Fantastic news!
Mark Avery is going back to the Royal Courts of Justice in London after being given permission by the Appeal Court to challenge an earlier court decision that hen harrier brood meddling is legal.
[Back to the High Court for Mark and his brilliant legal team. Photo by Ruth Tingay]
The RSPB has also been given permission to appeal.
As Mark explains on his blog today (here), details of the exact grounds for an appeal have not yet been given, nor has a court date, although according to this public notice record it should be before 6th July 2020!
I wonder how many more brood meddled hen harrier chicks will have vanished in suspicious circumstances by then? Two of them disappeared within weeks of being released from captivity back in to the uplands this year: one on a grouse moor in County Durham on 9th Sept (here) and one ten days later on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park on 19 Sept (here).
We don’t know what’s happened to either of them, although an informed and educated guess would suggest they’ve both been illegally killed, exposing the sheer stupidity and futility of the brood meddling scheme.
Well done Mark and the RSPB for continuing the fight.
Raptor Persecution UK 
That is wonderful news.
Good luck Mark , I run a FB group (mainly osprey but all wildlife) and just posted this in a file and see so far this year have posted 328 blogs etc to do with Raptor Persecution etc :( I looked back at the 2018 file and it was 451 for the year , just awful
Great news! Good luck Mark – let us know if you need a crowdfund!
How many hen harrier chicks were brood meddled? I thought there were 5?
Good Luck to all involved .