The illegal killing of Hen Harriers on British grouse moors has been known, for years, to be the main cause of the species’ desperately low population size in the UK.
The sheer weight of scientific and police evidence, collected over several decades, has led to this fact being undisputed by successive Governments, statutory conservation agencies, the police’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, scientists, raptor workers, conservationists….in fact everyone, except for those representing the grouse shooting industry.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone. These crimes are a public relations disaster for the grouse shooting industry, more so than any other environmentally and socially damaging aspects of grouse moor management, of which there are many.
As grouse shooting has fallen under closer scrutiny over the last decade or so, and the threat of regulation looms large in England (and has already been introduced in Scotland), the grouse shooting industry has been in overdrive in its attempts to portray itself as being benign at worst, and ‘a conservation success story‘ at best. It has also gone to great lengths to try and discredit and smear the reputations of any organisation, or individual, who has dared to challenge this view.
So today’s latest effort, a so-called ‘analysis’ of Hen Harrier tag data, published by the Moorland Association (grouse owners’ lobby group in England), that purports to show that ‘missing’ tagged Hen Harriers probably haven’t been killed by grouse moor gamekeepers, shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.
The Moorland Association has produced what it calls a ‘Comprehensive Satellite Tagging Register’, supposedly documenting the fates of 269 Hen Harriers from 2002 to part way through 2025. The title itself is a complete misnomer because the spreadsheet includes 99 Hen Harriers that were fitted with radio tags, not satellite tags, way back in the early to mid 2000s before satellite tags came to the fore.
The Moorland Association writes on its website,
“We are not asking anyone to take our word for any of it; we are asking them to check it“.
So I did.
It wasn’t a comprehensive check – it didn’t need to be. I simply looked at the data for several well known Hen Harriers and could immediately see that at least seven of them had incorrect information assigned to them. If that’s the level of incompetence, found with just a quick glance at the data, how on earth is anyone supposed to trust any subsequent ‘analysis’ of the data?!
The seven incorrect entries that were found very quickly are:
- Hen Harrier Bowland Beth (also known as Bowland Betty). The Moorland Association’s Register states her body wasn’t recovered, and neither was it submitted for post mortem. Actually, her body was recovered, on the Swinton Estate, North Yorkshire, and a post mortem was undertaken, revealing she had a fractured left leg which led to her death. A pioneering forensic examination followed, undertaken by scientists at the University College London Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science, who found a tiny fragment of lead at the site of the fracture, confirming that she had been shot. According to the Countryside Alliance, this expert scientific evidence was just ‘supposition’ (see here).
- Hen Harrier Rowan (Hawk & Owl Trust tag). The Moorland Association’s Register states that Rowan’s body was recovered, but it wasn’t submitted for a post mortem. Actually, his body was submitted for a post mortem at the Zoological Society of London, whose expert vets concluded, “ … the bird’s injuries were entirely consistent with it having been shot“, despite the Hawk & Owl Trust (in bed with the grouse shooters at that time) claiming the findings were “not wholly conclusive” (see here).
3. Hen Harrier Free. The Moorland Association’s Register states that Free’s body wasn’t recovered and nor was it submitted for a post mortem. Actually, Free’s mutilated corpse was discovered, on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and it was submitted for a post mortem, which revealed the cause of death was having his head twisted and pulled off. One (ringed) leg had also been torn off whilst he was still alive (here).
4. Hen Harrier Asta. The Moorland Association’s Register states that Asta’s body wasn’t recovered and nor was it submitted for a post mortem. This is technically accurate, but her satellite tag was later found crudely attached to a Crow, in a sick ploy to disguise the crime, and it was determined that Asta’s wings must have been ripped off for the harness to have been removed intact from her body (here).
5. Hen Harrier Susie. The Moorland Association’s Register states that Susie’s body was not recovered and it was not submitted for a post mortem. Actually, Susie’s body was recovered, from a grouse moor in the North Pennines, and it was submitted for a post mortem, which revealed she’d been shot, although it couldn’t be determined if that was the cause of death (here).
6. Hen Harrier Edna. The Moorland Association’s Register states that Edna’s body was not recovered and it was not submitted for a post mortem. Actually, Edna’s body was recovered, and it was submitted for a post mortem, but it was too decomposed for the pathologist to determine a cause of death. The police still suspected she’d been illegally killed, and there are suggestions that her tag data had shown she’d been killed elsewhere and then transported to a windfarm to make it look as though she’d collided with a wind turbine (here).
7. Hen Harrier Margaret. The Moorland Association’s Register states that Margaret’s body was recovered but that it wasn’t submitted for a post mortem. Actually, Margaret’s body was not recovered, but her satellite tag was, and an examination revealed it had been ‘removed’ (here).
I’m sure if I looked harder I could find other examples of inaccurate data but there’s no need to spend any more time looking, because these initial seven are enough to render the Moorland Association’s ‘analysis’ as flawed.
It’s not clear who produced this spreadsheet for the Moorland Association because there isn’t a name attributed to it, which seems odd when the Moorland Association’s main tenet is that it is being transparent whereas the RSPB is not. Perhaps the author was Mr G. Keeper.
There’s also a ‘report’, to accompany the (flawed) data set. This document is hilarious, and it’s no wonder the author didn’t want their name on it. For a start, they’ve grouped together two very different types of tracker (radio tags and satellite tags) with an unqualified assumption that the outcomes are comparable without taking into consideration the massive number of variables between the two operating systems.
Inevitably, the report attacks the RSPB because the RSPB declined to share their satellite tag data with the Moorland Association. The author contends that this is because the RSPB has something to hide. Yeah, giving up highly sensitive data to the very industry that’s responsible for this species’ perilous conservation status makes perfect sense, right?
The author goes on to argue that the RSPB’s interpretation of its own data is flawed because the RSPB’s mapping resolution is too broad. Good grief. Does the author not understand that the RSPB’s analysis is based on a very high mapping resolution but that it only publishes low resolution data to protect sensitive information?!
Critical thinking is entirely absent from this report.
The Moorland Association’s accompanying blog to this ‘report’ claims that its ‘analysis’ challenges the findings of the Murgatroyd et al (2019) paper. That’s the paper that demonstrated that at least 72% of Hen Harriers satellite-tagged by Natural England were presumed to have been illegally killed on or close to driven grouse moors (see here). The Murgatroyd paper was published in one of the world’s top-rated peer-reviewed scientific journals:
The Murgatroyd paper was based on a comprehensive and complex statistical analysis of Hen Harrier satellite tag data. Funny, I didn’t find any statistical analysis in the Moorland Association’s anonymous ‘report’, just a multi-coloured word salad based on inaccurate data.
If the Moorland Association is so certain of its ‘analysis’, perhaps it will submit its findings to a peer-reviewed scientific journal?
Raptor Persecution UK 