A young hen harrier that had been satellite-tracked since 2010 has gone missing near Glen Dye in Aberdeenshire. Roy Dennis, the man behind the satellite-tagging project, concludes that she has been killed. He has made a report to the Grampian Wildlife Crime Officer.
The harrier, named ‘Tanar’ after her birthplace on the Glen Tanar Estate in June 2010, was one of two harriers tagged from the same nest. Her brother, ‘Glen’ is also dead according to Roy. The loss of both youngsters in their first year will come as no surprise to those who read the 2011 government report on hen harrier persecution in Scotland. The report (see here and here) confirmed what many raptor fieldworkers have known for years – that hen harrier persecution is rife, particularly on land managed for grouse shooting, and in Scotland over 2,000 harriers are ‘missing’ from apparently suitable habitat.
Raptor Persecution UK 
This situation is just becoming utterly ridiculous! Whilst it might seem a naive comment, the one thing that maintains my “cool” is that the persistence of those guilty of such persecution will be the eventual undoing of the majority as sites like this, and the wider media , report on the increasing number of incidents. There is no clearer indicator that others within the shooting fraternity, who allege such activities are carried out by a minority , should directly and actively “turn on their own” , or be tarred with the same brush because of their passive tolerance. Until recently I believed such activities were the results of actions by a relative minority , but with increasing reportage of incidents up and down the UK I’m beginning to be convinced of a much wider practice than previously. There are some good guys out there, but their reputations, and that of their “sport”, will be cast aside by the ever increasing number of detected incidents that , eventually, will cause a backlash of opinion from the general public and a call for far more draconian measures to be implemented against the shooting fraternity,, however immune they feel from such action.
A little while ago I wrote a piece on my Blog entitled, ” Is the shooting fraternity losing the plot? ” given the cack-handed , conceited statements being put out and such a transparently flawed PR stance they persist in pursuing.. They may not accept it, but they’re fighting a rearguard action at the moment in my opinion. You would think, would you not, that when a hostile press is in evidence and new legislation is forthcoming from the ( Scottish ) government, the sensible thing to do would be to become more, rather than less,, responsible or suffer the consequences. This makes it even more important why sites like this continue to bring to the attention of the public cases , incidents and the like and expose the continuing arrogant behaviour of these people who persist in pursuing a flagrant disregard for the laws of the land.
The problem is the people who are overall responsible for this Raptor persecution, the shooting estate owners, are so arrogant that they believe it is their right if not their duty to kill the Raptors in their bigoted belief that the wildlife protection laws don’t apply to them and they must make sure their Red Grouse, Partridges and Pheasants artificially thrive just to be gunned down later by the minority shooting fraternity.
nirofo.