Month: November 2016

We’ve recently been blogging about DEFRA’s hen harrier brood meddling scheme, due to start in the 2017 breeding season. A series of FoIs has uncovered some of the plans to date (e.g. see here, here, here).

Today’s blog relates to the proposed social science study, which is being viewed as an integral part of the brood meddling trial.

The proposal has been submitted by Steve Redpath (Aberdeen Uni & Trustee of the Hawk & Owl Trust) and Freya St John (Kent Uni), both well known for their interest in wildlife conflict management.

Here’s the proposal: social-science-proposal-brood-meddling-june-2016

Basically the proposal is for a seven-month long study, estimated to cost ~ 50K, to assess how grouse moor managers, gamekeepers and conservationists ‘feel’ about hen harriers and about the different aspects of the wider Hen Harrier Inaction Plan.

Not being social scientists there’s a very good chance that we’re missing something here, and we’d be happy to be corrected, but we’re struggling to see the point/value of this study. Apart from the obvious flaw that the study will rely upon grouse moor owners and gamekeepers telling the truth (good luck with that, researchers!), the attitudes of all these ‘stakeholders’ are already blindingly clear, surely?

The vast majority of driven grouse moor owners and gamekeepers don’t tolerate hen harriers, to the extent that the English hen harrier breeding population is on its knees because these birds are routinely killed. Conservationists place a high nature conservation value on hen harriers and want grouse moor owners and gamekeepers to abide by the law and stop killing them.

The whole premise of the brood meddling scheme is to see whether driven grouse moor owners and gamekeepers will ‘tolerate’ hen harriers if they can be assured that there won’t be more than one breeding pair per 10 sq km. The claimed purpose of brood meddling is to reduce the pressure of predation on red grouse caused by parent hen harriers hunting to provide for their broods (and yet strangely, the industry isn’t up for trialling diversionary feeding). But this predation pressure is not the only aspect of hen harrier ecology that the grouse shooting industry objects to. It is also known that they don’t like to see hen harriers flying over the moors during the grouse-shooting season because the harrier might disrupt the flights of red grouse being driven towards the guns. So who thinks that releasing young hen harriers back to the uplands in August/September is going to work?!

The proof will be in the pudding. Will those captive-reared hen harriers survive once they’ve been released? Their satellite tag transmissions will provide the real answer, not the result of some questionnaire that’s been answered by members of an industry that’s based on criminality and that has proven itself untrustworthy time and time and time again.

We’ve learned, through a series of FoIs about DEFRA’s planned hen harrier brood meddling scheme, that the practical aspect of the trial (i.e. the removal of eggs/chicks from the nests and the subsequent captive-rearing) will be undertaken by the International Centre for Birds of Prey in Gloucestershire (see here and here for previous blogs).

The ICBP is directed by Jemima Parry-Jones, who, along with several others involved in this brood meddling scheme (Philip Merricks, Steve Redpath and Philip Holms), also serves on the Hawk & Owl Trust’s Board of Trustees.

As part of her input, she has produced an estimated costing. Given the number of uncertainties about the trial, the costing is, inevitably, largely guesswork. Nevertheless, it’s pretty detailed and provides an insight to what will be involved.

You can read it here: harrier-brood-management-draft-ballpark-costings

Jemima Parry-Jones’ knowledge and expertise on the breeding and captive rearing of raptors is undeniable. She is a recognised and highly respected world authority on this subject. We can be assured that any hen harrier eggs/chicks that the ICBP receives during this trial will be given the utmost care and attention to ensure they’re fit enough for release.

But what’s so baffling, and yes, disappointing, is that Jemima would want to play any part in this brood meddling scheme. As a lifelong advocate for raptor conservation, why would she support a plan to remove these harriers from the wild, just to enable an industry to kill an artificially-high number of grouse, for personal gratification, and then release those harriers back to the wild knowing that their chance of survival (at the hands of that same criminally-based industry) is virtually nil?

Why go to all the effort of rearing those birds, knowing that in fact all you’re doing is delaying the inevitable? There isn’t a scrap of evidence, not one tiny shred, to suggest that those released juveniles will be left alone; on the contrary, ALL the evidence suggests otherwise.

All we have is the word of the grouse shooting industry that they’ll abide by the law, but who in their right mind would take them at their word?! They don’t even believe it themselves – why else would they propose that the cessation of illegal persecution is not a condition of this brood meddling trial!

Wake up Jemima, you’re being played.

Following on from yesterday’s blog on some of the details emerging about DEFRA’s hen harrier brood meddling scheme (see here), here are some more revelations that have come to light from a series of FoIs.

There’s a document written by Steve Redpath, Adam Smith (GWCT) and Martin Gillibrand (then secretary of the Moorland Association) dated August 2013. It’s titled ‘Improving the conservation status of hen harriers in the UK – establishing a research trial of a brood management scheme‘.

You can read it here: harrier-trial-brood-management-scheme-final-draft

It’s not clear for whom this document was written, but we’d take a guess that it was produced for DEFRA as an overview of /justification for, a hen harrier brood meddling scheme. Some of the brood meddling plans mentioned in this document may well have been developed further since August 2013. However, there are definitely parts of it still being cited (by Amanda Anderson), word for word, in discussions about the planned 2017 launch of brood meddling.

A few things jumped out at us. The first thing isn’t a revelation as such – the justification for using a brood meddling scheme based on the successful use of this management tool on Montagu’s harriers in western Europe. We’ve heard this a lot, especially from GWCT, and yes, at a superficial level, it does sound like a reasonable comparison. Montagu’s harrier nests in cereal fields are at high risk from mechanised harvesting equipment, and so broods have been removed from the danger areas, captive-reared, and then released back to the wild. And it has worked well.

But what the pro-brood meddlers never mention is the fact that the risk to those Montagu’s harriers is limited to a very short time period when harvesting takes place. Once the crops have been harvested, the risk is gone until harvest time the following year. That is not comparable with the hen harrier situation in the UK. The risk to hen harriers on UK driven grouse moors is year-round. They are killed at the beginning of the breeding season when they try to settle, they are killed during the breeding season, and they are killed during the autumn and winter, particularly at roost sites. Year-round harrier persecution is the name of the game in the UK so to argue that brood meddling will work for hen harriers on grouse moors in the UK just because it’s worked for Montagu’s harriers in agricultural fields abroad is totally absurd. The circumstances are nowhere near comparable.

One revelation that did jump out at us from this document is a sentence in the Introduction section:

“Should a trial brood management scheme be successful, the next phase would be to offer this as a management option across the whole of the UK“.

Jesus.

The other revelation we found was this, in the section describing how the trial might work:

“Once harriers start settling the trial will commence. As soon as a pair of harriers lays eggs within 10km of another pair, that will activate the brood management scheme. At least one pair must be settled on a grouse moor employing one or more full-time grouse keepers where a suppressed grouse population poses the greatest social, economic and conservation risk“.

Eh? A “suppressed” grouse population? There’s nothing “suppressed” about an artificially-high grouse population with 300-500 birds per sq km, crammed on to a driven grouse moor!

More revelations to follow….

UPDATE 16 Nov 2016: Brood meddling: the role of the International Centre for Birds of Prey (here)

In January 2016, DEFRA published its Hen Harrier (In)Action Plan (see here).

There are six ‘action’ points, including #6, a brood management (meddling) trial, where it is proposed to remove hen harrier eggs/chicks from driven grouse moors when breeding pairs have reached a certain density on that moor or on nearby moors, hatch and rear them in captivity, and then release them back to the uplands at fledging age.

At the time of publication, the actual details of this brood meddling scheme were very sketchy. Where would the trial take place? When would it start? Who would fund it? Who would be involved? Was it even legal, given the catastrophically low number of breeding hen harriers in England?

A working group was established to scope out the trial. Since then, very little information has reached the public domain. We learned from Amanda Anderson (Moorland Association) during the e-petition evidence session at Westminster that there were hopes brood meddling would begin during the 2017 breeding season, but that’s about all we’d heard.

Until now.

A series of FoIs have revealed what this working group has been up to.

The working group comprises various individuals and organisations: GWCT (Teresa Dent, Adam Smith), Hawk & Owl Trust (Philip Merricks, Phil Holms), Moorland Association (Amanda Anderson, Robert Benson), Natural England (Rob Cooke, Adrian Jowitt), Jemima Parry Jones (International Centre for Birds of Prey) and Steve Redpath (listed as an ‘independent academic’ although we note he has recently joined the Hawk & Owl Trust Board of Trustees).

The working group has met four times this year and has agreed on some details of the trial, and other details are still being assessed.

Here’s what we know so far:

• The brood meddling trial area has yet to be established. The Moorland Association wants all its members’ grouse moors to be included but the licence for the trial will have to comply with various legislative instruments concerning wildlife and habitat.
• Brood meddling will be triggered if the initial ‘ceiling density’ has been reached. For the purposes of this trial, the initial ceiling density is one pair of breeding hen harrier per 80 sq km or 20,000 acres, or a (straight line) distance between pairs of 10km or 6.3 miles.
• Brood meddling will begin without the need for the English hen harrier population to reach a pre-determined level. In other words, even if there are only two hen harrier breeding attempts in 2017, and at least one of those breeding attempts is on a driven grouse moor and is within 10km of the other nest (even if the other nest is on an RSPB reserve) then the eggs/chicks of that grouse moor nest will be removed. (Absurd, we know).
• Legal advice given to Natural England suggests there are no legal barriers to the brood meddling trial, despite the failed status of the hen harrier Special Protection Areas.
• Brood meddling can only take place with landowner permission, regardless of whether the site lies within the licensed trial area. In other words, hen harrier nests on, say, RSPB reserves, cannot be touched unless the RSPB says it can.
• The brood meddling trial is not dependent on the cessation of illegal persecution. So, even if the released captive bred birds (all satellite tagged) are found to have been bumped off post-release, the trial will continue for five years.
• The practical aspect of brood meddling will be undertaken by the International Centre for Birds of Prey. The Natural England licence will be in this organisation’s name.
• All hen harriers reared in captivity will be released back in to the uplands; they will not be used as the source birds for DEFRA’s proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England.
• Possible release sites (not on “prime grouse moor”) for these captive-reared birds have been suggested in Northumbria, West Pennine Moors and Wensleydale. However, the group has since realised that any proposed release sites must not only have a willing landowner, but they must also meet stringent ecological criteria. Natural England is currently assessing various potential sites.
• A social science study will run parallel with the practical brood meddling trial, to assess whether the attitudes of the grouse shooting lobby change towards hen harriers over the course of the trial. A proposal for this study has been submitted by Steve Redpath and Freya St John (Kent Uni).
• Funding options for both the practical trial and the social science study are still under discussion.

Here are the official ‘notes’ from the brood meddling working group’s four meetings this year:

draft-note-1st-bm-meeting-29-march-2016

note-of-2nd-bm-meeting-5-may-2016

note-of-3rd-bm-meeting-27-june-2016

note-of-4th-bm-meeting-29-sept-2016

Further documents from this working group provide much more detail about certain aspects of the trial, including the practicalities of brood meddling and release and its estimated costs, the proposed social science study and its estimated costs, the ecological requirements of proposed release sites, and some interesting information about the proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England. We’ll publish these in due course.

Photograph of hen harrier nest by Mark Hamblin

UPDATE 15 Nov 2016: More brood meddling revelations (here)

UPDATE 16 Nov 2016: Brood meddling: the role of the International Centre for Birds of Prey (here)