Further to yesterday’s news that, against all the odds, two hen harrier nests have been successful this year on National Trust land in the Peak District National Park (see here), there was excellent coverage last night on the BBC’s regional news programme, North West Tonight.
With contributions from the National Trust’s General Manager in the Peak District, Craig Best, and from Howard Jones of the RSPB’s Investigations Team, this short, three-minute piece managed to get across the significance of this year’s breeding success but without pretending that ongoing illegal persecution isn’t an issue.
The programme is available on iPlayer but expires at 7pm this evening so you’ll need to be quick. The link is here (starts at 14.34 min).
Well done to all involved.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Cue BASC et al complaining about the programme’s ‘lack of balance’ as they weren’t allowed to spout their soi-disant “expertise” denying persecution was a problem!
Isn’t in insane that we have come to expect people to jump to the defence of crimes. No other area that i can think of (within UK) would even consider it.
Just watched it: brilliant piece. No mealy-mouthed representatives of the shooting and meddling communities to muddy the waters and pretend that they aren’t behind the decline!
The film of that moorland: proper, mixed, wet, a bit of heather and loads of other stuff shows what can be achieved once you ditch the heather monoculture and stop draining the water from the landscape and let it recover.
Nice to see that some breeding success took place this year. The real test for the birds hatched this year is still to come when they leave their breeding area and move into new areas where they will encounter people who still deny killing them to suit their programme of ‘management’ of the uplands.
Having a few tags fitted will help with the monitoring of these birds and when or if they ‘disappear’ we will know exactly where that is and who ‘manages’ that particular area of land. Sadly they will not be brought to book for the disappearances.
They have just shown the piece on the Wednesday lunchtime national news! It will be interesting to see if it makes the evening national news bulletin.
Great piece getting the news out there including the loss of the two males this spring to undoubted persecution and no mealy mouthed liars from the shooting lobby, well done to all including the BBC.
They will, of course, “mysteriously disappear in the vicinity of a Grouse moor” as soon as they leave the nest…
great work