Author: RaptorPersecutionUK

Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: illegal persecution still ignored

Natural England has been planning a so-called ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England since 2016, as part of DEFRA’s ludicrous Hen Harrier Action Plan.

We’ve been blogging about this unhinged proposal for years. As regular blog readers will know, finding out information about this ‘Let’s divert attention from illegal persecution on driven grouse moors’ scheme has been as difficult as finding breeding hen harriers on driven grouse moors. Natural England has been reluctant to share its plans with the general public and all the information we’ve gleaned so far has come from years of submitting Freedom of Information requests.

For new blog readers, some of the key posts are linked at the foot of this blog for those who want to understand the background.

Meanwhile, a recent update on the project has come from the most unlikely of sources  – the newly published ‘official blog’ of the National Gamekeepers Organisation! That blog didn’t get off to a good start – one of its first posts on what it called the ‘wildlife licensing crisis’ was absolutely ripped to shreds by Mark Avery about a week ago (see here – it’s very funny).

The blog’s most recent post is an interview with Simon Lester (Natural England) on the proposed reintroduction of hen harriers to southern England. If alarm bells are ringing, yes, this is the same Simon Lester who was employed as the Head Gamekeeper at the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project until his resignation in 2016 (here), and the same Simon Lester who has argued, without scientific evidence, for the need for legal raptor culling on driven grouse moors (here, here and here), now working for Natural England on a proposed reintroduction project for a species whose population has been decimated by illegal persecution on, er, driven grouse moors.

To read the blog please click here.

In summary, Simon claims the project has strong support from local gamekeepers (well they’re hardly going to admit otherwise, are they?!), doesn’t think that illegal persecution is an issue (although the RSPB begs to differ, here), hints ominously but not overtly about ‘mitigating future problems’ (cough, raptor control, cough), and says that had Covid19 not emerged then harriers could have been brought in from Spain and France this year.

The idea of getting donor hen harriers from Spain and France is interesting, as previously these countries had refused to cooperate given a number of concerns about the status of their own harrier populations but also concerns about the ongoing illegal persecution issue in the UK. How come they’ve had a change of mind?

Well, have a look at this document that we obtained via FoI from Natural England:

Brief Report on Study Visit to Spain and France_Redacted

It’s quite something. It describes how Natural England appears to be using UK tax-payers’ money to fund hen harrier satellite tagging in Spain, and to provide field assistance to a Spanish research team, apparently to appease the Spanish authorities and encourage them to hand over hen harriers for the southern England reintroduction project!

Isn’t this the same Natural England that complains that budget cuts and staff losses prevent it from carrying out its statutory nature conservation duties in England? How much money has it chucked at research in Spain, with what looks like an ulterior motive? This is all very interesting.

Back to Simon’s interview on the National Gamekeepers blog. He is quoted as saying:

“The RSPB appear to think that all harriers released will be persecuted. It would be naive to think that something illegal could not happen to a [reintroduced] harrier at some time in the future, but that is no reason to dismiss the reintroduction out of hand. I am sure we and the shooting community will prove them wrong”.

Really? Given that at least 42 hen harriers have ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or been confirmed illegally killed since 2018 (see here), it’s pretty clear that neither Simon, Natural England or the shooting community are in any position to state with confidence that reintroduced harriers wouldn’t be targeted.

UPDATE 23rd September 2020: Large police operation investigating raptor persecution near proposed release site for hen harriers (here)

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Here are some key blogs about the proposed hen harrier reintroduction to southern England:

28 Nov 2016 – Hen Harrier reintroduction to southern England: an update (here)

3 Jan 2017 – Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: the feasibility/scoping report (here)

8 Jan 2017 – Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: the project group and their timeline (here)

9 Jan 2017 – Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: who’s funding it? (here)

9 Jan 2017 – Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: a bonkers proposal for Exmoor National Park (here)

12 Jan 2017 – Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Wiltshire (here)

14 Feb 2017: Leaked email reveals Natural England’s views on Hen Harrier Action Plan (here)

23 Feb 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: donor countries (here)

19 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: new project manager appointed (here)

20 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Dartmoor as potential new release site (here)

20 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: revised costs (here)

21 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: project team vists France (here)

27 July 2017: RSPB statement on hen harrier reintroduction to southern England (here)

15 Aug 2017: Natural England Board making up justification for hen harrier southern reintroduction (here)

24 October 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Natural England delays release of information (here)

11 December 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: report of fieldtrip to France (potential donor country) (here)

12 December 2017: 2018 start date for reintroduction of hen harrier to southern England? (here)

14 January 2018: Stop illegal persecution then no need for reintroduction of hen harrier to southern England, says DEFRA Minister (here)

13 March 2018: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: has France said “Non”? (here)

28 February 2019: Satellite-tagged hen harrier Vulcan disappears near proposed reintroduction site in southern England (here)

10 March 2019: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Natural England suggests persecution not an issue (here)

42 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed killed since 2018

Three days ago we blogged that at least 40 hen harriers were ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances or had been confirmed killed since 2018 (see here).

Today the list is updated to 42 hen harriers, ‘missing’ or confirmed killed since 2018.

Here’s the blog we’ll publish every time this list is updated:

It’s getting to that time of year when the grouse shooting industry pumps out its patently misleading propaganda relating to hen harrier conservation in the UK. The aim is to hoodwink the public in to believing that the industry loves hen harriers and is doing all it can to protect and nurture the tiny remnant breeding population (but conveniently forgetting to mention that the breeding population is only in such dire straits because the grouse shooting industry has been ruthless in its maniacal intolerance of this supposedly protected species).

And the industry’s pursuit of the hen harrier is not simply ‘historical’ or indicative of past behaviour, as some would have us believe. It is on-going, it is current, and it is relentless.

To illustrate this fact, we intend to keep a running tally of all the hen harriers that we know (because most of these victims had been fitted with a satellite tag) to have either ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed as being illegally killed since 2018.

Why only since 2018 when we know that hen harriers have been a persecution target for years and years and years? Well, 2018 is the year that the grouse shooting industry ‘leaders’ would have us believe that the criminal persecution of hen harriers had stopped and that these birds were being welcomed back on to the UK’s grouse moors (see here).

This assertion was made shortly before the publication of a devastating new scientific paper that demonstrated that 72% of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses (see here).

We only started compiling this list of dead / missing hen harriers in June when we learned that all five of last year’s brood meddled hen harrier chicks were ‘missing’, presumed dead (see here). It was then further updated when we learned that two more satellite-tagged hen harriers had ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in the Cairngorms National Park during the Coronvirus lockdown (see here).

It’s now time to update the death list again, as we’ve learned of two more satellite-tagged hen harriers that ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances in 2018 and had been missed from our earlier list: Tom vanished in South Wales on 23 October 2018 (see here) and Barney vanished on Bodmin Moor on 1 November 2018 (see here). Both are also listed in Natural England’s hen harrier database, last updated Nov 2019 (here). (Thanks to blog reader Alex Milne and Kim for pointing us to these sources).

That brings the gruesome tally to 42 hen harriers.

Four Two.

Forty two.

In the space of two years.

Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these cases. We have every expectation that this list will be updated again in the near future.

For now, here are the 42:

February 2018: Hen harrier Saorsa ‘disappeared’ in the Angus Glens in Scotland (here). The Scottish Gamekeepers Association later published wholly inaccurate information claiming the bird had been re-sighted. The RSPB dismissed this as “completely false” (here).

5 February 2018: Hen harrier Marc ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Durham (here)

9 February 2018: Hen harrier Aalin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Blue ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Finn ‘disappeared’ near Moffat in Scotland (here)

18 April 2018: Hen harrier Lia ‘disappeared’ in Wales and her corpse was retrieved in a field in May 2018. Cause of death was unconfirmed but police treating death as suspicious (here)

8 August 2018: Hen harrier Hilma ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Northumberland (here).

16 August 2018: Hen harrier Athena ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

26 August 2018: Hen Harrier Octavia ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here)

29 August 2018: Hen harrier Margot ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

29 August 2018: Hen Harrier Heulwen ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

3 September 2018: Hen harrier Stelmaria ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

24 September 2018: Hen harrier Heather ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

2 October 2018: Hen harrier Mabel ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

3 October 2018: Hen Harrier Thor ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Bowland, Lanacashire (here)

23 October 2018: Hen harrier Tom ‘disappeared’ in South Wales (here)

26 October 2018: Hen harrier Arthur ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park (here)

1 November 2018: Hen harrier Barney ‘disappeared’ on Bodmin Moor (here)

10 November 2018: Hen harrier Rannoch ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here). Her corpse was found nearby in May 2019 – she’d been killed in an illegally-set spring trap (here).

14 November 2018: Hen harrier River ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (here). Her corpse was found nearby in April 2019 – she’d been illegally shot (here).

16 January 2019: Hen harrier Vulcan ‘disappeared’ in Wiltshire close to Natural England’s proposed reintroduction site (here)

7 February 2019: Hen harrier Skylar ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (here)

22 April 2019: Hen harrier Marci ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

26 April 2019: Hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Nairnshire (here)

11 May 2019: An untagged male hen harrier was caught in an illegally-set trap next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire. He didn’t survive (here)

7 June 2019: An untagged hen harrier was found dead on a grouse moor in Scotland. A post mortem stated the bird had died as a result of ‘penetrating trauma’ injuries and that this bird had previously been shot (here)

5 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 1 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor nr Dalnaspidal on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park (here)

11 September 2019: Hen harrier Romario ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

14 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183704) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

23 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #55149) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

24 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 2 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Invercauld in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

10 October 2019: Hen harrier Ada ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North Pennines AONB (here)

12 October 2019: Hen harrier Thistle ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Sutherland (here)

18 October 2019: Member of the public reports the witnessed shooting of an untagged male hen harrier on White Syke Hill in North Yorkshire (here)

November 2019: Hen harrier Mary found illegally poisoned on a pheasant shoot in Ireland (here)

January 2020: Members of the public report the witnessed shooting of a male hen harrier on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

1 April 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183703) ‘disappeared’ in unnamed location, tag intermittent (here)

5 April 2020: Hen harrier Hoolie ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

8 April 2020: Hen harrier Marlin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

21 May 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183701) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria shortly after returning from wintering in France (here)

To be continued……..

Anybody still wondering why the grouse shooting industry wants us to stop fitting satellite tags?

UPDATE 27 JULY 2020: This article has been picked up by The Herald (here)

Wild Justice lodges court papers in badger cull legal challenge

Last week wildlife campaign group Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder to raise money to support a proposed legal challenge against the Government’s ongoing badger cull (see here).

A phenomenal public response resulted in £48,500 being raised in just three days (see here).

[Badger photo by Chris Packham]

Yesterday, Wild Justice lodged legal papers at the High Court seeking permission for a judicial review of Natural England’s decision to issue licences to ‘free shoot’ badgers, which Wild Justice argues is a failure to ensure the badger cull is humane.

This was the culmination of over ten months of consideration of this issue, which included research, discussion and debate, and was based not only on extensive legal advice but also on the specialist advice of a number of prominent scientists and vets whose immense expertise was invaluable in building the case. Wild Justice’s lawyers, Leigh Day, have issued a press release with further detail here.

One of the three Wild Justice Directors, Mark Avery, has also written a series of blogs clarifying his thoughts on the legal challenge (here, here and here).

A separate legal challenge against the badger cull is also on the cards, this one by long-term badger campaigner and ecologist Tom Langton and supported by the Badger Trust.

Details of Tom’s proposed challenge can be found in this press release (here) and a link to his crowdfunder site can be found here.

Wild Justice is now waiting to hear whether the court will grant permission for a judicial review to go ahead.

40 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed killed since 2018

It’s getting to that time of year when the grouse shooting industry pumps out its patently misleading propaganda relating to hen harrier conservation in the UK. The aim is to hoodwink the public in to believing that the industry loves hen harriers and is doing all it can to protect and nurture the tiny remnant breeding population (but conveniently forgetting to mention that the breeding population is only in such dire straits because the grouse shooting industry has been ruthless in its maniacal intolerance of this supposedly protected species).

And the industry’s pursuit of the hen harrier is not simply ‘historical’ or indicative of past behaviour, as some would have us believe. It is on-going, it is current, and it is relentless.

To illustrate this fact, we intend to keep a running tally of all the hen harriers that we know (because most of these victims had been fitted with a satellite tag) to have either ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed as being illegally killed since 2018.

Why only since 2018 when we know that hen harriers have been a persecution target for years and years and years? Well, 2018 is the year that the grouse shooting industry ‘leaders’ would have us believe that the criminal persecution of hen harriers had stopped and that these birds were being welcomed back on to the UK’s grouse moors (see here).

This assertion was made shortly before the publication of a devastating new scientific paper that demonstrated that 72% of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses (see here).

We only started compiling this list of dead / missing hen harriers in June when we learned that all five of last year’s brood meddled hen harrier chicks were ‘missing’, presumed dead (see here). It was then further updated when we learned that two more satellite-tagged hen harriers had ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in the Cairngorms National Park during the Coronvirus lockdown (see here).

It’s now time to update the death list again, as we’ve learned that satellite-tagged hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances over a grouse moor in Nairnshire on 26 April 2019 (see here). (Thanks to blog reader Alex Milne for pointing us to this info).

That brings the gruesome tally to 40 hen harriers.

Four Zero.

Forty.

In the space of two years.

Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these cases. We have every expectation that this list will be updated again in the near future.

For now, here are the 40:

February 2018: Hen harrier Saorsa ‘disappeared’ in the Angus Glens in Scotland (here). The Scottish Gamekeepers Association later published wholly inaccurate information claiming the bird had been re-sighted. The RSPB dismissed this as “completely false” (here).

5 February 2018: Hen harrier Marc ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Durham (here)

9 February 2018: Hen harrier Aalin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Blue ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Finn ‘disappeared’ near Moffat in Scotland (here)

18 April 2018: Hen harrier Lia ‘disappeared’ in Wales and her corpse was retrieved in a field in May 2018. Cause of death was unconfirmed but police treating death as suspicious (here)

8 August 2018: Hen harrier Hilma ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Northumberland (here).

16 August 2018: Hen harrier Athena ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

26 August 2018: Hen Harrier Octavia ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here)

29 August 2018: Hen harrier Margot ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

29 August 2018: Hen Harrier Heulwen ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

3 September 2018: Hen harrier Stelmaria ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

24 September 2018: Hen harrier Heather ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

2 October 2018: Hen harrier Mabel ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

3 October 2018: Hen Harrier Thor ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Bowland, Lanacashire (here)

26 October 2018: Hen harrier Arthur ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park (here)

10 November 2018: Hen harrier Rannoch ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here). Her corpse was found nearby in May 2019 – she’d been killed in an illegally-set spring trap (here).

14 November 2018: Hen harrier River ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (here). Her corpse was found nearby in April 2019 – she’d been illegally shot (here).

16 January 2019: Hen harrier Vulcan ‘disappeared’ in Wiltshire close to Natural England’s proposed reintroduction site (here)

7 February 2019: Hen harrier Skylar ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (here)

22 April 2019: Hen harrier Marci ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

26 April 2019: Hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Nairnshire (here)

11 May 2019: An untagged male hen harrier was caught in an illegally-set trap next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire. He didn’t survive (here)

7 June 2019: An untagged hen harrier was found dead on a grouse moor in Scotland. A post mortem stated the bird had died as a result of ‘penetrating trauma’ injuries and that this bird had previously been shot (here)

5 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 1 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor nr Dalnaspidal on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park (here)

11 September 2019: Hen harrier Romario ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

14 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183704) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

23 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #55149) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

24 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 2 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Invercauld in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

10 October 2019: Hen harrier Ada ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North Pennines AONB (here)

12 October 2019: Hen harrier Thistle ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Sutherland (here)

18 October 2019: Member of the public reports the witnessed shooting of an untagged male hen harrier on White Syke Hill in North Yorkshire (here)

November 2019: Hen harrier Mary found illegally poisoned on a pheasant shoot in Ireland (here)

January 2020: Members of the public report the witnessed shooting of a male hen harrier on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

1 April 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183703) ‘disappeared’ in unnamed location, tag intermittent (here)

5 April 2020: Hen harrier Hoolie ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

8 April 2020: Hen harrier Marlin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

21 May 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183701) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria shortly after returning from wintering in France (here)

To be continued……..

Anybody still wondering why the grouse shooting industry wants us to stop fitting satellite tags?

Leadhills Estate granted ‘individual licence’ to shoot crows

As many will recall, in November 2019 SNH imposed a three-year General Licence restriction on the Leadhills Estate in South Lanarkshire following ‘clear evidence from Police Scotland that wildlife crimes had been committed on this estate’ (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Those alleged offences included the ‘illegal killing of a short-eared owl, two buzzards and three hen harriers’ that were ‘shot or caught in traps’ on Leadhills Estate since 1 January 2014 (when SNH was first given powers to impose a General Licence restriction). SNH had also claimed that ‘wild birds’ nests had also been disturbed’, although there was no further detail on this. The estate has consistently denied responsibility, obviously.

[This male hen harrier was found with its leg almost severed, caught in an illegally-set trap next to its nest on Leadhills Estate in 2019. Despite valiant efforts by a top wildlife surgeon, the bird didn’t survive. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

As many of you will also know, a General Licence restriction is supposed to prevent an estate from killing so-called ‘pest’ species (e.g. crows) that would otherwise be permissible under the General Licences but that estates can still apply to SNH for an ‘individual licence’ to circumvent the General Licence restriction and continue killing birds, albeit with a bit more paperwork to complete.

This ridiculous situation is a legal quirk, outlined in a Judicial Review, and isn’t SNH’s fault (although SNH could be doing a lot more to point out the system failings to the Scottish Government). Basically if a penalised estate isn’t provided with an opportunity to apply for an individual licence the estate could argue the system was unfair and the legality of the General Licence restriction probably wouldn’t stand. If further wildlife crimes are discovered on the estate when an individual licence is in place, SNH can revoke the individual licence but the estate can simply reapply for another one. We’ve discussed how the General Licence restriction is a wholly ineffective deterrent plenty of times in the past, (e.g. see here, here, here, here) and last year we even gave evidence to this effect alongside RSPB Scotland and others to a Scottish parliamentary committee (here).

Since the General Licence restriction was imposed on Leadhills Estate in Nov 2019 we’ve been interested to find out whether the estate has applied for, and been granted, an individual licence.

An FoI request has revealed that yes, SNH issued an individual licence that was valid between 27 April – 1 June 2020 but this was far more restrictive than the individual licences (e.g. see licence details here) that were issued to Raeshaw Estate when a GL restriction was imposed on that estate in 2015.

The individual licence at Leadhills Estate only permits the shooting of two species – hooded crow and carrion crow, in a limited part of the estate and apparently to protect lambs.

According to condition #8 of this licence, the licensee has to submit a written report to SNH within one month of the licence expiring (so by 1 July 2020) detailing the scaring methods deployed and the number of birds shot. We have submitted an FoI request for this information.

We’ve also asked SNH for details of the compliance checks made for the duration of this licence. SNH has said in the past that compliance checks would form part of the ‘tighter scrutiny’ involved with an individual licence. Let’s see. Presumably this type of environmental monitoring/legal compliance check would have been one of the Government-sanctioned jobs during lockdown.

Wild Justice raises £48.5K within 3 days for badger cull challenge

Just three days ago Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder to raise £48.5K to support a legal challenge against the badger cull (see here).

Today, incredibly, thanks to an outpouring of public support the target has been reached and the crowdfunder has now been closed!

£38.5K was raised directly by generous supporters and then another £10K was pledged this afternoon from an organisation whose identity will be revealed in due course.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this appeal – the response has been phenomenal.

For more information on this case and other Wild Justice legal challenges, both current and forthcoming, check out the Wild Justice blog (here) and subscribe to the free Wild Justice newsletter (here).

Petition to ban driven grouse shooting: Chris Packham talks with Kerry McCarthy MP

Last summer campaign group Wild Justice (Chris Packham, Mark Avery, Ruth Tingay) lodged a petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting (here).

Within just a few hours of going public the petition had attracted 10,000 signatures, triggering the usual pathetic response from DEFRA (here).

Less than three weeks after the launch the petition had attracted 100,000 signatures (here), triggering what we hoped would be another Parliamentary debate, especially as many of the dishonourable members whose self-interested posturing had defiled the 2016 debate (here) had since left the building.

The 2019 General Election brought an abrupt end to the petition and to the prospect of a prompt debate but in early March 2020, Wild Justice was informed that a Parliamentary debate was due to be scheduled, probably within a month (see here).

Shortly afterwards the UK went in to Corona virus lockdown and obviously other priorities took hold. But several weeks ago the Parliamentary Petitions Committee got in touch and asked whether Wild Justice would like an opportunity to have an online discussion with a Committee member about the issues raised in the petition.

Many thanks to Petitions Committee member Kerry McCarthy MP who hosted a video conference call with Chris Packham, which was published yesterday (see links below).

It’s interesting to note that at the end of the discussion Kerry told Chris the Committee would be contacting the DEFRA Minister to try and extract another response and she also suggested that once Parliament is sitting again, there might be an opportunity to have what she called ‘a proper debate’. That’d be good. And as Chris said, this issue isn’t going away and campaigners will be continuing to raise awareness and mobilise more and more supporters to bring about a ban on driven grouse shooting.

Download the full transcript here: WildJustice petition videocall transcipt Kerry_Chris

Watch the video here:

Scottish Land & Estates appear to have some explaining to do re statement on ‘missing’ hen harriers

Last week the RSPB revealed that two more satellite-tagged hen harriers had ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on two grouse moors in the Cairngorms National Park (see here).

Scottish Land & Estates, the grouse moor owners’ lobby group, issued this statement in response. Pay close attention to the sentence underlined by RPUK:

For those who don’t know what the Heads Up for Hen Harriers Project is all about, a good place to start is by reading previous blogs see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Basically its a greenwashing exercise. The idea is that everybody pretends not to know why hen harrier nests are failing in certain areas (yes, really!) but by putting cameras on nests we might learn more about these ‘mystery issues’. The focus then becomes on natural predation events caught on camera and everybody can point to that as the main cause for hen harrier population decline instead of having to address the illegal persecution that continues far from any official nest camera scheme.

Scottish Land and Estates have been challenged before about publishing what looked to be inaccurate assertions about some of the estates involved in this sham (e.g. see here) but the organisation’s complete lack of transparency, coupled with SNH’s refusal to tell us which estates are involved in this project funded with taxpayers’ money, meant that SLE’s claims were allowed to stand.

Now it seems another of SLE’s claims about this project has been challenged. Have a look at this very interesting twitter exchange that was posted yesterday:

We’ll be following this with interest….

Watch this space.

Wild Justice launches legal challenge against badger cull

Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder yesterday (here) to support a legal challenge against the badger cull.

It’s already attracted a large sum of support but still has a long way to go to reach the target.

Here is the background information from Wild Justice’s crowdfunder page:

Wild Justice opposes DEFRA’s highly controversial Badger cull, licensed by Natural England. Amongst a plethora of reasons we regard it as an unwarranted assault on wildlife which will not eliminate bovine Tb from dairy herds and which operates at appallingly low standards of animal welfare.

We contend that DEFRA and Natural England have failed to define humane practices and that unacceptably high number of badgers, killed by free shooting, die slowly and painfully every year.

In 2014 an expert panel advising Government on animal welfare standards for Badger culls recommended that “in the context of controlled shooting of badgers by trained and licensed contractors, the percentage of animals surviving for more than 5 min after being shot, and the percentage being wounded but not retrieved, should not together exceed 5%”. 

Natural England’s own annual reports show that this standard is never met in practice and that the number of Badgers taking longer than 5 minutes to die or failing to be recovered is consistently about 10% – twice as high as recommended.

So DEFRA appears to us to be pursuing an inhumane Badger cull, NE is licensing it and Badgers are suffering cruelly. Why? Because a humane cull would be even more expensive and would draw even greater attention to the large sums of public money being spent on an unsuccessful control measure.

Wild Justice is raising money to challenge the legality of free shooting under current circumstances and we are seeking a judicial review of Natural England’s licensing decisions.

We want to initiate a debate on the inappropriate methods employed to facilitate the cull and challenge their legality.

This is a costly challenge – we have already spent a lot of time in correspondence with DEFRA and Natural England.  We need to raise £48,500 to pay our lawyers, court costs, costs of research, Crowdjustice fees and Natural England’s costs if we fail to win the legal argument.

Please help with a donation to enable us take this challenge on behalf of Badgers, those charismatic and ecologically essential members of our fauna.

Thank you for any help you can give.

Chris Packham, Ruth Tingay and Mark Avery (co-founders of Wild Justice)

If, for any unexpected reason, we raise more money than we need to fund this challenge then unspent funds will be retained by Crowdjustice and will be available for Wild Justice to use for other similar legal cases on behalf of UK wildlife.

ENDS

If you’re able to help please click here

Thank you

In conversation with Ian Thomson, Head of Investigations at RSPB Scotland

Jimmi Hill of charity Raptor Aid has recorded a series of fascinating interviews with various raptor experts during the lockdown period, all of them archived and available to watch for free (find Raptor Aid on Facebook and click on ‘videos’ in the left hand column).

One of the early ones was with Ian Thomson, Head of Investigations at RSPB Scotland. If you want a well-informed yet understated masterclass on the ins and outs of raptor persecution in Scotland, you should really watch this.