Appeal for information from North Yorkshire Police on Facebook (12 May 2025):
Did you see anything suspicious?
Our Rural Task Force is appealing for information following the suspected shooting of a buzzard in the North York Moors National Park.
The Buzzard is thought to have been killed near to, Beck Hole Road, Goathland on Friday 2 May, and we are appealing for anyone who may have seen any suspicious people or vehicles in the area to please come forward.
Buzzards and all other birds of prey are legally protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. To intentionally kill or injure one is a criminal offence which could result in an unlimited fine or up to six months in jail.
If you have any information that could help please email Chris.Unsworth@northyorkshire.police.uk or call North Yorkshire Police on 101, select option 2 and ask for Chris Unsworth.
If you wish to remain anonymous you can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 via their website.
Please quote NYP reference 12250082575 when passing on information.
ENDS
Goathland is probably best known to many as the filming location of the TV series ‘Heartbeat’. To me it’s known as one of a number of raptor persecution hotspots in the grouse moor-dominated North York Moors National Park.
Goathland is almost surrounded by intensively-managed driven grouse moors and in 2020 video footage emerged purporting to show a gamekeeper killing a Goshawk that had been trapped inside a Jackdaw-baited trap on one of the Queen’s grouse moors, part of the Duchy of Lancaster (see here and here).
Channel 4 News did a very good follow-up piece here.
A couple of years earlier, a group of local residents from Goathland got together and called a series of public meetings to discuss their concerns about the environmental damage caused by driven grouse moor management in their area, and particularly their concerns about ‘disappearing’ wildlife, notably satellite-tagged Hen Harriers. The North York Moors National Park has been identified in an excellent scientific paper based on Hen Harrier satellite tag data as the place with the highest risk of HH death/persecution in any of our National Parks – it’s no coincidence that the NYMNP also holds the largest expanse of grouse moors within its boundary.
Notes from the Goathland community meetings of disgruntled residents can be read here, here and here.
If you look at the map showing the distribution of signatures on Wild Justice’s recent Ban Driven Grouse Shooting petition, it’s worth noting the high number of signatures in this area. I hope they’ll be making their voices heard again if/when the Government’s petitions committee announces the date for a debate in Westminster Hall.
The latest appeal from North Yorkshire Police about the suspected shooting of a buzzard near Goathland is a bit vague. It’s not clear if the appeal is a result of a witness report of someone seen shooting a Buzzard or whether a corpse has been found and is awaiting post mortem.
The police appeal says, ‘The Buzzard is thought to have been killed near to, Beck Hole Road, Goathland on Friday 2 May…‘.
Here is an annotated map from Guy Shrubsole’s brilliant website Who Owns England, showing the extent of the Duchy of Lancaster grouse moors (purple) around Goathland. I’ve added the approximate location (in red) of the Beck Hole Road.
UPDATE 22 May 2025: Incident update – Buzzard found dead near Goathland in North York Moors National Park ‘was shot’ (here).
Raptor Persecution UK 
POLICE COULD, SHOULD TIGHTEN SHOTGUN FIRE ARMS LICENCE LAWS, THEY WONT AS BLOODSPORTS ARE A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS , SHAME ON THEM.
This incident must have occurred between Goathland and the hamlet of Beck Hole adjacent to the country lane stretch of Beck Hole Road which connects the two and on which I live. I am rather miffed at finding out about this incident from a press release.
This follows on from a very strange incident involving a Buzzard last year in Goathland when a villager witnessed a Buzzard flying high at speed crashed into the top of big tree and proceeded to fall through the branches to the floor. The villager approached the bird which allowed itself to be picked up and placed for shelter under a Bush where it was found dead the following day. I collected the bird, a big female, and it was collected a few days later by a PC from the Rural Task Force who had it xrayed. It had not been shot. A vet apparently carried out a post- mortem and decided there was no obvious indication of poisoning, so no toxicology tests were performed on ghe bird. All very strange. Birds sick from natural causes do not fall from the sky to their deaths they fall from perches.
All very strange.
Thank you for that.
From what you report, we are, rather obviously and quite alarmingly, seeing only the tip of the raptor persecution ‘iceberg’:-(
Raptors kill to live not to get a perverse pleasure in killing something like the grouse hunt members. Shotgun licence should be reviewed
This is on my doorstep I am regularly mooching about these moors on motorbike and in car it is sickening and appalling and driven grouse shooting needs to be banned I see xxxxx xxxxx in their pick ups and walk a lot with dog regularly but haven’t witnessed anything to report. My partner also has off road bike and regularly goes places to keep an eye but it’s vast and they are out at daft o’clock all very distressing for everyone who loves these innocent victims of extortion and money making moors .
Another day, another buzzard – probably an average of a hundred plus buzzards get it every day across the whole of UK. This winter like every winter, when grouse shooting has finished and keepers turn their minds back to the vermin, you could probably triple that number as young buzzards are sucked into the prey-rich, territory-vacant keepered grouse moor vacuums.
I also watched the Channel 4 video again (link in the blog) and found it even funnier this time. Nobody knows anything about it – the goshawk killing – nor the pigeon crees on the edge of the fell with (legal) crow cage strategically placed a short distance away. How strange. Do they really think that nobody other than stalwart supporters of DGS, along with the killers / practitioners themselves, the aiders & abettors and apologists of raptor persecution know how this shit works? i.e how to tread the fine line of legality for appearances sake? Pigeons draw in the hawks to general area – pigeons disperse but hawk sees the hapless corvids sitting legally in the legal crow cage – hawk goes in crow cage to nail the corvids….then of course cannot get back out. But in law this set up is nothing more than a purely unintended (!) accidental by-catch…as it assumes that any protected species are released instantly by the trap operator when they check it. And in those remote places usually at daft times of day, the law seems to trust the integrity of the trap operators without question. What a joke.