Month: January 2017

Last spring, a satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Highlander’ joined the ranks of the ‘missing’ as her sat tag suddenly stopped transmitting over a grouse moor in Co Durham (see here).

When you consider the extraordinarily high disappearance rate of young, tagged hen harriers (78.7% as of 2014) and the absence of breeding hen harriers on almost every driven grouse moor in the country, it wasn’t unreasonable to conclude that she’d been illegally killed.

But in Highlander’s case, she just may be the one who got away and against all the odds, survived past her second birthday. According to the RSPB’s Skydancer blog (see here), Highlander may still be alive and the cause of her ‘disappearance’ is likely to have been a satellite tag technical failure.

Predictably, the usual suspects from within the grouse shooting industry have already taken to social media to use today’s news as an opportunity to pretend that hen harriers are not routinely killed on grouse moors but that the many hen harriers that have been reported as ‘missing’ over the last ten years have suffered from satellite tag technical faults. That may be plausible for one or two ‘missing’ birds, but unfortunately for the grouse shooting propagandists, these technical failures don’t happen very often, and nor do sat tag technical failures explain the absence of breeding hen harriers on most driven grouse moors.

We know from a study of Montagu’s harriers, fitted with exactly the same type of tag as the UK hen harriers, that technical failures amount to just 6% (n = 67 tagged birds). Highlander’s failed tag is the first technical failure the RSPB has recorded (n = 23 tagged birds) so this failure rate is well within the expected range.

Satellite tag failure rates will be further scrutinised in the forthcoming review of satellite tag data from hen harriers, golden eagles and red kites in Scotland, which is expected to be completed by March. We know the grouse shooting industry is extremely twitchy about this review because they know as well as we do what the results are likely to show, and it won’t be good news for them. So it’s unsurprising that they’ll use every opportunity presented in the run up to that report being published to discredit the data, discredit the researchers who fit the tags, and discredit the tag-fitting techniques. Interestingly, you don’t see them trying to discredit the data, researchers or techniques associated with the satellite-tracking of woodcock (GWCT) or cuckoos (BTO) – it’s only the upland raptors. Funny that.

Photograph of Highlander (right) and her sister Sky being satellite tagged at their nest in Bowland in 2014 (photo by Mick Demain).

As part of DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan, we know that a ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers is planned for southern England.

We know that a (flawed) feasibility study funded by Natural England had identified two main areas of interest: Wiltshire and Exmoor (see here). We discussed the bonkers plan for Exmoor a few days ago (here). This blog is all about the proposed reintroduction of hen harriers to Wiltshire.

In May 2016, the Reintroduction project team discussed their early communications with stakeholders in potential reintroduction areas in Wiltshire. The following notes were recorded:

‘TD [Teresa Dent, GWCT] has had some early conversations with people likely to be helpful/key in helping communicate the proposals in southern England in particular [redacted] who is closely involved in the Marlborough Downs NIA [Nature Improvement Area] and has an application in for the Facilitation Fund to develop a farmer cluster in the Salisbury Plain area. There may already be an opportunity to raise the subject of the reintroduction via a raptor group meeting associated with the NIA in September‘.

Here’s a general map of the area:

In July 2016 the Reintroduction project team was updated with this:

‘AJ [Adrian Jowitt, Natural England] and Stephen Murphy [Natural England] down to talk to a group of farmers in early October but will try to make some further proactive engagement with key people before then‘.

In October 2016, the Reintroduction project team was updated with this:

‘A meeting proposed for the Marlborough Downs was cancelled due to fears that it would prove unproductive due to concerns raised by some of the shoots in the area.

A meeting was held with the MoD at Salisbury Plain which was positive; they are happy to continue to work with us.

AJ [Adrian Jowitt] and [redacted] meet with the “Delta Group”; a group of MoD tenants who farm around the Plain. Although poorly attended the proposals were positively received. The farmers there are already use [sic] to Montagues [sic] Harriers. There was acknowledgement that there were some shooting interests, not present, who may have concerns and it was agreed to try and have 1-2-1 meetings with those land managers. Further AJ will look to attend the Delta Group’s AGM so that farmers could discuss the proposals with him there‘.

An action point from this October meeting was: ‘CP [Christopher Price, CLA] to have some 1-2-1 conversations with CLA members involved in the proposed reintroduction areas‘.

We were fascinated to read about the lack of support from shooting interests in the Marlborough Downs area. This area is pretty close to Salisbury Plain (the apparently favoured reintroduction area) – a distance of approx 11.5km. Do you think the IUCN guidelines would be met if hen harriers were released on Salisbury Plain, in full knowledge that known hostile shoots are in such close proximity? Seems pretty doubtful to us.

As part of DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan, we know that a ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers is planned for southern England.

We know that a (flawed) feasibility study funded by Natural England had identified two main areas of interest: Wiltshire and Exmoor (see here). We’ll discuss Wiltshire in a separate blog. This blog is all about the proposed reintroduction of Hen Harriers to Exmoor National Park.

We’ve gleaned the following information from a series of FoIs:

At a Hen Harrier reintroduction project team meeting in July 2016, Adrian Jowitt (from Natural England) reported to the group that he had started conversations with Exmoor National Park Authority (ENPA), the Greater Exmoor Shoot Association (GESA), the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the National Trust (NT). Adrian told the project team that he had a further meeting planned in September but that so far ‘generally feedback has been positive although some concerns about what was in a project of this kind for the land managers, and worries over potential to have to change land management practices in the future should the birds become established. National Trust very positive at both a national and local level. It was agreed that we should invite NT to join this group‘.

The following month (10 August 2016) a ‘Hen Harrier’ meeting was held between Natural England, GESA, Exmoor National Park Authority and an unnamed consultant. What happened at this meeting is simply unbelievable.

Here are the notes from that meeting: brief-note-of-hen-harrier-meeting-aug-10_redacted

The meeting participants felt that ‘it would not be easy to reintroduce hen harriers‘ (although the rationale behind this view wasn’t given) ‘but not impossible‘.

According to the notes from this meeting, ‘the group’s main concern was around sufficient food supplies. Harriers had attempted to nest in recent years but not settled. Lack of food may have been an issue. GESA was keen to trial the reintroduction of red grouse to help secure a reliable food supply. This could have the added benefit of encouraging heathland management‘.

What a brilliant idea. Introduce some red grouse (on the pretence that reintroduced hen harriers will starve without them) and thus pave the way for the development of driven grouse shooting in Exmoor National Park. Yep, that’ll work a treat because everyone knows how well hen harriers do on driven grouse moors. It’s not like there’s ever been a conflict of interest between grouse moor managers and hen harriers. It’s not like grouse moor managers have ever killed so many hen harriers that the HH breeding population is on the point of extinction in England.

WTAF?!

Later on in this meeting, it was decided that rather than just focus solely on hen harriers, the project should be seen as ‘bringing moorland birds back to Exmoor – e.g. red (and potentially) black grouse, merlin, ring ouzel etc as well as hen harrier‘.

It was agreed that this idea would be discussed further at GESA’s annual meeting at the end of August. And it was. Here is the agenda for that GESA meeting: greater-exmoor-game-shoots-draft-agenda-aug-31_redacted

We don’t know exactly what was said at that GESA annual meeting at the end of August but we know a little bit. Adrian Jowitt reported back to the HH reintroduction project team in October 2016 and this is what was recorded in the meeting notes:

‘ AJ and [redacted] attended a meeting with Exmoor National Park and GESA. A number of views were expressed, some very positive but one, from the shooting perspective, clearly against the idea of reintroduction. The fears raised were that a reintroduction would lead to increased scrutiny of their legal activities and if the project was unsuccessful the shoots would be blamed. They did not see Harriers as being a direct issue for the shoots‘.

Increased scrutiny of legal activities, eh? What a shocker. Although not a shocker when you start to look at some of the names involved with shoots on Exmoor….some of those names are quite familiar to us and have strong connections to certain grouse moors in northern England and Scotland. It’s no surprise that those individuals would not want increased scrutiny on Exmoor if their activities in the northern uplands are a measure of their attitude to the law.

So what next for the bonkers proposal for Exmoor National Park? Well, it looks like they’re still going for it. Here is some email correspondence from Sept 2016 between Adrian Jowitt and Sarah Bryan of Exmoor National Park Authority (she was Head of Conservation & Access at ENPA at the time these emails were written, but she’s recently been promoted to Chief Exec of ENPA): email-correspondence-sarah-bryan_adrian-jowitt-re-moorland-bird-project-exmoor

An FoI has been submitted to ENPA to find out more details about the planned ‘moorland bird project’.

Yesterday we blogged (here) about the HH southern England ‘reintroduction’ project team and the proposed project timeline.

That project timeline, which was drafted in May 2016, made it clear that a funding bid was going to be made to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). However, more recent documentation, released under FoI, suggests that an HLF bid may be trickier than the project team had first thought.

We know the project team was discussing a bid to the HLF right from the start. At a project team meeting in May 2016, Jeff Knott (RSPB) reported to the group that as far as the RSPB was concerned, there were no issues with the project team pursuing a separate LIFE bid for the southern reintroduction, but that extending the scope of the RSPB’s current HH LIFE project, or developing some other formal engagement between the two projects, was not possible.

In July 2016, Adrian Jowitt (Natural England) said that an HLF bid was the “preferred funding route”. However, by that time he’d also had discussions with Natural England’s external funding team to seek advice about the specific process and timescale needed for an HLF bid. He shared a document with the project team, summarising these discussions. That document can be downloaded here: natural-england-advice-on-hlf-application

This document provides the suggested timeline for an HLF bid, but what’s of more interest are the notes to the project team at the bottom of the document. Here’s what those notes say:

“Because hen harriers are such a controversial subject HLF will be very wary of this bid. We will need to provide clear evidence that there is strong support from stakeholders for the project.”

AND

“Our estimates of project cost [£500k] have so far focused on the ecological/practical elements. We need to consider the costs associated with the public engagement elements of the project – these may be quite considerable. Advice from the EF [external funding] team is that the total costs will be in excess of £2 million“.

Now, we know from the FoI material we’ve got, that there is mixed support for the project from various landowners / shoot managers in Wiltshire and Exmoor. It definitely can’t be described as being ‘strong support’ (more on that in another blog). Although, bear in mind that we are working from ‘old’ material – our FoI request covered documents from January 2016 to 28 November 2016. Things may well have moved on since then – we’ve submitted more FoI requests which may reveal that more landowners have since been talked around. We’ll see.

Anyway, back to the FoI material we do have – at a project team meeting in October 2016, the issue of funding was raised again. It would appear from what was discussed at that meeting that an HLF bid may no longer be the “preferred funding route”, perhaps because of the lack of support from certain landowners / shooters. Here’s what was said at that project team meeting in October:

‘A number of potential funding routes were discussed, including the possibility that some conservation trusts may be interested in funding this work. We agreed to postpone the decision on which funding route to pursue until the informal consultations were over and we had been able to fully gage the level of support‘.

As of November 2016, the likely success of an HLF bid looks decidedly ropey. We’ll see in due course if an HLF bid is still on the cards and if it is, many of us will be making contact with the HLF and asking the sort of questions that Mark Avery has suggested we ask (see his blog on this subject here).

Last week we blogged about the proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England (here), part of DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan.

In that blog we focused on the unpublished feasibility/scoping report that was being used to justify the project, and we highlighted various concerns about the scientific robustness of that report.

In this blog we’re discussing who’s in the project group and that group’s proposed timeline for project completion.

So, who’s in the project group? Through a series of FoIs, the following individuals/organisations have been identified:

Rob Cooke (Chair) from Natural England

Adrian Jowitt, Natural England

Ian Carter, Natural England (although Ian has since left NE and it looks like Richard Saunders has replaced him in this group)

Phillip Merricks, Hawk & Owl Trust

Jemima Parry-Jones, listed as both Hawk & Owl Trust and International Centre for Birds of Prey

Steve Redpath, Aberdeen University

Teresa Dent, GWCT

Jeff Knott, RSPB (although the RSPB withdrew support for DEFRA’s Inaction Plan in July 2016 so presumably Jeff is no longer involved with this group)

Christopher Price, Country Land & Business Assocation (CLA)

Alex Raeder, National Trust (was invited to join the group in September 2016)

In May 2016, the group produced a draft timeline for the reintroduction project. Here it is:

If you’re struggling to read the small font size, here is the draft timeline as a downloadable PDF: draft-hh-southern-reintro-timeline

As you can see, there’s a long way to go before any hen harriers might be released in southern England (first releases planned for 2020) and there are numerous hurdles for the project group to jump over before those releases can happen. The group has to identify suitable release sites, find some birds from donor countries, get local stakeholder support for this ‘reintroduction’, meet IUCN guidelines, and find some funding.

We’ll shortly be blogging about each of these topics, and some of what we’ve discovered through FoIs will blow your minds. Watch this space.