A new report has been published today reviewing confirmed incidents of illegal persecution and other threats to raptors in Ireland between 2007-2019.
The report is the cumulative work of the RAPTOR protocol (Recording and Addressing Persecution and Threats to Our Raptors) which was a collaborative approach between the National Parks & Wildlife Service, Regional Veterinary Laboratories and the State Laboratory to ‘systematically determine the extent to which anthropogenic non-habitat related impacts (for example poisoning, persecution, disturbance, collisions, etc.) are threats to Ireland’s native birds of prey‘.
The report contains the usual illegal poisoning, shooting and trapping incidents that won’t come as a shock to anyone familiar with this blog, although the range of poisons detected is interesting and the geographic spread of illegal persecution incidents is disturbing.
What’s unusual about this report is that it includes reports of other ‘threats’ to birds of prey such as collisions (wind turbines, vehicles, fences, powerline) and secondary poisonings, which might be useful for planning purposes but needs to be borne in mind if trying to draw quick conclusions from the headline data.
A very useful aspect of this report is the idea of providing individual species accounts, giving an overview of the specific threats and a map detailing the spread of incidents for that particular species.
This report is a comprehensive data resource, well worth a look. You can download it here:
Raptor Persecution UK 