There’s another article out today about the imminent extinction of breeding hen harriers in England (see here).
None of you will be surprised by its content. It’s the same old opponents, using the same old arguments. How long has this ‘debate’ been going on? At least twenty years and probably longer. What’s changed? Not much. The accusations are the same (grousemoor owners and their gamekeepers are systematically eradicating the hen harrier from the British uplands). The denials are the same (“it’s nothing to do with us”). The one thing that has changed is the number of breeding pairs of hen harriers: just the one, solitary and pitiful breeding pair in England in 2012.
In the latest article, Adrian Blackmore, Moorland Director for the Countryside Alliance, suggests that the decline may be due to the hen harrier’s “susceptibility to bad weather, disturbance, poor habitat and lack of available food“. He clearly hasn’t bothered to read the Hen Harrier Conservation Framework which identifies illegal persecution as the main limiting factor. The game-shooting lobby dismissed this report when it was first published and claimed, amongst other things, that it used data that were now out of date (see here). In response, SNH has agreed to have the report revised to incorporate the 2010 national hen harrier survey data. Another delaying tactic by the game-shooting lobby? Do they seriously expect the report’s conclusions to change, considering the widespread population declines that were uncovered during the 2010 surveys?! Whatever, we’re all looking forward to seeing the revised text, especially as we understand that SNH is asking GWCT to be involved with the revision, that well-known independent scientific body with no axe to grind against hen harriers and no reason to favour the grouse-shooting industry. Ahem.
Meanwhile, back on the moors, how many breeding pairs of hen harriers will be ‘allowed’ to settle this year? And will it be enough to stop the huge and legitimate swell of public anger that may well just lead to a campaign to ban driven grouse shooting (see here)?
Raptor Persecution UK 
My son’s friend just came in and said the local keepers are killing everything that moves on XXXXXX moor next to the RSPB reserve but still there is no increase in Red Grouse. I told him it is not the keeper’s fault but the owner’s who want as many Red Grouse as possible to shoot. The keeper is only doing his job even if it is braking the law. If owners and syndicates do not want birds of prey being killed then they have to tell their keepers not to kill them. I get sick of hearing about Hen Harriers when Peregrines are also being removed at such a rate. There are now more Peregrines breeding in London than the North Pennines.
Don’t worry John, you won’t have to hear about Hen Harriers in England for much longer! :-(
Personally, I am sick of Keepers & Land Owners dodging the issue …… & the blame.
I dream of a day when Grouse Shooting is extinct!
I do blame keepers as much as owners, if any of my past employers had asked me to break the law of the land, in the execution of my work I would have refused. If they sacked me for this reason, the unfair dismisal lawyers would have had a field day!
The only real way forward in stoping wild life crime is to ban driven grouse shooting.
As a former staff member of Game Conservancy (now GWCT) they are the last organisation SNH should be asking to undertake any revisions. They employed the Head Keeper at Leadhills to be their adviser to gamekeepers….I shouldnt need to say any more….
and Im sick of hearing about the poor old keepers being forced to kill protected species, agree fully with Chris Roberts. If the keepers refused to do this the landowners would have to run their moors differently.It always comes back to the same thing – driven grouse shooting, mass killing of bloated grouse populations, was invented in the Victorian era when they could kill what they liked. If the only way you can make money and/or run a “successful” grouse moor is by killing what the rest of society wants protected then they will lose their “sport”. End of.
I seriously believe that many if not most of the gamekeepers just enjoy killing the protected raptors for the sake of it, they know they shouldn’t but it gives them an extra buzz knowing that they are doing something that’s illegal and they rubbing the noses of the wildlife protection agencies, the police and the law courts in the dirt at the same time.
I don’t doubt that the hen Harriers are susceptible to extremes of weather,food availability, habitat change and disturbance as are most other bird species throughout the avian world, it’s just that the Hen Harriers and other birds of prey are extremely more susceptible to persecution on the Grouse moors than from any other conceivable threat. Best compromise, remove the threat, ban Grouse shooting on every moor where Raptor persecution is proved to be taking place. In other words, ban Grouse shooting on all moors throughout the UK.
I am of the opinion that criminals involved in drugs, gangs, etc obviously want to carry out crimes, either to prove they are worthy or to fit in with the regime and it is the exact same with shooting estates – the gamekeepers want to kill, regardless of protective status, just to prove they are up to the job or to fit in with the landowners beliefs that anything predatory should be exterminated.
I’ve also been led to believe that suicide is quite common in the gamekeeping industry, so it would appear that they can’t even let themselves die naturally.
It is the same old level of ignorance and lack of education to what little damage is done in the grand scheme of things. Yes I do shoot a little, but birdwatch more, and when once speaking to a old school gamekeeper he was berating the Tawny Owl that eating his pheasant chicks, and that he was loosing several a night. I noticed that around the pens a large number of rat holes that were obviously active, in making this observation suggested that it maybe the rats and not the owl. His comment was no; the rats were after the grain, then maybe the owl is after the rats, “that’s rubbish” was his comment, “there after me pheasants.”
A few weeks later he was quite proud to boast that he no longer had a owl problem. However his rat problem had got worse. when asked was he still loosing birds he admitted he was; in larger numbers than before. There is a happy outcome; when the syndicate heard of this behaviour by their keeper he was asked to resign, which he did. The new keeper operates under very robust guidelines. Also, there is a pair of owls back, together with regular sightings of a little owl.
Sorry but in most cases, keepers and other so called sporting guns buy weapons to kill…and kill what they can get away with by the looks of recent (past 100 years or more ) of illegal persecution records. Today the only reason it comes to our notice more is because numbers of raptors especially near sporting estates are so low, one bird less is so obviously noticed by experienced watchers. To think of a single pair of nesting Hen Harriers in this light makes them, with all the publicity a target for the shooting thug. Sorry that’s what they are, they know exactly what they are doing. Guardians of the countryside will fade away as a title when there’s only reared birds in the countryside and their title can be described as it should be, battery pheasant farmers and wildlife criminals.
Trade descriptions must use their title of game keeper as the biggest joke of the entire trade, The fact that eventually the game keeper kills everything living even hand reared stock on his estate must mean, the title should now be as it should be “Game Killer” All very sad for all the various comments aimed at these people but sooner there’s none left and then what…I can just imagine the tally on an upland grouse moor, 2 brace of emaciated grouse, 2 beaters and a fiendishly fast dog. What a grand day Sir.
OK its no joke and certainly not in bad taste, but this is the way its rapidly going and all our clever words and arguments don’t matter to those that continue in this way of life and this is exactly what it means to those that think they are entitled to kill without question.
All our well meaning and educated opinions are just that, it means little to the law, less to the various organizations supposedly looking after the interests of the countryside and its wildlife…RSPB, SNH, dare I mention the Countrside Aliance, heaven forbid, the whole lot of you are letting this happen today…withdraw all donations and especially the funding of public money to wrong doing estates and lets see if hitting you in the pocket has more clout than just words alone.
Quote:
“withdraw all donations and especially the funding of public money to wrong doing estates and lets see if hitting you in the pocket has more clout than just words alone.”
Yes great idea which has been said many times before on this and other similar forums, I’m sure the majority of us would love to see it happen, unfortunately the people who are in a position to make something like this happen are the very same people who are allowing the Raptor persecution to continue in the first place, e.g, Natural England / Scottish Natural Heritage, DEFRA, local and national government ministers etc. Not to mention that some of the estate owners and their cohorts are already well placed in high positions of control within or associated with these very same bodies, and are more than willing to yank the strings to make the puppets do their bidding.
Yip, SNH pandering to the shooting industry yet again. Considering the last Hen Harrier study was carried out by RSPB in partnership with Raptor Study Groups, why are SNH allowing [what I would call] the Gun & Wildlife Crime Trust the opportunity to manipulate the figures and effectively rewrite a document to suit themselves? We all know that the shooting lobby cannot be relied to provide factual evidence and that SNH really struggle with basic arithmetic, so I can see GWCT eventually providing [something], leading to more calls for culls.
On the subject of GWCT impartiality, can this same organisation really be trusted? This is the same organisation that took tremendous delight when it was discovered a Hen Harrier nest was predated by an Eagle Owl.
See here http://www.gwct.org.uk/policy/wildlife_issues/489.asp (first paragraph, second sentence)
But then again, when you read the last paragraph, you realise that you are dealing with hypocrites. The organisation are willing to accept that any species considered for re-inroduction should go through a rigorous process before being allowed back into the country and they deplore attempts to release animals from theme parks – but they are happy that millions of non-native pheasants and partridges are released each year for the personal pleasures of the GWCT and its supporters. Hypocrisy on a grand scale.
While on the subject of hypocrisy, we must go back to Adrian Blackmore, Moorland Director for the Countryside Alliance (or should that be Criminal Apologists?). He has stated
”Although Hen Harriers do not often settle to breed in England, they are regularly seen migrating over the English uplands in the spring and autumn,and the latest available figures estimated there to be 806 breeding pairs in the UK in 2004 – an increase of 41% since 1998. Neither is the Hen Harrier a rare bird across Europe. Near the top of its food chain and with 167,000 nesting females, it is listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)- the worlds main authority on the conservation status of species – as of ‘least concern’.”
Now, I don’t know where Mr Blackmore got his European Hen Harrier information, as Birdlife International data shows that the European Hen Harrier breeding population is, at most, 29,500 pairs. A far cry from Blackmore’s 167,000 nesting females alone. Is this yet another deliberate lie from the shooting lobby? Is the shooting lobby trying to portray the Hen Harrier as a common species in a sly attempt to get the Hen Harrier onto the General Licence? Is Blackmore suggesting that because of the Hen Harrier’s European status, they should not be afforded full protection, and if so, then what would he have to say about another species of least concern on the IUCN list, with a UK population estimate of 155,000 breeding pairs and a European breeding population estimated at 1.65 million pairs? That species is the Red Grouse, for those that don’t know.
Mr Blackmore has also also (deviously?) omitted the fact that the Hen Harrier is a UK Red-listed species (Red Grouse is Amber), and Hen Harrier is considered vulnerable in Europe.
It is now patently obvious that you cannot believe a single word uttered by anyone from the shooting lobby. Sadly, SNH are not of this belief and should now be branded a national disgrace. Perhaps SNH should be renamed as Scotland’s Natural Hypocrites.
just a quick note, the Countryside Alliance as mentioned at the start of this blog was one of the groups criticising the Hen Harrier Conservation Framework report published in 2010 as being out dated as it only contained data up to 2004, how on earth can Adrian Blackmore then justify making a point using figures from 1998 as a comparison, it’s the same as the gun lobby’s right wing splinter group songbird survival harking back to the long hot summers of the seventies when everything was so much better
As I said, Merlin, those involved with the shooting lobby are hypocrites and cannot be trusted. They will use some figures to suit themselves, then trash the exact same figures when it doesn’t suit them. They are, quite simply in my opinion, manipulative, devious, odious people that cannot tell the truth. Perhaps amongst the most vile in modern society, I would rate them on a par with the gun lobby in the USA.
Remember we still have £1.75 million in the kitty to spend on the Langholm programme. We need to bring back the Golden Eagles that were removed by xxxxxxxxx. The estate do not want them as they they only want a Red Grouse moor after 10 years of spending public money. Damage to many species of bird like Black Grouse and Whinchat to name a few means that the SSSI is being damaged by the same people who should be protecting it. The Hen Harrier is not expanding due to birds being removed. Why do most people sit back and let this money be spent by the wrong people. Its your money. Wake up and do some thing about it.
Unfortunately for Hen Harriers and all raptors, landowners now have a legal way to kill them off – wind turbines. Two Hen Harriers were killed by the turbine rotors on Griffin wind farm in Perthshire last Spring.
These wind farms will be the biggest challenge to Scottish raptors and will kill far more than any of the current illegal actions (oh, nearly forgot -allegedly) taken by grouse estates.
Wind Farms would have to work very hard indeed to kill more harriers than direct persecution has done, is doing and will continue to do. There is no “allegedly” about the killings on grouse moors, they are well documented, researched, reported on and accepted by past governments.As far as I’ve ever read the documented accidental death of harriers at Wind Farms has amounted to a tiny number, with no effect on the overall harrier population. This is a distraction from the main cause of their near extinction in England and restricted numbers elsewhere.
The effects of wind farms is by its tittle not on the remit of this website but they a very serious threat to raptors.