The Scots taking on brutal badger baiters

The first clue to the crime is a 10ft hole in the ground, which has obviously been dug by a human rather than an animal. The second is a piece of blue rope which has been tied to a tree - one end is looped round the trunk, the other is lying, cut off or torn, on the ground. This is what the criminals would have used to tie up their dog while they were digging into the ground looking for their prey: one of the badgers that live here.

My guides Eddie Palmer and Susan Tierney, of the charity Scottish Badgers, tell me what probably happened next. Once dragged from the ground, either the badger would have been made to fight with the dog right here in this spot in the woods or it would have been taken away to a farm or a field or the back of a pub to fight several dogs. If one dog dies, they send in another. Then another. Whatever happens, the badger does not come out alive.

It is not easy to stand here in the woods on a cold afternoon and listen to this dark story, and see the sordid evidence of it, and it's even more depressing when Palmer tells me he believes the badger baiting that happened here is only part of what he calls a tidal wave of wildlife crime.

The problem with trying to establish whether that's true or not is that wildlife crime is hard to detect, although take a look around and there's always a steady flow of evidence that a problem does exist. In the last few weeks, there have been a number of suspicious cases. An illegal snare in a wood in Kirkcaldy. An illegal bird trap in Stirlingshire. A dead buzzard in South Lanarkshire. And the mysterious disappearance of a hen harrier that was being monitored as part of a conservation project in Northumberland and southern Scotland.

But is this evidence of a tidal wave? When I speak to the staff of charities such as the RSPB and Scottish Badgers, they tell me absolutely yes. The representatives of gamekeepers and the shooting industry I speak to say no - the charities are exaggerating, they say, and cases of bird poisonings in Scotland are actually very low. What everyone seems to agree on is that the full extent of wildlife crime is hard to determine - possibly because of the remoteness of some of the crimes, or a lack of evidence, or inadequate investigation, or the reluctance of people in the country and in towns to report the criminals. The most recent figures on badgers are that there were 63 police-recorded crimes against badgers between 2007 and 2012. The figures on raptor poisoning are slightly different depending on whether you rely on the police or the RSPB: the police say that between 2008 and 2012 there were 94 incidents; the RSPB says it was 118.

There is also a severe division of opinion over whether enough is being done to detect and enforce wildlife crime. The police say it is one of their top priorities and there seems to be evidence of that - and when I meet Detective Superintendent Sean Scott, the police officer in charge of wildlife crime in Scotland, he bullishly defends what the force is doing. On the other hand, several high-profile environmental groups have just claimed in a highly controversial report that Police Scotland aren't doing enough and need to improve their training and detection.

As we walk round the badger sett, Palmer and Tierney tell me their experience with the police has not been good and that the officers who do attend incidents are often underprepared or untrained. They are also convinced, based partly on mapping models of what the bird of prey population should be in Scotland, that there is severe under-reporting of wildlife crime, including badger baiting, and that the problem is getting worse, not better.

"We have a tidal wave of badger baiting in Scotland," says Palmer, "and it's for several reasons. One is that dog fighting has become more organised and bigger and if you removed the dog fighting bit of it, you would remove most of the badger baiting problem. People are bringing in new breeds of dog from abroad and cross-breeding - people are totally obsessed with it. Other people are totally frightened of them - the police are also frightened about what might happen if they go raiding a house. I'm certain that the problem is increasing."

We walk round the sett and Palmer and Tierney tell me how the whole gruesome process works. This sett has around 40 entrances (and probably around five or six resident badgers) and the first thing the criminals would do is send a dog down to find and hold a badger. The dog will have been trained to do so but it is also likely that it will be fitted with a tracker so the gang know exactly where it is. Terriers or lurchers are most typical at this stage of the process (they use bigger, heavier dogs for the fighting).

The next stage is to dig down towards the badger and I can see that in this area there are at least 12 spots that have been dug, some bigger than others. It means this sett has been targeted many times and, Tierney tells me with a heavy heart, is likely to be targeted again partly because it's relatively easy to get to if you know where it is. The sett is also near a town that is typical of the kind of community that produces badger baiters: a former mining town and a pretty tough place.

Palmer tells me that in such towns, many of the residents will often know who is likely to be responsible for the badger baiting but they are too afraid to speak out. Partly, this is because badger baiters can be pretty heavy-duty guys involved in a chain of other crimes - firearms, burglary, anything you can think of, he says. "Any farmer or whoever who comes across these guys will be told: 'Go away, or your barn will get burned down or your tyres will get slashed.'" Most badger baiting is carried out during the day, says Palmer, because they are not afraid of being seen.

He says part of the answer is for the police to be much more intelligence-led in their work on wildlife crime. He and Tierney are highly critical of the efforts that are being made to detect and enforce wildlife crime in Scotland. Is enough being done?

After speaking to voluntary organisations working in the sector, lawyers, the gamekeeper community, and the police, there is not much agreement on that, but there is consensus on at least one question. Almost everyone agrees that the legislation on wildlife crime in Scotland is strong and in fact is the strongest in the UK.

But what about detection and enforcement? Are they good enough? Detection first. Scottish Badgers tell me gamekeepers who have spoken to them say they know they will not get caught if they have poison on their estate because they've worked out the police can't cover vast areas.

They also tell me they are receiving reports of one potentially criminal incident at a badger sett every month and that many of them do not lead to prosecutions or convictions. The recent report by LINK, a coalition of voluntary organisations including the RSPB, also suggested that from 2008 to 2013, almost 20 per cent of confirmed wildlife crimes did not result in a follow-up investigation and were effectively ignored.

Tierney also says it is often very hard to get an officer to attend an incident and that when they do, they are often untrained. "Some who do come along to incidents openly admit that they don't know anything about badgers or the protection of badgers and we're having to teach them on the spot," she says.

Palmer believes profound change is needed. "Wildlife crime will not be tackled in Scotland until we have a specialist environmental police force as they do in another countries," he says. "The UK is lagging behind. If you took, say 15 full-time wildlife crime guys, with management who were very mobile and could respond, you would start cracking it, but the police turn up so late or not at all."

Naturally, the police perspective is different. The force recently announced that 100 more officers are being trained to tackle wildlife crime, but there are concerns about how many staff are available - the single force comprises 14 regional divisions but only five have a full-time wildlife officer. When I meet him at the Gartcosh crime campus, Detective Superintendent Sean Scott defends the force and says officers are full time or part time depending on the demand and that city areas do not require a full-time officer.

"We are continually assessing that demand to see if we need to up the resourcing," he says. He also insists they respond timeously to reports of a crime. "Any inference that we are not taking it seriously or we are not being professional about it is unwarranted."

Det Sup Scott also has little time for the LINK report. "The accuracy of the LINK report was severely criticised by the Scottish Crown and the Scottish Government and it's based on information that's years old," he says. "We met with Scottish Badgers and RSPB to discuss that report and let's just say they were reassured that whatever is inferred in that report is no longer the case or is based on facts that are just irrelevant now.

"We can only respond to what's reported to us so there were reports of 300 wildlife crimes last year and at the moment, there are no spikes, no increase. It's been a fairly steady profile in terms of the number of crimes reported."

So what about enforcement? I speak to Ian Thomson, the most senior figure in species protection at RSPB Scotland, who says there is comprehensive evidence that enforcement is far from good enough in Scotland and that tougher sentencing would help. The staff of Scottish Badgers also believe tougher sentencing would have an effect.

However, there may already be signs that the sentencing is becoming tougher. Take the case of gamekeeper George Mutch, for instance. Earlier this year, he was found guilty of killing a goshawk in Aberdeenshire and setting traps illegally to capture other birds and was jailed for four months, making him the first gamekeeper to be jailed for such an offence. The RSPB said it was a landmark case and should represent a turning point in the investigation and enforcement of wildlife crime. Indeed, a review into the penalties of wildlife crime is currently being conducted by the Scottish Government which may lead to a change in the current maximum which is a £5,000 fine and/or six months in prisons (in practice, the fines tend to be in the hundreds rather than thousands).

The gamekeeper community's perspective is that enforcement is already tough enough and that the problem is a lack of help and understanding for people working the land. According to a spokesman for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, the current emphasis in tackling wildlife crime is high on punishment but low on help for working people seeking to manage land in the face of conflict.

"For example, when sea eagles were reintroduced in the west, farmers were given compensation for lost sheep," says the spokesman. "It gave people confidence they could still attempt to run a business. It stopped resentment building, threatening the reintroduction. Legal solutions and balances can involve everything from compensation to displacing nests like has been done with kingfisher and osprey to accommodate T in the Park or to remove newts from building sites. It can involve adaptive management and, as a very last resort, culling."

The spokesman cites the example of the buzzards that are legally killed at Scottish airports every year (more than 300) and would like to see similar licences for the shooting industry. "In our industry, no-one has ever been granted a licence to manage any conflict, not even to protect endangered black grouse from abundant ravens. Furthermore, they have been told they will not get one."

The association also says it expels members who do break the law and has done so with five members in the past three years. David McKie, a partner in Levy and McRae, and solicitor to the Scottish Gamekeepers' Association and to many landowners in Scotland, also tells me the law is now very strict against gamekeepers - much stricter than it has ever been.

"Scotland now has much stricter wildlife laws than England," he says. "Included in those measures have been tighter regulations on the use of snares and traps, criminal vicarious liability has been created for landowners, the consequences of committing offences has seen reductions in single farm payments, removals of licences to work both for individuals and on land and a tighter approach to firearms licensing. In that same period, while these much stricter controls in how gamekeepers are permitted to work under the law, we have seen in the same period a fall in raptor persecutions."

McKie also has little patience with the "tip of the iceberg" argument. He also believes that it has become harder, not easier, to commit wildlife crime. "There are areas of isolation where on one view it might be easy to commit wildlife crime but equally, with the advance of technology, more information on wildlife crime accessible to the public via all forms of media and the greater opportunity to be seen or caught than ever before, I don't consider that the opportunity to commit wildlife crime is anywhere near as great as it was 20 years ago."

There has also been some demonstrable progress in some areas - egg collecting, for example, which was an acceptable, unquestioned boyhood hobby in the 1960s but has now virtually disappeared. Voluntary organisations say that happened as a result of intelligence-led, targeted, community policing and that the same must happen with the wildlife crimes that persist, such as badger baiting and the poisoning of birds.

Standing above the badger sett close to a town where some of the wildlife criminals live, with seeming impunity, it can be hard to see how that will be achieved. This is a hardcore crime buried deep in some persistent cultural habits - beliefs even.

"I've talked to people in the RSPCA special unit who have infiltrated these groups," says Eddie Palmer, "and they do not have an awareness that badger baiting is wrong - to them, it is viable sport. They know what they're doing, they want to do it and they don't think people should stop them."

Can we stop them? The evidence in this little clearing somewhere in central Scotland - the deep, dark holes in the ground, the pathetic piece of rope tied round a tree - says this particular wildlife crime is going on, and is very likely to happen again unpunished. As we walk back to the car, Susan Tierney says it is always a worry coming here.

"I always worry because I always suspect we could go in there and find that it's been dug out again." It will happen. Are we all doing enough to stop it?