Two days ago we blogged that at least 44 hen harriers were ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances or had been confirmed illegally killed since 2018 (see here).
Today the list is updated to 45 hen harriers, ‘missing’ or confirmed illegally killed since 2018.
Here’s the blog we’ll publish every time this list is updated:
It’s getting to that time of year when the grouse shooting industry pumps out its patently misleading propaganda relating to hen harrier conservation in the UK. The aim is to hoodwink the public in to believing that the industry loves hen harriers and is doing all it can to protect and nurture the tiny remnant breeding population (but conveniently forgetting to mention that the breeding population is only in such dire straits because the grouse shooting industry has been ruthless in its maniacal intolerance of this supposedly protected species).
And the industry’s pursuit of the hen harrier is not simply ‘historical’ or indicative of past behaviour, as some would have us believe. It is on-going, it is current, and it is relentless.
[This male hen harrier died in 2019 after his leg was almost severed in an illegally set trap that had been placed next to his nest on a Scottish grouse moor (see here). Photo by Ruth Tingay]
To illustrate this fact, we intend to keep a running tally of all the hen harriers that we know (because most of these victims had been fitted with a satellite tag) to have either ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed as being illegally killed since 2018.
Why only since 2018 when we know that hen harriers have been a persecution target for years and years and years? Well, 2018 is the year that the grouse shooting industry ‘leaders’ would have us believe that the criminal persecution of hen harriers had stopped and that these birds were being welcomed back on to the UK’s grouse moors (see here).
This assertion was made shortly before the publication of a devastating new scientific paper that demonstrated that 72% of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses (see here).
We only started compiling this list of dead / missing hen harriers in June 2020 when we learned that all five of last year’s brood meddled hen harrier chicks were ‘missing’, presumed dead (see here). It has since been updated a few times as we learned about more satellite-tagged hen harriers that had vanished during lockdown in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in the Cairnorms National Park (here), on a notorious grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (see here) and on a grouse moor believed to be involved with the brood meddling in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
It’s now time to update the death list again, as we’ve learned of yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier that ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, this time a bird called Fingal who vanished from a grouse moor in the Lowther Hills in May 2020 (see here).
That brings the gruesome tally to 45 hen harriers. (We’re still waiting to hear whether three hen harriers, satellite-tagged by Natural England this year and have since vanished (here), are being treated as suspicious disappearances by the police and if so, they will be added to this list).
Four Five.
Forty five.
In the space of two years.
Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these cases. We have every expectation that this list will be updated again in the near future.
For now, here are the 45:
February 2018: Hen harrier Saorsa ‘disappeared’ in the Angus Glens in Scotland (here). The Scottish Gamekeepers Association later published wholly inaccurate information claiming the bird had been re-sighted. The RSPB dismissed this as “completely false” (here).
5 February 2018: Hen harrier Marc ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Durham (here)
9 February 2018: Hen harrier Aalin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)
March 2018: Hen harrier Blue ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park (here)
March 2018: Hen harrier Finn ‘disappeared’ near Moffat in Scotland (here)
18 April 2018: Hen harrier Lia ‘disappeared’ in Wales and her corpse was retrieved in a field in May 2018. Cause of death was unconfirmed but police treating death as suspicious (here)
8 August 2018: Hen harrier Hilma ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Northumberland (here).
16 August 2018: Hen harrier Athena ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)
26 August 2018: Hen Harrier Octavia ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here)
29 August 2018: Hen harrier Margot ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)
29 August 2018: Hen Harrier Heulwen ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)
3 September 2018: Hen harrier Stelmaria ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)
24 September 2018: Hen harrier Heather ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)
2 October 2018: Hen harrier Mabel ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)
3 October 2018: Hen Harrier Thor ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Bowland, Lanacashire (here)
23 October 2018: Hen harrier Tom ‘disappeared’ in South Wales (here)
26 October 2018: Hen harrier Arthur ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park (here)
1 November 2018: Hen harrier Barney ‘disappeared’ on Bodmin Moor (here)
10 November 2018: Hen harrier Rannoch ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here). Her corpse was found nearby in May 2019 – she’d been killed in an illegally-set spring trap (here).
14 November 2018: Hen harrier River ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (here). Her corpse was found nearby in April 2019 – she’d been illegally shot (here).
16 January 2019: Hen harrier Vulcan ‘disappeared’ in Wiltshire close to Natural England’s proposed reintroduction site (here)
7 February 2019: Hen harrier Skylar ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (here)
22 April 2019: Hen harrier Marci ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
26 April 2019: Hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Nairnshire (here)
11 May 2019: An untagged male hen harrier was caught in an illegally-set trap next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire. He didn’t survive (here)
7 June 2019: An untagged hen harrier was found dead on a grouse moor in Scotland. A post mortem stated the bird had died as a result of ‘penetrating trauma’ injuries and that this bird had previously been shot (here)
5 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 1 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor nr Dalnaspidal on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park (here)
11 September 2019: Hen harrier Romario ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
14 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183704) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)
23 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #55149) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)
24 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 2 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Invercauld in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
10 October 2019: Hen harrier Ada ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North Pennines AONB (here)
12 October 2019: Hen harrier Thistle ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Sutherland (here)
18 October 2019: Member of the public reports the witnessed shooting of an untagged male hen harrier on White Syke Hill in North Yorkshire (here)
November 2019: Hen harrier Mary found illegally poisoned on a pheasant shoot in Ireland (here)
January 2020: Members of the public report the witnessed shooting of a male hen harrier on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)
1 April 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183703) ‘disappeared’ in unnamed location, tag intermittent (here)
5 April 2020: Hen harrier Hoolie ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
8 April 2020: Hen harrier Marlin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
19 May 2020: Hen harrier Fingal ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Lowther Hills, Scotland (here)
21 May 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183701) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria shortly after returning from wintering in France (here)
27 May 2020: Hen harrier Silver ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on Leadhills Estate, Scotland (here)
7 September 2020: Hen harrier Dryad ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)
To be continued……..
Anybody still wondering why the grouse shooting industry wants conservationists to stop fitting satellite tags?
Raptor Persecution UK 
Thanks for the update. I follow your blog closely so that I have the correct figures to hand whenever I get the chance to speak to my MP. I noticed a typo in today’s update: the sentence “That brings the gruesome tally to 44 hen harriers” should I think read “45”? Hope that’s helpful and keep up the good work! Public awareness of raptor persecution is definitely building!
[Ed: thanks Nick & well spotted, now amended]
This is beyond belief in a country which is supposed to be governed by the rule of law.
If we can not protect the Hen Harrier through the use of satellite tags then it is time for a very different approach.
– A very intrusive approach which will put the wildlife criminal on the back foot, and make them fearful to even step outside and onto the moor??
45 missing or confirmed dead Hen Harriers in less than 2 years is appalling, and should be what NE is putting out in the media, instead of the rather pathetic story of 19 successful Hen Harrier nesting sites across all the upland areas in England, in the hope this will deceive the public into believing how successfully they are working on Hen Harrier recovery projects with the shooting industry.
It’s disgrace that as a nation we are letting down one of our most endangered birds of prey like this.
Absolutely shameful and shocking figure in such a short space of time, Thank goodness the grouse shooting industry has a zero tolerance approach to raptor crime and that our political leaders are all over the issue like a rash, or where would we be?
I keep wondering, is it possible to extrapolate in a scientifically valid way, what % of the total hen harrier population is likely to have suffered this fate using the % of tagged harriers that have been disappeared as the starting point?
Tragic a truly tragic list and it will doubtless continue to grow whilst the politicians sit on their hands and look the other way. It would more impact if we always knew the estate. This of course may be removed by our moderator but the latest bird in Yorkshire was on Gunnerside estate.
Good god! I know these shooters like to brag about “kill rates” over port, but if we put kill rates in terms of percentage of the population, the kill rate (KR subscript Hen Harrier) must be bigger than than the KR (subscript Reg Grouse).
Two questions, what is the total number of transmitters fitted since the study began, ie including those fitted to birds prior to 2018 but are showing up in the post 2018 figures? And what is the total percentage of birds fitted with transmitters?
From Natural England’s own data, I remember that 70-80 % of birds look likely to have been killed off in the interests of game bird shooting, so I am just trying to get a handle on whether or not the data derived from these satellite tagged birds confirms the story that the Natural England data suggests?
Great work. It’s inspiring to know that people really do care about what’s happening to our wildlife especially that part of it that is affected by the ‘kill for sport’ brigade. Your courage and activism here brings to mind the old dictum: ‘It only needs good men to do nothing for evil to prevail’.
I can’t help feeling sometimes that the gun-toting MAGA mentality of the US is becoming ever more present over here with its closed-minded, bullying ways. And that killing wildlife is emblematic of what its proponents would like to do to those who oppose them. Living on a shooting estate myself I have come to experience this controling hostility at first hand and it is not pleasant. Until, as a nation, we manage to curtail the activities of these criminals I fear the polarisation will only grow deeper.