Back in September, Natural England announced its decision to end its controversial plan to ‘reintroduce’ Hen Harriers to southern England (see here).
The decision was widely welcomed by conservationists, who had long argued that Hen Harriers don’t need to be ‘reintroduced’ to southern England, or anywhere else in the UK for that matter. They are perfectly capable of breeding in the wild and recolonising their former range, over a relatively short space of time, IF, and only IF, their survival isn’t curtailed by grouse moor gamekeepers shooting, trapping and poisoning them, pulling off their heads and legs, or stamping on their eggs and chicks.
I’ve blogged about this unhinged ‘reintroduction’ plan for years – see here for a series of links to relevant blogs (scroll to end to find the links).
Whilst Natural England’s decision to close the farce was welcome, the reasons behind it were quite vague:
‘Following a thorough review, it has become clear that Natural England is no longer in a position to provide the long-term funding and resource needed to continue delivering the Hen Harrier Southern Reintroduction project, despite the progress to date. The difficult decision has therefore been made to conclude this project‘.
I submitted an Freedom of Information request to Natural England on 16 September 2025, asking for further detail.
On 13 October 2025 Natural England refused my request, saying it was ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because the cost of providing the information requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as laid out in the regulations.
Here’s a copy of NE’s response:
Hilariously, Natural England’s response included this line:
‘While Natural England supports openness and transparency, we also have a duty to ensure the effective and responsible use of public funds‘.
I’ll come back to that later in this blog.
Even though NE refused my request, it was still under obligation to assist with my enquiry,, within its cost limitations, so NE gave me two options:
- That it would provide a summary of the rationale for the Hen Harrier Southern Reintroduction Project closure, or
- That it would provide redacted documentation and a meeting schedule outlining key discussion topics.
I chose option 1, and on 10 November 2025 Natural England provided me with this summary document:
This document reveals that two of the wild-disabled captive-held Hen Harriers, brought over from Europe to form the core breeding programme, have since died (cause of death is not given), leaving just four breeding pairs in captivity. In 2025, those birds failed to breed successfully for the third consecutive year.
In addition to this, funding cuts to Natural England, and a demand for increased payment from the International Centre for Birds of Prey (ICBP) to manage the unsuccessful captive breeding programme, meant the project became unviable.
The document states, ‘Natural England has spent heavily on outsourcing breeding to ICBP, with the agreement ending in March 2026‘ [with an additional two-year extension granted].
So what does ‘spent heavily‘ actually mean? How much public funding has Natural England/Defra actually wasted on this pointless project?
Well, according to a Parliamentary response to a written question from Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake in November 2025, NE/Defra is said to have spent a whopping £572,272.
Over half a million pound’s worth of public funding, with nothing to show for it? Good grief.
But take a close look at that parliamentary response from Defra Under-Secretary Mary Creagh MP. It states this funding was spent between March 2021 and October 2025.
So what about the money spent prior to March 2021? Why hasn’t that been factored in?
We know that planning and preparation for this project began as early as 2016 (see here), and has included numerous trips to France & Spain by the project team, trying to persuade the Europeans that sending Hen Harriers to the persecution-infested UK is a good idea, and even included paying for satellite-tags for Harriers in Spain in an attempt to curry favour with the Spanish authorities (see here).
That won’t have been cheap!
How much, in total, has this useless project cost us? And how does Natural England justify spending so much of our money given its “duty to ensure the effective and responsible use of public funds“?
Meanwhile, further north, Hen Harriers continue to be killed illegally on driven grouse moors. Natural England says it has spent £80,800 on the ludicrous Hen Harrier brood meddling trial (the project itself will have cost a great deal more than this but the cost of satellite-tags and doing the actual brood meddling is believed to have been privately funded by grouse moor owners).
Mary Creagh says that a total of 15 Hen Harrier nests were brood meddled, resulting in 58 Hen Harrier chicks subsequently released. She seems to have forgotten to mention that over half of those released birds (at least 31 of the 58) later ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances and/or were illegally killed.
Value for money and public benefit? Not in my book.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Really the only criticism of the new Government is that it didn’t close it down on day one. This whole project was clearly totally political and nothing else and the money wasted is a disgrace. Obviously, it was never going to succeed because the HH would just wander north and get shot. It’s interesting that the new Government tried to suspend a couple of projects because they were ‘Tory Legacy’. It shows the ongoing confusion in the present Government that they can’t just come out and tell the truth. I can’t see why NE are being secretive – its hard to imagine there was much if any support for this farce within NE, they were simply obeying orders.
“Really the only criticism of the new Government is that it didn’t close it down on day one.”
My understanding of the recent Budget is that the ‘new Government’ are cutting the core funding for Natural England.
“The approach carries with it the significant risk that Natural England will become financially dependent on the very activity it was created to help regulate. This is because Natural England’s only hope for an increase in funding going forward will be if more development is brought forward and assessed as needing environmental mitigation under its Environmental Delivery Plans. In other words, the more development takes place that harms the environment the more funding Natural England will receive through the NRF.”
From Freeth’s environmental law team:
https://www.freeths.co.uk/insights-events/legal-articles/2025/environmental-law-update-december-2025/#:~:text=Reduced%20funding%20for%20Defra,under%20the%20Environment%20Act%202021.
It was just another sham to avoid the herd of elephants in the room – the ones dancing next to a neon sign that says “it’s the persecution, stupid” and trumpeting the same message at the top of their lungs. Yet it nearly got going – likely would have if Conservatives had won the election.
And though it’s hardly relevant, why were they messing about keeping (probably depressed) birds in captivity anyway? Could they not have negotiated to take a couple of eggs from some early laying pairs in Spain, flown them back as safely as poultry and falconry eggs do travel around the world, and reared them artificially or potentially under another raptor species? Bloody hell, I would even have sat on those eggs, hatched them, handfed and brooded the young ones night & day myself if those sorts of daft sums of money were on offer!
“Yet it nearly got going – likely would have if Conservatives had won the election.”
I have doubts about that: the ICBP failed to breed any chicks in three years (if you look at the web site, they only have one elderly Eagle Owl and whatever remains of the Hen Harrier Southern Release programme left, and weren’t prepared to extend the programme to reach the minimum number of chicks required.)
Natural England wrote:
“Without proven breeding success, European partners won’t provide more birds.”