Natural England has announced its disgraceful plan to brood meddle hen harriers is due to begin imminently.
An article in today’s Guardian claims this controversial “trial” is ‘supported by conservation groups including the International Centre for Birds of Prey and the Hawk & Owl Trust‘. Of course it is! The ICBP is being paid to manage the brood meddling, and several Hawk & Owl Trust Board members are believed to be benefiting from this trial. These are hardly independent supporters!
The article fails to mention that no independent conservation organisation is supporting this “trial” because everyone recognises it as a sop to the grouse shooting industry that has been killing hen harriers for years, without sanction.
[Drawing by Gerard Hobley]
The article also includes a quote from Tony Juniper, the new Chair at Natural England:
“Conservation and protection of the hen harrier is at the heart of what we are doing in licensing this trial of brood management. This decision takes forward but one element in a far broader recovery strategy for the species.
Natural England is ready to take the next careful step, aware that the licensed activity and the research will rightly come under close scrutiny from the scientists on the advisory group, from ourselves as the licensing authority and by those both supportive of and opposed to this trial.
We, as an organisation, must pursue all options for an important bird such as the hen harrier, so that our children may enjoy this majestic species in the wild“.
How disappointing from someone who has been held in high regard by the conservation community for many many years. Conservation and protection is NOT “at the heart” of what Natural England is doing in licensing this trial – how can it be, when it knows from it’s own commissioned research that the main threat to hen harriers (illegal persecution by gamekeepers on grouse moors) will still be present when those young brood meddled harriers are released back to the wild later in the summer?
It’s our understanding that at least one of the nests under consideration for being brood meddled is on a grouse shooting estate that has a reputation for the illegal persecution of birds of prey, including an earlier conviction of at least one gamekeeper employee.
Who says crime doesn’t pay, eh?
Meanwhile, both Mark Avery and the RSPB are still waiting to hear whether their appeals against their earlier judicial review brood meddling rulings can proceed.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Shameful barely covers it! Persecution of Hen Harriers has not declined and is still apparently routine so this seems doubly pointless. An expensive way of producing harriers for certain employees within grouse shooting to kill at winter roosts. The distances used between nests is NOT based on science but grouse shooting prejudice and if we have to have this awful scheme it should be 3km. Knowing where this is going to happen/happening makes it doubly angering, I hope NE have their sums right on the distance between these nests or there will be hell to pay.
I can recall a particular member of NE staff saying if it came to this he would resign, a failure to do so ought to engender a complete loss of faith and credibility by all for this person and result in a cessation of any co-operation from those in organisations opposed to BM. This is very bad for my blood pressure it feels like criminality rewarded.!!!
Are the 2 broods supported by the same male?
No
Good question.
Sally
Does all of this mean that there are now clusters of successful hen harrier nests currently on grouse moors in Northern England?
If so I suppose we could say that this is an indicator of the pressure that has been brought to bear on this disgraceful industry. “We cannot allow hen harriers back on grouse moors” was a recent quote I think from the Moorland Assoc. Things change.
“Does all of this mean that there are now clusters of successful hen harrier nests currently on grouse moors in Northern England?” No, there are not.
While, “If so I suppose ” is not evidence based.
I thought the idea that there were clusters of Hen Harrier nests on grouse moors might be a silver lining – how disappointing now the evidence is out.
If there are not clusters on grouse moors where will they be brood meddled from – perhaps you could enlighten us.
I thought the Guardian article covered this point quite clearly – “Removing young hen harriers from nests on grouse moors is designed to prevent concentrations of the bird of prey on grouse shooting estates”.
Happy to be corrected
“”trial about the potential for brood management to be used as a conservation technique”.”
‘A conservation technique’! We are deep into the territory of a land where black means white and white means black. George Orwell was the modern Nostradamus.
Indeed, it is essentially a shameful admission by NE that they have no will to prevent persecution, its essentially an admission of failure and this is a last hope to persuade the CRIMINALS who manage grouse moors that their prejudices are being listened to and “hope” they stop killing harriers. Even if they do stop the killing, and that is a very big IF, it puts the same number of harriers into the population as if they were left alone, the only way this increases harriers is if we assume that nests not meddled with would be lost to criminality. Its a piss poor way of approaching a problem that keeps the harrier population not only way below capacity but way below a level where grouse shooting is ” Damaged.” This bird should be relatively common in the uplands yet due to the criminals that manage grouse moors in an entirely unsustainable way it is one of the rarest making the very idea of currently “managing” the population in this way morally and scientifically BANKRUPT. We expect nothing better from the DGS cabal but a government agency FFS never mind HOT and ICBP they should hang their heads in shame at the very least as their credibility at any level rushes off into the distance screaming never to be restored.
Exactly, the maths don’t add up. Who in their right mind would believe that a measure which is supposed to increase HH numbers would be acceptable to those estates, which are in fact being offered a sweetener. NE are being conned willingly or not and what to say about Tony Juniper. That didn’t take long.
The only people laughing about all this are the grousers.
Tony Juniper, Joins NE, chucks his morals and reputation out the window and becomes a complete turncoat grouse moor apologist shock horror.
When a wee while back there was quite a lot of near jubilation at Tony Juniper being selected to head Natural England I couldn’t quite share it. About 11 years ago now I was on a FoE Scotland local groups weekend and a very dedicated lady from the south of England was there too as a guest. I got talking to her and very quickly the conversation turned to Tony Juniper, she said she knew him very well…and she was NOT complimentary, which is a very polite way of putting it. I was very impressed by the lady’s knowledge and commitment and that combined with her knowing him personally made me think her opinions carried an awful lot of weight and were worth remembering. In light of what she said I’m not surprised at TJ backing brood meddling…good career move. Since that weekend I heard him on the radio talking about one of his books which argued that to save nature we had to put a price on it. An economist called into the program and tore lumps out of TJ and very indignantly said that putting a price on nature actually allowed it to be dismissed, rubbished. TJ just flanneled after that he was left with egg on his face by an economist who was genuinely interested in conservation. Not impressed with the guy, he’s certainly no Chris Packham.
Yet more crap news.
Unnatural England at it again.
In my opinion, Tony’s named after the wrong tree – it should be Cercis siliquastrum.
Bad news for our us and our wonderful hen harriers.
What exactly is this ‘trial’ supposed to be testing? It is virtually certain that hen harrier chicks can be raised in captivity so if investigating that is the objective of the trial it seems to be utterly pointless. If on the other hand the trail is supposed to test whether or not brood-meddling will reduce levels of persecution and allow hen harrier populations to increase it is impossible to see how the trail will be able to cast any useful light on this. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that this ‘trial’ is just a sop to the gun-toters in the grouse shooting industry.
It is outrageous that the Guardian article refers to the captive rearing of curlew chicks from nests established close to runways on MOD airfields as a ‘similar scheme’. This is buying into the falsehood perpetrated by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust that the Hen Harrier brood meddling proposal is equivalent to brood management schemes implemented to save montagu’s harrier chicks nesting within cereal crops on the continent, that would otherwise be at risk of being destroyed by (legitimate NOT illegal!) harvesting operations. The only relevant threat to hen harriers on moorland is illegal killing by gamekeepers and saving the hen harriers form this is best achieved by stopping the gamekeepers from breaking the law NOT by giving said gamekeepers what they want i.e. a harrier-free moor.
What a pity. Many will be deeply disappointed that Tony Juniper has failed at the first hurdle. It was probably inevitable for anyone taking on this poisoned chalice. A complete waste of time and money, any young removed will, no doubt, be targeted as soon as they are returned at a later date. The whole idea is intellectually bankrupt and brings shame on Natural England.
I suppose he didn’t really have any choice. Could he have ditched the scheme?
The only hope and it is forlorn, is that when it gores wrong he will scrap it immediately.
Surely TJ is only the chair. He can’t single handedly change a committee which has already committed to this path.
Am I right in thinking that the birds taken from the nest into captivity will be released back into the same area they were taken from ? And each bird will be sat tagged paid for by the moorland association? Just seeking clarification. Cheers
They are supposed to be released back into the same area but i wouldn’t be surprised if they stretch that definition to the limit.
Not at all surprised that he has fallen at the first hurdle !
The plus side I hope is that the inevitable slaughter of these tagged birds will be well publicised along with those that may be reintroduced for more target practice.
Keep up the pressure !
What makes you say losses will be ‘well publicised’? Tracked, yes, but publicised?
The second hurdle – the first was (and is) NE’s support of badger culling which shows no signs of waning.
With so few breeding pairs left in England this is just beyond farce
Look at this a different way…the trial will most likely never go ahead, if Mark Avery & RSPB get their appeals
Accordingly, TJ may have calculated that there was no point fighting this battle with so much else to do
So, given he was unniversally feted by conservationists when appointed, the least we can do is be patient and give him time.
I feel as strongly about this issue as anyone who commented but resorting to personal attacks in response to one apparent setback is no way to support TJ in what must be a difficult, political minefield.
Totally agree, no need to make a knee jerk reaction. TJ could hardly ride in and single handedly overturn NE’s crackpot scheme. Let’s hope there’s an intelligent approach being taken which will ultimately bring the right result.
But he could have been much more cautious in his wording. he could have used it as a platform against raptor persecution. Sorry not impressed at all. But i am not totally giving up on him. Only in the high 90%
Not to mention this is something that’s been around long before TJ came along, it may just be he’s taken over at an awkward time. Like the general licence issue when he started his job at around the same time, and wrongly got the blame in some of the media. Only time will tell.
I’ve not seen many ‘personal attacks’ on Tony. But, if you’re correct, Tony would also expect – welcome – the criticism, and secretly agree. I find it strange that Tony chose to compare hen harrier brood removal with sea eagle reintroduction to the Isle of Wight. I’m surprised he agreed with shooting interests by expressing surprise that conservation folks use ‘head starting’ for, for example, godwits, but criticise its use for HH. Does Tony not know the difference between Ends and Means objectives? Ends matter. A given ‘Means’ (such as head-starting) can be deployed to ill, as well as good, effect, depending on the effect (Ends) you’re hoping for. And I was frankly astonished when Tony asserted that no-one has proposed any ‘alternatives’ to brood removal, ignoring debates about de-intensifying DGM management, licensing, a ban, a sequential approach to mitigation (i.e. try diversionary feeding and then, if it’s shown that that’s not working at a given site, present a case at that site for brood removal). And Tony fails to appreciate that brood removal solidifies the position of intensive management for high grouse yields, a practice that brings so many other adverse effects I’d have to write a book to do justice to the list.
If brood removal ‘trial’ succeeds, it will be rolled out across intensive driven grouse moors (otherwise what’s the point?). This one move has the potential to affect a huge land area across the English uplands. Tony should have seen this bigger picture and the widespread impact it could have.
He wasn’t universally feted though, and going through with a charade because you believe it will be scuppered anyway, if that’s what’s happening, is not taking us forward, is a waste of time and money and in itself a diversion from the real issues. If something as critically flawed and ludicrous as brood meddling can’t be rejected for the piece of crap it is what exactly is the point of TJ or NE for that matter?
The most interesting aspect of brood management is that it (unwittingly) demonstrates the limits of Natural England’s ambition for Hen Harrier recovery. We know from the science that the English uplands should support around 300 pairs of Hen Harrier. Yet imagine how unworkable brood management would be if the population were left alone to recover to this level. It would involve the collection and rearing in captivity of many hundreds of young harriers, years after year after year, at unimaginable expense. And once the uplands support 300 pairs, where on earth would you release all these young birds?
More realistically, for brood management to work, the aspiration must be to allow a small increase in the population to, say, 30-40 pairs and then prevent any further increase through continued illegal persecution. Then brood management could continue year on year without becoming unworkable. Those involved would try to portray this as a success because it is an increase on what we have now, even though it is still only 10% of what should be present.
So, the concession of brood management has been hard won by persistent, organised crime over many years. And, even more importantly, it will need to rely of the continuation of organised crime in order to form a useful and workable approach in future. If anyone doubts this then they need to explain how brood management would work when harriers make a full recovery to the levels that the best scientific models predict. If Hen Harriers were truly left alone, as proponents of this approach argue will now happen, then it wouldn’t take very long for a population of 300 pairs to be reached. So asking how brood management would work at this population level is not an unreasonable question at the start of this trial. It would be interesting to get an answer.
If you read the Judge’s summing up, you will find that the first intention behind the meddling experiment is not to increase the number of hen harriers, it is to reduce the number killed by land owners and managers.
To quote the Summing Up,
“the application was for a trial to obtain evidence about the effectiveness of brood management of hen harriers affected by illegal persecution” . . . “The main aims of the trial were to investigate the effect of brood management on the perceptions and behaviour of the moorland community” . . . “the hypothesis being tested was that by reducing the conflict between harriers and grouse moor management during the chick provisioning period, breeding productivity would increase and non-breeding mortality would decrease as a consequence of a cessation in illegal persecution.”
The “hypothesis” is that during the breeding season, hen harriers won’t be on grouse moors to be shot and might not be shot outside the breading season.
However, as the Judge also wrote,
“It was common ground at the hearing before me that the main threat to the conservation of hen harriers is unlawful persecution by those associated with the grouse moor industry.”
Broad meddling will not succeed because, in or out of the breeding the season, land owners and managers are addicted to killing anything that moves.
A link is on this site for the 15 March 2019 or see https://raptorpersecutionscotland.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/hh-brood-meddling-judgement_march2019.pdf
‘breeding productivity would increase and non-breeding mortality would decrease ‘
That is an increase in HH numbers given unchanging persecution.
Of course if the scheme had any success at all it would almost certainly result in more Hen Harriers being shot to keep the numbers constant i.e. as close to zero as possible.
That is what would happen if there was a lowland introduction scheme or if Scotland somehow stopped persecution. English DGMs would just kill more.
Incredibly well put. As Mark’s lawyers saw straight away and it is astonishing that everyone else can’t see it, it takes crime as a starting point (and as you have pointed out an end point.)
You have to have blinkers on not to see this, wilful blindness.
What happens if they proceed with the removal of chicks and the legal challenge is reinstated?
Dave, the likelihood is that the chicks are about to be or already have been removed.
It’s also good to remember the utter rubbish that comes out from some in the shooting industry about satellite tagging supposedly harming the birds, and how it’s awful that people have to go to the nest briefly to ring and tag chicks. You even see that sentiment on those “moorland group” facebook pages, and RP has reported examples in the past, like that eagle nest a few years ago when lies about the nest site and satellite tagging spread on social media.
Funny that in their eyes, visiting a nest under licence to ring and satellite tag chicks is too much interference, but actually removing an entire nest for the duration of the breeding season to rear them in captivity is perfectly fine and reasonable. You couldn’t make it up.
Shame Shame Shame as they said in game of thrones Shame Shame (Tony Juniper)
Brood Management also perpetuates what one might call the “Langholm Myth.” That harriers are colonial, they are not and even if allowed to set their own density levels they generally get no more numerous in an area than Merlin or Short-eared Owls. Of course the likes of the Moorland Association, GWCT and the CA talk of colonies in order to justify both this dreadful scheme and the persecution.
The other myth perpetuated by both the scheme and these disingenuous representatives of the dark side is that Hen Harriers are “Grouse Specialists.” They quite clearly are not, many nest in areas where there are few if any Red Grouse, even on grouse moors almost all pairs take mainly voles, pipit sized birds, other small mammals up to the size of a young rabbit, reptiles and yes a few wader and grouse chicks. Figures( Grouse densities) suggest that most moors could support pairs at much higher density than this schemes ludicrously low 1 pair per 314sq km, easily 2 pairs per 10 sq km without any measurable difference made to grouse numbers.
Not only will this scheme fail to give us a natural Hen Harrier population as Ian Carter points out but also helps to promote and maintain the anti harrier prejudices of the grouse cabal too!
2 pairs per 100km is their definition of colony.
Can we brood error the gamekeepers ( and release them back into the wild on an inhospitable rock in the middle of the Atlantic)?
Meddle not error ( stupid autocorrect)