Several months ago I blogged about Natural England’s senior management team having a lovely day out on the notorious Swinton Estate in North Yorkshire on 14th February 2023, as indicated by Tweets from Natural England’s Chief Exec Marian Spain and Chair, Tony Juniper (see here).
When I say Swinton Estate is ‘notorious’, I’m referring to the numerous police investigations into alleged raptor persecution on this grouse-shooting estate (e.g. here, here, here, here) as well as the most recent discovery of a poisoned red kite in 2021 which, inexplicably and outrageously, did not result in a police investigation (see here).
Since the start of DEFRA’s insane hen harrier brood meddling trial in 2018, Swinton Estate, owned by Mark, Cunliffe-Lister, the current Chair of the Moorland Association, has become somewhat of a poster-child for the brood meddling trial due to the estate’s enthusiastic participation in hosting breeding hen harriers which have been subsequently ‘meddled’ (i.e. chicks removed, reared in captivity and released elsewhere).
I was curious about what Natural England’s senior staff might have been doing at Swinton Estate in February so I submitted an FoI to Natural England asking for the following:
- An itinerary of the visit, including date and time of arrival/departure, and activities undertaken during the visit.
- Details of any/all hospitality provided to any member of NE’s senior management team, to other NE staff who were present, and to any NE Board members who were present. This should include information about transport, food and accommodation.
- Copies of all correspondence between NE and Swinton Estate and the Moorland
Association relating to this visit.
Regular blog readers won’t be surprised to learn that it took Natural England two months to provide the information requested, doing its usual predictable trick of claiming my request was so ‘complex’ it needed 40 working days to respond instead of the standard 20. Being obstructive and lacking transparency has become this statutory agency’s trademark.
Natural England’s response to my ‘complex’ (hardly!) request finally arrived in mid-April. I’m going to split the information into several blogs because there’s a lot to discuss.
First up, in this blog, I’ll just set the scene:
As part of the visit, the Natural England Board was provided with a series of briefing notes (from NE staff) in preparation for the site visit to Swinton Estate and also in preparation for any “tricky issues” that might arise in conversation at the evening dinner with grouse-shooting industry reps. Those briefing documents are fascinating, and very useful, but I’ll come back to those in a separate blog.
Here are the non-controversial bits first:
Natural England also provided me with a redacted list of the dinner guests, although bizarrely the dinner guests’ names were redacted but not their accompanying biographies (!) so I’ve added in the names in the left-hand column:
Part two of this blog will appear later this week…(this isn’t being done for effect, I’ve just got too much else on right now).
UPDATE 16 August 2024 (sorry, took longer than I’d anticipated!): Has the hen harrier brood meddling sham finally collapsed? (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Quelle Surprise!
What a bloody piss take, thus tells you everything.
‘Natural England will be guided by the evidence’ -well, as your recent blog on the fate of 5 meddled Harriers proves conclusively is what everyone knew already: yes, you could rear them and let them go and then they would be killed illegally on Grouse Moors. Not really much more to say, is there ? Has a Harrier yet fledged on the North Yorks Moors ? More compact and accessible than some moorland areas during my time there the suppression of Hen Harriers was absolute.
Still is.
The complete pack of cards in one box, so to speak. Obviously state of the art field observation devices — day and night — will be available to them given the guest list. I find none of the above in the slightest way surprising — simply nauseating.
Ruth the Sleuth! Impressive tenacity. Huge respect.
Oh, and by the way I’d estimate the time required to gather the information and black out the redactions at roughly 40 minutes. In looking at this you need to bear in mind that this is highly political. NE will have been told what Ministers want in no uncertain terms and remember that an ‘arms length’ body like NE is just far enough away from government for Ministers to give it a good punch on the nose if they feel like it. The Biographies are a hilarious comment on the stupidity of the redactions – but one has to wonder, cock up or conspiracy ? Is this someone slipping around the iron control you can see in the ‘line to take’ briefing ?
Downshire owns Jervaulx Estate, including Agra moor another xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
[Ed: comment deleted as libellous]
In the interest of balance, fairness and objectivity I am pretty sure that Natural England will soon be inviting Ruth, Chris, Mark, NERF and the RSPB out to a similar get together. Open and transparent?
National Gun Organisation?
Freudian slip?
Reading such information on shooting estates, only magnifies my anger and disgust that such controls over what lives and dies on our upland areas is being allowed to continue in this supposedly modern age, when removing “embarrassing” (to humane thinking/acting people) cruel practices dressed up as “sport” and essential countryside pursuits maintaining the rural economy, are to be accepted as essential. The power bases the practitioners of blood sports occupy highlight the continuation of the great social and economic divisions in our UK society, bolstered by strategically placed individuals throughout our police, fiscal, justice enforcement of law and order services, along with wherever else compliant characters are to be found, as in Government bodies dealing with environmental, farming and conservation matters. RPU.K is helping the focus of an increasing public awareness and indignation over the sheer contempt of [Ed: some of] those who run shooting estates, which show utter contempt for hard-fought for laws by the rising toll of birds of prey and other creatures that “get in the way” of maximising profits. The essential task is that of how rational and compassionate people can remove such a class of privileged people, and reset the ethical compass of our society. Has the cancer of such an arrogant class spread too far throughout our society, using the vulnerability being felt after Covid, and the unstable world situation?
There is nothing like sleeping with the enemy, I can see no reason for the people responsible for helping to protect birds of prey inviting xxxxx xxxxx to a fancy meal, I don’t understand unless there is an ulterior motive, or interests are definitely compromised.
The idea behind having a body to protect birds of prey is perfect, but they need to be completely independent, and have no interest in the killing of game birds, currently I believe from what I have seen and read that the conflict of interest is detrimental to birds of prey, and is certainly not what the birds of prey need.
We need ambassadors who will actually fight to protect the birds of prey, a body who will support the reintroduction of birds to areas they once called home, since guns have been used for recreational endeavours our native birds have suffered, and been driven to extinction, laws should be kept to, and enforced stringently, any and all infringements of the laws should be dealt with appropriately, and the punishments should also be handed out to companies behind the individuals who commit the crimes, after all, the people killing birds of prey work for the shooting estates, and the shooting estates should be held liable for those crimes , if not all they will do is employ someone else to take over, the birds of prey have more rights to be in the countryside than those with guns, the people crashing through the countryside with guns are intruders, aliens, regardless of how much money they charge, or get charged it is still illegal to kill birds of prey, this is what the focus should be on.
The illegal killing of birds of prey, and all those involved should be punished regardless of whose name is on the landowner documents, the birds are protected for a reason.
That it’s marked “OFFICIAL SENSITIVE” says it all. It’s clearly a very politically biased board attendance. It doesn’t bode well for HHs. These are not people with the best interests of HHs as their first priority. Might it be safe to presume that NE and these board members would have preferred this information not be in the public domain.
“That it’s marked “OFFICIAL SENSITIVE” says it all.”
Quite. It is ‘sensitive’ because Natural England know that illegal activity is being carried out.
With the traditional landed gentry ownership and the behind the scenes “control” of NE what chance do we stand? However, their cages are getting rattled on a regular basis which as we know is really annoying them!
I don’t think NE should have been let out alone with that company!
Don’t know what to say. This is so predictable. Will anything ever change? Money is power sadly 😞😞
DEFRA = Destroying the Environment For the Rich-lists’s Ausement..
Shooting and Conservation in rhe same title?? What a load of toadying is going on in the Natural England camp.