A gamekeeper has been fined £1500 for setting illegal snares likely to cause unnecessary suffering to animals.

Animal welfare workers said Brian Petrie's action had endangered some of Scotland's most precious species on the Logie Estate, near Forres.

Petrie, 66, of Dunphail, admitted at Elgin Sheriff Court to setting snares likely to make animal suffers by wholly suspending them.

He also admitted setting snares in a manner likely to be dragged and failing to release or remove an animal from a snare with both being breaches of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Inspectors from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found a badger and several foxes dead in Petrie's snares which had been set around a number of middens constructed of trees and baited with carcasses.

The charity's chief superintendent, Mike Flynn, said Petrie had been a gamekeeper with more than 50 years of experience and he had sat his snaring course just a year earlier.

He said: "The snares were set in an area inhabited by sensitive native species such as the Scottish wildcat, pine marten, deer, otter and badger so there was a high risk of this type of animal being caught, maimed and killed and one badger was found dead at the scene."

He said the case highlighted that snaring was cruel, indiscriminate and unnecessary and should be banned.

Mr Flynn said the offences had taken place on land at Logie Estate however the estate was not aware of Petrie's actions and had co-operated fully in the SSPCA's investigation.