Month: December 2017

Clive Aslet is a former Editor of Country Life magazine who boasts of being ‘an acknowledged leading authority on Britain and its way of life‘, whatever that means.

One thing’s for sure, Mr Aslet is no leading authority on the principles of ecology.

He wrote a bizarre comment piece for The Times, published last week in response to DEFRA’s new (not new) raptor persecution maps, as follows:

BIRDS OF PREY NEED PROTECTION FROM HUMAN PREDATORS

The protection of raptors, such as hawks, eagles, buzzards and falcons, is one of the great success stories of the British countryside. When JA Baker wrote his classic The Peregrine fifty years ago, many species were in long-term decline, thanks largely to insecticides used in intensive agriculture and the severe winters of the early 1960s. Numbers have risen sharply since DTT and its like were banned, and raptors were given legal protection. Peregrines now even nest on London skyscrapers.

There have been successful reintroductions, such as that of the red kite: it’s common to see a dozen of these enormous birds now circling over the M40 in Oxfordshire. But successes like these worry country people who know that having too many large carnivores at the top of the food chain means that other species will suffer. Red kites are scavengers (hence their preference for roads, which provide a ready supply of carcasses) but when carrion becomes scarce they turn to living prey.

Grouse moors are a special problem. For the moor owner, grouse are a valuable crop. The bird provides a livelihood to the keepers who control predators such as foxes, stoats and rats that prey on eggs and chicks. Vermin control also allows wading birds like plovers, lapwings and curlews to nest in safety: it’s a wonderful thing to visit a moor teeming with wading birds as well as grouse, whether or not you plan to shoot any of them. But as a report published today shows, many keepers trap or kill hen harriers and sparrow hawks that threaten the viability of the shoot. They deserve to be prosecuted.

At last, landowners are getting the message that this behaviour is unacceptable, and are making greater efforts to conserve raptors. The prospect of the law in Scotland, which targets landowners as well as keepers, being introduced in England has concentrated minds. As has the possibility of a Labour government banning shooting altogether and making grouse moors worthless.

But there remains, as in many areas of conservation, a geographical imbalance. Some areas have too many raptors, others none at all. Exmoor, for example, has no hen harriers; before long, given the male bird’s promiscuity, the Yorkshire Dales could have too many.

Relocating broods from overpopulated areas to underpopulated ones is the answer — opposed, sadly, by the RSPB. Brexit offers a way out of this problem. Freed from the need for a one-size-fits-all approach, we can create the flexible conservation policy our birds of prey deserve.

ENDS

Leaving aside his obvious failure to grasp the simple conventions of predator/prey relationships (we can’t be bothered to turn this in to a lesson on the basics of ecology), we wanted to focus on just the last three paragraphs of his article.

Aslet seems to be muddled about brood meddling. He argues that “Relocating broods from overpopulated areas to underpopulated ones is the answer“. But that’s not what DEFRA’s hen harrier brood meddling is about. It might well be what the grouse shooting industry thought it was about, and wanted it to be about, when they first signed up for it – ‘Yeah, great, let’s get rid of hen harriers from our grouse moors and ship them off down to southern England so they can’t interfere with our shooting days in the northern uplands’, but as we now know, any hen harrier chicks removed from grouse moors and raised in captivity as part of DEFRA’s absurd brood meddling plan, will HAVE to be released back in to the uplands close to where they were first removed, and their release will coincide with the start of the grouse-shooting season. They cannot be used as the source birds for DEFRA’s equally absurd southern England reintroduction plan.

As for Aslet’s claim that “before long, given the male bird’s promiscuity, the Yorkshire Dales could have too many” [hen harriers], chance would be a fine thing! According to this report, there were only three successful hen harrier breeding attempts in the Yorkshire Dales National Park between 2000-2007, and since then, there haven’t been any!

Aslet also claims, “At last, landowners are getting the message that this behaviour is unacceptable, and are making greater efforts to conserve raptors“. Really? Some landowners are, for sure, but how many of those landowners manage driven grouse moors? It’s all very well saying that raptor persecution is unacceptable and pretending to be on board, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. There were only three successful hen harrier breeding attempts in the whole of England this year, and for the second year in a row, not one of those was on a driven grouse moor.

While Natural England is busily keeping secret its plans for hen harrier brood meddling, unbelievably it has funded a new ‘study’ to find out what members of the public think about the Hen Harrier Action Plan!

Some of you may have received an email recently from an academic researcher asking you to fill in an online questionnaire, which is part of a ‘study’ that aims to “understand the different perceptions of hen harriers and examine support for the different measures proposed by DEFRA to recover the hen harrier population“.

The ‘study’ is being undertaken by the Universities of Bangor and Aberdeen, and is “funded by Natural England“. What this actually means is that you, the British taxpayer, has funded it.

We don’t know how much public money has been wasted on this pointless study, but a similar study proposed by researchers at the Universities of Aberdeen and Kent (to guage the opinions of grouse moor owners) was estimated to cost in the region of £50,000 (see here).

It’s kind of hard to see how public opinion of the Hen Harrier Action Plan will be of any genuine research value given that much of the detail about the six action points in this Hen Harrier Action Plan has so far been kept secret!

The questionnaire targets a certain sector of society and the cover letter says, “You have been chosen as a respondent because you are a member of an organisation with an interest in birds in England“. The survey’s question 2 gives an indication about which organisations have been invited to participate:

Many of the questions relate to the respondents’ views on each of the six action points listed in the Hen Harrier Action Plan, such as this one:

It’s a ridiculous question to ask because although in principle the first four of these measures could (and should) increase the number of hen harriers in England, they clearly haven’t worked even though most of the measures have been undertaken for years! For example:

Monitoring (“currently in operation“) hasn’t increased the hen harrier population.

Diversionary feeding (“currently in operation“) hasn’t increased the hen harrier population (and has yet to even be put in to practice by any grouse moor manager in England – see here).

Improving intelligence information and enforcement (“currently in operation“) hasn’t increased the hen harrier population (which is hardly a suprise when you realise that this particular measure is supposedly being led by the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group [RPPDG] – the group that has taken years to produce out of date and inaccurate raptor persecution maps).

Nest and winter roost protection (“currently in operation“) hasn’t increased the hen harrier population.

Here’s another ridiculous question:

Again, none of the first four measures, which have been in operation for years, has resulted in the reduction of illegal hen harrier persecution.

It’s impossible to say whether brood meddling and the southern England reintroduction will reduce illegal killing because we haven’t yet been allowed to see detailed proposals for these two measures.

However, some questions are easier to answer:

We’re not publishing a link to the online questionnaire because undoubtedly it’ll be hijacked by those with a vested interest in making it look like the Hen Harrier Action Plan has widespread public support. Indeed, the questionnaire may already have been hijacked – the respondent is not required to provide any evidence of their identity, but only to indicate from which organisation they received the questionnaire. This will enable false claims that the respondent got the questionnaire from the RSPB or from the Northern England Raptor Forum (two groups that fundamentally oppose the Hen Harrier Action Plan), and thus their views that the Hen Harrier Action Plan is a brilliant thing will be falsely portrayed in the results as coming from members of these two organisations.

What a waste of public funds.

Natural England continues its tirade of a lack of transparency and public accountability in relation to the Hen Harrier Action Plan.

As regular blog readers will know, we’ve spent over a year trying to get details about the most controversial part of the HH Action Plan – the brood meddling scheme. Natural England has point blank refused almost every single FoI request we’ve submitted on this subject, citing concerns about how publication might ‘prejudice’ the on-going licence application for brood meddling (from Natural England, to, er Natural England).

We did, however, manage to get something out of Natural England in late November 2017 – we blogged about it here.

Part of what we learned was that the Brood Meddling Team (including representatives from GWCT, Hawk & Owl Trust, Moorland Association, Natural England, International Centre for Birds of Prey, and Aberdeen University) had held a meeting in June 2017 to discuss the draft Hen Harrier Brood Management Plan.

Naturally, we were keen to see this draft Brood Meddling Plan so we asked Natural England for a copy.

True to form, Natural England has refused:

In many respects Natural England’s refusal to be upfront about anything to do with hen harriers will not come as a surprise to anybody. However, we were surprised at this particular refusal given that the draft brief for the proposed reintroduction of hen harriers to southern England HAS been released after several FoI attempts (see here).

Hmm. What is in the Brood Meddling Plan that Natural England doesn’t want anyone to see?

Silly old us, eh? Wanting to see how Natural England is abusing our taxes to remove hen harriers from grouse moors.

We won’t have to wait long to find out. Natural England has previously told us that the brood meddling licence application, that has been under consideration for about 9 months, should be completed “by the end of the year”. Assuming the licence is approved, Natural England will have to release it, and the associated brood meddling plan, for public scrutiny.

Yesterday evening saw a Members Debate in the Scottish Parliament as a result of MSP Mairi Gougeon’s recent motion in support of the Heads Up for Harriers Project and the Role of Species Champions.

The archive video of this debate can be watched here and the official report of the meeting can be read here:

Heads up for Harriers debate 13Dec2017

The debate centred on two topics: the role of the species champions and the Heads Up for Harriers Project (HuHP). For the purpose of this blog, we’ll just be focusing on the HuHP – that’s not to say the role of the species champion isn’t important – as we’ve blogged before, it’s an incredibly worthwhile initiative and one that we very much support. We are especially pleased that Mairi Gougeon used her position as the Hen Harrier Species Champion to secure this debate – all credit to her, well done.

A number of MSPs spoke specifically about the HuHP and all except one acknowledged that illegal persecution continues to be a threat to the hen harrier and to several other raptor species. The only one who didn’t acknowledge this fact was John Scott MSP (Conservative), who gave a bizarre speech about the lack of fox and “vermin” control on FCS land and suggested that this played a part in the decline of the hen harrier population. He obviously hasn’t been told that just across the Scottish border at Kielder, the ONLY successful breeding pairs (x 3) of hen harriers in England this year were on, er, FC land.

He went on to say, “Notwithstanding the alleged predation of hen harriers by land managers, I still believe that the safest place for hen harriers to raise chicks is on well-managed grouse moors“.  Dear God.

John Scott’s parliamentary colleague Donald Cameron (Conservative) (and the Species Champion for the Merlin) was far better informed, although he did say, “There has been much criticism of people in the grouse industry who actively persecute birds of prey. I think that we all acknowledge that grouse shooting is an important industry for the rural economy of our country. The vast majority of land managers, whether they are owners or employees, use sustainable environmental management practices to a high standard and operate within the law. It is important to note that many estates carry out measures to conserve and preserve raptor populations“.

We agree that some estates do “employ sustainable environmental management practices to a high standard and operate within the law“. We heaped praise on one of them quite recently (see here). But it’s quite clear from the scientific data on several raptor species (e.g. hen harrier, golden eagle, peregrine, red kite) that there are still a large number of estates that do NOT operate within the law, and those landholdings just happen to coincide with areas intensively managed as driven grouse moors.

We’re not talking about the odd nest failure here and there due to predation or poor weather – these are natural causes of failure that you’d expect from time to time, and everybody acknowledges this. What we’re talking about here is the persistent, long-term absence of these species in areas where they should be, and would be, thriving if they weren’t being routinely and systematically persecuted.

The speeches of two Parliamentary members were the most interesting to us – those given by Andy Wightman MSP (Scottish Greens) and Liam McArthur MSP (Lib Dem). You really do need to read them (and/or watch the video). Both of them pointed out that the HuHP does not address the fundamental issue of tackling illegal persecution because none of the participating estates that have had cameras deployed are known raptor persecution hotspots, nor are they operated as intensively managed driven grouse moors. Andy Wightman went further and said,

“Indeed, I believe that the project is being used as a greenwashing exercise to hide the criminal activities that are undertaken by some in the driven grouse shooting industry and to promote the misleading impression that it is voluntarily cooperating to clean up its act“.

Bravo!

The claim that many of the estates with nest cameras on them are managed as driven grouse moors is an interesting one, and, we believe, is untrue.

According to the briefing paper from Scottish Land & Estates (SLE), provided to MSPs prior to the debate:

“Up to two thirds of the estates where cameras were installed have been driven grouse moors, indicating a strong take-up where the issue of Hen Harrier decline is most relevant“.

See SLE’s briefing paper here: SLE briefing Heads Up for Harriers debate_13Dec2017

Why do we believe this statement to be untrue? Well, we could argue that any information from SLE on raptor conservation issues is quite likely to be misleading. We’ve seen many examples of outright propaganda from this organisation over the years (under it’s own name and also under the name of its subgroups, the Scottish Moorland Group and the Gift of Grouse), e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and as a result we don’t trust a word they say.

But in this case our suspicion is based on more than just a natural distrust of SLE; it’s based on some long-term and painstaking investigative research that we’ve been doing to identify the estates involved in this Heads Up for Harriers Project.

We are confident that we’ve identified the three estates that had cameras deployed in 2015, the three estates that had cameras deployed in 2016, and five of the six or seven estates (there seems to be uncertainty about the actual number) that had cameras deployed in 2017. We are also confident that NOT ONE of these areas where the actual cameras were deployed is a known raptor persecution hotspot and we questions how many of them are actually managed for driven grouse shooting.

But before we can publish our findings, we need to verify our conclusions. So we submitted an FoI request to SNH and this is what we got back:

FoI request to SNH: In each year, how many estates had successful nests and of those, how many estates were managed for driven grouse shooting?

SNH response: 2015 – 2 estates with successful nests, 2 of which were driven grouse moor. 1 additional successful nest 100m off the estate boundary of a driven grouse moor.

2016 – 3 estates with successful nests, 2 of which were driven grouse moor.

2017 – 6 estates with successful nests, 3 of which were driven grouse moor.

FoI request to SNH: Please provide the name of each estate, in each year, that signed up to participate.

SNH response: We have considered this part of your request very carefully, and we are unable to provide the estate names. Estates enter into the Heads Up For Harriers project voluntarily. The estate name information in this case was provided voluntarily, there are no other circumstances that entitle SNH to disclose it, and the estates have not consented to disclosure. Making the information publicly available would be likely to prejudice the interests of the estates, for example via negative publicity in the event of harriers not nesting on the estate or in the event of nest/s failing on the estate. We are therefore withholding the estate name details under EIRs Regulation 10(5)(f) (Interests of the individual providing the information).

The Heads Up for Harriers project members’ position is that estate wishes must be respected. Further, members agree the most important aspect of the project is to encourage cooperation and a positive working relationship ‘on the ground’ between estates, Project Officers and other project members to promote survival of hen harriers and enable monitoring if and when hen harriers return to breed. We have therefore concluded that, in this case, the public interest is best served by not releasing the estate names.

Interesting, isn’t it? As Andy Wightman pointed out in his speech, this is a publicy funded project and yet the names of the participating estates are being kept secret. Why is that, do you think?

Given the serious nature of our concern that inaccurate and misleading information is being spewed out, not only by SLE but significantly by SNH, to portray this project as a genuine attempt by the driven grouse shooting industry to support hen harriers, we’ll be challenging SNH about its refusal to release information that would either support or refute our suspicions that the Heads Up for Harriers Project is just a greenwashing exercise.

Watch this space.