot had been illegally used in a wildlife sanctuary during their filming were never prosecuted. On November 6, the Crown Prosecution Service said that as there were no witnesses who could identify who shot the birds and no hen carcasses were available for forensic examination, there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. The CPS added: “There are no other areas of inquiry that can be pursued.” At the time, a spokesman for Clarence House said: “As Prince Harry and a friend were both in the area at the time, the police contacted them and asked if they had any information that could help. Unfortunately, they have no knowledge of the alleged incident.” It was awkward for all concerned: the Queen has been the patron of the RSPB since she came to the throne. It has had a royal charter since 1904. Many wildlife crime investigators told the Guardian that it is normal practice not to give the subject of a police investigation advance notice that a search for evidence will take place. Norfolk Constabulary refused to confirm or deny that it had informed Sandringham that its officers wanted access to the estate in October 2007 or for any other crime investigation. Norfolk Police said: “Alleged crime and wildlife incidents reported to Norfolk Police or near Sandringham Estate are investigated in an open and transparent manner with the full co-operation of Sandringham Estate. The results of any police investigations are published at the same time.”

Warning for Sandringham

In 2009, several buildings on the Sandringham estate were searched by police and Natural England officers after a dead sparrow and two poisoned pigeon carcasses, used as bait, were found on the estate. The case was referred to the Chemical Regulations Directorate (CRD), a sub-directorate of the Department of Health and Safety, for investigation. Memos later released to the investigative blog Raptor Persecution UK under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that there was heated debate by lawyers in the HSE and CPS over whether the Queen and Sandringham were exempt under the Food Protection Act and environment of 1985. These lawyers believed that because the act did not specifically say that her private properties were covered by the law, Sandringham was not exempt. Buckingham Palace officials say this is wrong: they insist the Queen is always personally exempt from prosecution. A CRD lawyer records in a memo: “When the [Natural England] the officer returned to [Sandringham] to obtain some documents, [he] he was met by estate agents and the solicitor and was (in his words) quite aggressively questioned by them about the powers under which he was acting.’ Despite these conflicts, CRD officials were allowed to search Sandringham’s outbuildings. They didn’t find the poison that killed the sparrow, but they discovered a series of “unacceptable” offenses involving another poisonous and highly volatile substance called Phostoxin, which is used to fumigate rabbits, rats and moles. The CRD warned Sandringham: “Phostoxin storage conditions are strictly controlled as, on contact with even small amounts of moisture, it produces toxic and flammable phosphine gas. Short exposure to phosphine can be fatal to humans and animals.” His inspection found that the chemical was stored in unlocked open containers in…