Hen harrier brood meddling, a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England, in cahoots with grouse moor owners, the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England, see here, is now in its sixth year.
Natural England and the grouse shooting industry will tell you it’s a conservation success story. It isn’t. It’s anything but, as demonstrated by the 98 hen harriers that have suspiciously ‘disappeared’ or have been illegally killed on UK grouse moors since the brood meddling trial began in 2018 (see here).
Conservation campaign group Wild Justice has just published a new report on hen harrier brood meddling (called Meddling on the Moors), where the disingenuous claims of the grouse shooting industry are taken apart and the methods of this so-called ‘scientific trial’ led by Natural England are slated.
The three directors of Wild Justice have criticised hen harrier brood meddling for many years, in various places including in the High Court. This report brings together our collective view in one place and also analyses new data recently published by Natural England that don’t appear to have been analysed elsewhere.
The report is written for a general audience, designed to be understood by those with no prior knowledge of hen harrier brood meddling, but is also detailed enough to hopefully be of interest to those already familiar with this scandalous ‘scientific trial’.
I’ll be writing more about hen harrier brood meddling in due course, specifically about Natural England’s stunningly inadequate ‘social science’ output from 2022, which NE hasn’t published (probably too embarrassed) but which was provided to me in a recent FoI response. Honestly, I’m almost speechless.
For now, here’s the new report from Wild Justice on brood meddling:
UPDATE: The publication of Meddling on the Moors was covered in The Guardian (here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
An excellent analysis of this crude and deeply flawed activity. I can remember it being originally floated at the mediated ” Hen Harrier dialogue” and the attitude of the NGO and others was the reason NERF left that process, far too much butting ones head on an immovable object of the various DGS lobby groups who saw no reason to change their attitude or activities in the field. it was something we saw then as the edge of a slippery slope to nowhere fast and might easily lead to quotas of protected predators on grouse moors and not just harriers.
Here we are 17 years down the road and no further forward in those days they also suggested flagging ( literally any harriers that turned up on a moor in spring despite it several times being pointed out as illegal. Remember many of these Pennine grouse moors from the Peak District into Northumberland are not only often in National Parks but also SSSIs in their own right and part of the North Pennine or Bowland SPAs designated in part for their notional Hen Harrier population, you really couldn’t make it up.
This daft and immoral scheme which rewards criminals and moves the problem of the Grousers attitudes to Hen Harriers and the law no further forward. Harriers have been protected since 1954 yet you would think that protection was new given the continued current level of persecution and those birds deserve the full protection of the law and a proper solution to criminal persecution not this illogical, immoral and impractical at the scale needed deflection scheme.
Nor of course has it done what it was claimed it would, significantly reduce persecution, it seems the criminals are now more careful who they kill as well as where and when. Time DEFRA and NE got a grip.
A brilliant commentary Paul, thank you.
Thank you. I think we all feel the same. It has to change, it just has to. Our countryside is in a state of collapse. I do so wish this was at the top of the agenda in every media organisation because it’s not only about the hen harriers but also about all of us and how we want to be governed and how we want our land to be owned and managed.
It’s too much to put into words really how frustrated I feel about these beautiful birds
I think it must be the case that brood-meddled ones that are released without a tag* are easier to get close to and shoot than the natural wild birds. When in captivity their proximity to humans and especially (in my view) associating the sound of approaching vehicles / quad bikes with good things – like being visited and fed their rations of dead poultry chicks – will make them too trusting and too incautious when released into the big bad world. Much more easy to get within the required minimum distance to let off 5 shots of heavy load cartridges.
Therefore I think the mortality of first-year brood-meddled must certainly be higher than first year natural, the figures only appearing level-ish because proportionately more brood-meddled have tags on them so those individuals may be left alone more often.
*those with tags will almost certainly benefit from the deterrent effect, a keeper may notice it at the last moment and think sod it, let it fly next door and they can deal with the shitstorm of bad publicity.
“In order to combat the problem of the birds, which are endangered in the UK, continually going missing over moors, Natural England began a scheme…”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/08/scheme-to-protect-hen-harriers-in-england-a-waste-of-money-says-charity
Of course, we all know why they really started it!
A very good report on a ridiculous project, that is simply a way of allowing driven grouse shooting estates to continue to operate without raptors – unsustainably and (often) illegally.
One point that I would like to pick up on: the report states that eggs have not been removed due to concern about damage to eggs in transit.
Eggs could easily be transported without risk of damage.
The more likely explanation is that Hen Harriers will re-lay eggs if their eggs are removed (or predated). Hen Harriers rarely, if ever, relay if their young are removed (or predated).
This just appears to be yet another way of pandering to the estates that do not want Hen Harriers nesting on their land.
The first thing that made me pause was that whole broods of chicks are removed, so that adults won’t predate so many red grouse and the grouse Moor fraternity will then be nice and not kill the adults.Yeah right!
Also, the logic is not there.If say a brood of 5 are raised and released that means more adults feeding chicks year on year…….so grouse Moor owners have NO INCENTIVE not to continue killing more and more.
What a stupid idea.
We need to badger the government intensively to ban grouse shooting into the history books with bear baiting and cock fighting etc.
Return the moors to public ownership and ban grouse shooting…..and all wildfowl.
Excellent report.
The National Gamekeepers Organisation has just published a YouTube video on the brood meddling scheme. titled “The Truth About Hen Harriers”. It features an unnamed bloke on Salisbury Plain interviewing a couple of other blokes and then making an unsubstantiated allegation about the RSPB delaying the scheme because it is somehow incompatible with fundraising.
Hilariously, even the keeper interviewed admits he is “very dubious” that the scheme will succeed in establishing a breeding population at the site.