Author: RaptorPersecutionUK

Scottish parliamentary committee considers petition calling for mountain hare protection

Earlier this month Harry Huyton (on behalf of OneKind) presented evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee in support of a petition calling for greater protection for mountain hares.

This petition, signed by over 11,000 people, specifically calls for:

‘The Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce greater protection for mountain hares on both animal welfare and conservation grounds, which may include: introducing a three-year moratorium on all mountain hare killing, permitting culls and driven hunts only under licence, and ending all culling and driven hunting of mountain hares within Scotland’s National Parks using a Nature Conservation Order‘.

The full transcript of proceedings can be read here (starts at page 38):

Transcript Public Petitions Committee_14Sept2017

Photo of culled mountain hares being transported on a grouse moor on Farr Estate in February 2017 (photo by Pete Walkden)

It was an interesting discussion and Harry made many good suggestions about how the currently unregulated mass culling of mountain hares on grouse moors could be better regulated, including a fascinating analogy with seal culling. He said:

“We have tried to put forward a number of approaches. The other possibility would be a simple extension of the licensing regime. Given that the current regime applies five months of the year, why not just extend it to apply the whole year round? If we ran it for a few years, it would not only result in fewer mountain hares being killed but provide quite essential data on the level to which the species is being controlled.

I point the committee to a similar arrangement that was introduced five years ago for seal killing in Scotland. In that example, the move from unregulated to licensed activity not only resulted in a big reduction in the number of seals killed but brought transparency to the sector. Every three months, SNH publishes the latest data on the number of licences that have been issued and the number of seals that have been killed under licence, and that is essential from a conservation and, indeed, a welfare perspective“.

The Petitions Committee agreed to seek written evidence from several named stakeholders: SNH, Scottish Land & Estates, Scottish Wildlife Trust, James Hutton Institute and GWCT.

As Harry noted in his blog about this evidence session, the responses from some of these organisations is quite predictable – they will not support any change to the status quo (e.g. see responses given back in 2015 when ten conservation organisations called on the Scottish Government to introduce an immediate three-year ban – see here – an action that the Scottish Government ignored).

With that in mind, Harry urges those ten conservation organisations (National Trust for Scotland, John Muir Trust, RSPB Scotland, RSZZ, Highland Foundation for Wildlife, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish Raptor Study Group, The Cairngorms Campaign, the Mammal Society and the Badenoch & Strathspey Conservation Group) to update and republish their earlier joint statement so the Petitions Committee are provided with a more balanced view.

We strongly urge those ten groups to act. Given the comments made by some members of the Petitions Committee about mountain hares (as part of a discussion about Les Wallace’s petition calling for a study on the economic impact of driven grouse shooting), we think the Petitions Committee is quite confused about mountain hare culling.

For example, during the discussion on Les’s petition (starts on page six of this transcript), Petitions Committee Convenor Johann Lamont (Lab) said:

“It was interesting to hear last week that the mountain hare is thriving because of grouse“.

Committee member Brian Whittle (Con) said:

“Also, having subsequently had a wee look at it, I have found that other environmental issues are driving down the mountain hare population. The planting of spruce and conifers is driving the ferret, weasel and fox populations, which is decimating the hares. There is quite a tension“.

Hmm. Would love to see the scientific paper that demonstrates wild ferrets are decimating mountain hares!

Hopefully the ten conservation organisations can provide the Committee with a more scientifically accurate account of what is happening to mountain hares on driven grouse moors, such as this account by Dr Adam Watson, based on decades of scientific research.

Secret trial for Edradynate Estate gamekeeper

Back in June we blogged about the prosecution of former Edradynate Estate gamekeeper David Campbell for alleged offences including the malicious damage of crops (it is claimed he poisoned them by spraying with an unknown substance, causing them to rot and perish) and the alleged theft of a thermal imaging spotting scope (see here).

What fascinated us about this case was that the Crown Office deemed the charges sufficiently serious to begin proceedings ‘by petition’ – only serious cases are begun by petition and may be heard in the Sheriff Court or a higher court.

Contrast the Crown Office’s approach in this case with that of its approach in another case involving an unnamed Edradynate Estate gamekeeper, in relation to the alleged poisoning of several buzzards. Despite a plea from Police Scotland to proceed with a prosecution, the Crown Office decided to drop the case earlier this year with just a vague (and unsatisfactory) explanation (see here). We’re now waiting to see whether SNH will impose a General Licence restriction on the estate in relation to these and other alleged wildlife crimes.

But back to the alleged poisoning of crops and theft of estate equipment. We wanted to track this case so we called the Sheriff’s clerk to ask when the next hearing was due. The clerk was polite but firm; he couldn’t tell us because it was a secret. He didn’t actually use the word ‘secret’ but by telling us that he wasn’t allowed to provide any information, effectively he was saying it was a secret.

Eh? All we wanted to know was the date of the next hearing. We weren’t asking for any details about the case, the charges or whether the accused had entered a plea. Just the date of the next court hearing.

The clerk told us that all information relating to proceedings by petition were not for public release. We mentioned that this seemed a bit strange given that the details of the first court hearing back in June had been published in the local newspaper. He seemed a bit perplexed by this and went off to check with his manager. He came back and said he couldn’t tell us anything.

Excellent.

If there are any lawyers reading this blog who could explain why this case is shrouded in secrecy, given that it doesn’t appear to relate to a minor or to national security, we’d be very interested to hear those thoughts.

Scottish Parliament considers petition calling for study on economic impact of driven grouse shooting

Earlier this year, Les Wallace lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee calling for a comprehensive and independent study into the full economic impacts of driven grouse shooting (see here).

This petition was due to be heard by the Petitions Committee last week but they ran out of time so they deferred their consideration until the next meeting, which took place today.

Basically they agreed that a full independent study was needed but were unsure whether this topic would be covered as part of the Scottish Government’s earlier commitment in May to undertake a review of grouse moor management practices.

There was also confusion as to whether the Scottish Government had actually commissioned this research yet, and the panel agreed to contact the Scottish Government to ask for an update on progress and to ask for a timescale (e.g. start / finish date) of that proposed work.

Good. That’ll be very useful. Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said last week that “good progress is being made” and that she’ll be announcing further details “shortly“. We look forward to hearing more about it.

The Petitions Committee also agreed to write to SNH to ask for their view.

It was noted by the Committee that there had been a number of recent petitions relating to the management of grouse moors and its impact on the environment (e.g. Logan Steele’s petition on behalf of the SRSG calling for the introduction of a game shoot licensing scheme, Harry Huyton’s petition on behalf of OneKind calling for greater protection of mountain hares (we’ll blog more about this soon), and this current petition from Les about the economic impact of driven grouse shooting). Yes, there has been a flurry of petitions – that’s because there is a lot of public concern about what this industry has been allowed to get away with for so very long!

And isn’t it great to see it all being laid bare for political and public scrutiny!

Today’s Petitions Committee meeting can be watched on Scottish Parliament TV here (the discussion about Les’s petition starts at 09.31.21 and ends at 09.36).

Raptor shot in North York Moors National Park

North Yorkshire Police have tweeted about the shooting of a raptor two days ago in the North York Moors National Park:

At the moment there is no further information about the circumstances of this reported incident, the species, the extent of its injuries, and whether it’s alive or dead.

Hopefully the police will issue a detailed appeal for information.

[UPDATE 18.20hrs: Further tweets from the police – the shooting was witnessed by a walker, the bird was thought to be a marsh harrier or a buzzard, the body was not found].

The North York Moors National Park is a well known raptor persecution hotspot, which is no surprise given the extent of driven grouse moors within the Park’s boundary. Earlier this year a buzzard was found in the Park with shotgun injuries (here) and last year another buzzard was found in the Park with horrific injuries caused from being shot and caught in a leg trap (see here).

Where have all the merlins gone? A lament for the Lammermuirs

Earlier this year a peer-reviewed scientific paper was published in the journal British Birds, documenting the long-term decline of merlins on four driven grouse moors in the Lammermuirs, south east Scotland (see here).

In that paper the authors, all members of the Lothian & Borders Raptor Study Group, detailed the results of their 30-year study of merlins, brought to an abrupt halt at the end of the 2014 breeding season after several estate owners refused vehicular access for nest site monitoring.

The authors concluded that illegal persecution was NOT a contributory factor in the decline of the merlin population in this area, but suggested that the intensification of grouse moor management, particuarly an increase in heather burning, had probably had a detrimental impact.

This month the authors have another paper published, this time in the journal Scottish Birds:

This paper discusses many of the scientific results from their earlier paper, but is written in more of a commentary style and includes more information about the changes they observed during this long-term study.

This poignant paper is well worth a read: Where have all the Merlins gone

The Natural England hen harrier satellite tag cover up

Last week we blogged about how Natural England has been withholding 15 years worth of hen harrier tagging data, most of it paid for with public funds, and we encouraged blog readers to email them and ask for the data to be released without further delay (see here).

Specifically, we wanted to find out how many satellite-tagged hen harriers have ‘disappeared’ on grouse moors in England and whether those disappearances occured in non-random clusters on specific grouse moors, much like the suspicious clustering of ‘missing’ satellite-tagged golden eagles in certain grouse moor areas of Scotland.

We know that many of you did email Natural England (thank you) and yesterday (Mon 18 Sept 2017) they caved in and released some more data. Unfortunately, they’ve only released part of the data they hold. And of the information they did release, their interpretation of it is, frankly, scandalous. Natural England are either grossly incompetent or are being deliberately obstructive in an attempt to shield the criminal grouse moor managers from the spotlight. Actually, looking at the evidence, we think they’re being both incompetent and deliberately obstructive. See what you think.

Here’s what they released yesterday:

A spreadsheet showing the number of hen harriers they tagged between 2002 and 2017. This is an updated version of the spreadsheet they published in 2014. It shows a total of 158 harriers were tagged: 99 with radio tags and 59 with satellite tags. Download the spreadsheet here: hen-harrier-tracking-data-2002-onwards

Accompanying this spreadsheet is some inaccurate explanatory text and three maps. We know that both the text and the maps are inaccurate because the explanatory text says that “Fig 2 shows the movement of birds obtained from the satellite tracking data covering 158 birds” when actually only 59 birds have been satellite-tagged. Figure 2 is also supposed to show the movement of satellite-tagged hen harriers but it doesn’t include any tag data from the continent, and we know from the spreadsheet that at least one sat tagged hen harrier was defintely recorded in Spain (McPedro) and two other birds were recorded in France. However, these international locations ARE shown in Fig 3, which is supposed to be a combination of the data from Figs 1 & 2. That’s just sheer incompetence.

We can largely ignore these maps because (a) we know they’re inaccurate but, more importantly, (b) they’ve been produced at such a low scale as to render them virtually useless. They do show that some tagged hen harriers wander widely across political boundaries but that’s not new information.

What we’re more interested in is the updated spreadsheet.

The updated spreadsheet shows how many of these tagged hen harriers are ‘missing, fate unknown’. 86 of the 99 radio tagged harriers are in this category (that’s 86.8%). Radio tags were used during the early years of the study, prior to the availability of satellite tags. Natural England quite rightly points out that, due to the limitation of this technology, not much can be surmised about the birds’ fates. If the bird moves out of range of the hand-held tracking receiver (which has a limited line-of-sight range of a few kms), then there’s no way of knowing whether the radio tagged bird is alive or dead. That’s fair comment, and it’s why many research studies switched over to using geographically unconstrained satellite tags in the late 2000s.

So let’s ignore the radio tagged hen harriers and instead concentrate on the ones that were satellite-tagged between 2007 and 2017. There were 59 satellite-tagged hen harriers during this period, and of these, 43 are listed as ‘missing, fate unknown’. That’s a very high 72.8%. Natural England provides some explanatory notes about what might have happened to these harriers:

Natural England, are you for real? This is the sort of half-arsed spin we’d expect from Dr Charlotte Tan, Professor of Grouse Moor Managementology at the GWCT. Are we seriously expected to believe that the 43 missing sat tagged hen harriers have all died of natural causes, lying on their backs, thus rendering their tags incapable of charging and transmitting further data? Sure, that might have happened in a handful of cases, but in 43 out of 43 cases? Come on!

It’s scandalous that Natural England excludes ANY explanation for these missing harriers that might just involve illegal persecution, especially when they’ve previously admitted that their own tagging research found “Compelling evidence that persecution continues, both during and after the breeding season” and “Persecution continues to limit Hen Harrier recovery in England” (Natural England, 2008, A Future for the Hen Harrier in England?).

Now, had Natural England published a map showing the locations of where these 43 ‘missing, fate unknown’ hen harriers went off the radar, we might be able to detect some patterns to see whether they disappeared at random locations across the landscape (which you’d expect if the birds had died on their backs of natural causes) or, rather like satellite-tagged golden eagles, they disappeared in suspicious clusters in certain grouse moor areas.

That Natural England haven’t provided this level of detail is very telling indeed. They’ve got the information and it would only take a matter of minutes to upload those data on to a map that would have sufficient resolution to identify suspicious geographical clustering but that wouldn’t compromise sensitive site details.

It is quite clear to us that Natural England are involved in a cover-up job, designed to protect those hen harrier-killing grouse moor managers from any hint of suspicion. Sorry, Natural England, but we won’t allow you to continue to mislead like this.

We’d urge blog readers to write again to Natural England and ask for the release of this information. This time we recommend sending the email as a formal FoI request as opposed to a more informal general enquiry (which Natural England can easily swerve, as above). Emails please to: foi@naturalengland.org.uk

In the words of Chris Packham:

Update 6 October 2017: The Natural England Hen Harrier satellite tag cover up: part 2 (see here).

National golden eagle survey 2015: low occupancy on Eastern Highland grouse moors remains a concern

Every year a proportion of the Scottsh golden eagle population is surveyed by licensed experts from the Scottish Raptor Study Group. This phenomenal voluntary effort (currently 373 home ranges [approx 53% of known ranges] monitored by 150 eagle experts) provides invaluable data that are submitted to the Scottish Raptor Monitoring Scheme and are used to inform conservation policy at local, regional and national level.

In addition to this annual monitoring, a national survey is periodically undertaken with both paid and voluntary experts in an effort to visit every known home range throughout Scotland.

Photo by Mark Hamblin

The latest national golden eagle survey took place in 2015 and the interim results were announced in November 2016. The main headline was that overall, the national population had increased by 15%, rising from 442 pairs recorded during the last national survey in 2003, to 508 territorial pairs in 2015, and the species was now considered to be in favourable conservation status.

This was excellent and welcome news, but as we pointed out at the time, the headline masked a more sinister situation. Although the national population had surpassed 500 territorial pairs, the magic number needed to upgrade the species’ national conservation status from ‘unfavourable’ to ‘favouable’, it was still well below the estimated capacity of 700 pairs. This meant that approx 200 pairs of golden eagles were still ‘missing’.

Unsurprisingly, the national survey revealed that golden eagle populations in the driven grouse moor areas of eastern and southern Scotland were still being suppressed and had not shown any significant sign of recovery since the previous national survey in 2003. Illegal persecution has been identified time and time again as the main constraint on population growth in these regions.

The formal scientific peer-reviewed results of the 2015 national survey were published last week in the journal Bird Study [Hayhow, D., Benn, S., Stevenson, A., Stirling-Aird, P. and Eaton, M. (2017). Status of golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos in Britain in 2015. Bird Study].

Unfortunately publishing restrictions do not permit us to upload the full paper (you’ll have to subscribe to Bird Study for full access) but here is the abstract:

[UPDATE: This paper is now fully available online, free access, thanks to the BTO. Click here]

In additon to details about the continued low occupancy on grouse moors in the eastern Highlands, the paper also provides information that dispels a couple of myths that are frequently claimed as ‘facts’ by the SGA and co.

You might remember the SGA giving evidence to a parliamentary committee earlier this year where they claimed that “the Cairngorms National Park held the highest density of eagles in the world“. They might want to have a look at this map. This is the distribution of pairs of golden eagles in 2015 and shows the densities of occupied home ranges by 10 x 10 km squares. As you can see, the highest densities of golden eagles were recorded in the Outer Hebrides and on Mull (no grouse moors in these areas):

Another commonly-heard myth, usually trotted out to support calls for the ‘control’ of white-tailed eagles, is that re-introduced white-tailed eagles are displacing golden eagles and taking over their territories/nest sites, even though recent research has demonstrated that these two species partition their habitat and prey preferences in western Scotland. In this latest paper, the authors comment:

“Although we have not assessed this in the current study, we report increases in golden eagles numbers in regions such as the Hebridean Islands in which there has been a rapid increase in white-tailed eagles (Holling 2016), which suggests that, at least at current population levels, there has been no major impact“.

The authors do acknowledge that the white-tailed eagle population is predicted to continue its expansion and this may, potentially, create competition between the two species in the future but right now, based on the currently available data, there is no evidence to suggest this is a population-level concern.

The main current threat to Scottish golden eagles is the same as it was following the previous national survey, fourteen years ago. And that is illegal persecution on some driven grouse moors in the eastern Highlands and south Scotland. The grouse-shooting representatives can continue to deny it, but this latest paper is yet another nail in the coffin of this filthy industry.

Northern England Raptor Forum (NERF) annual conference 2017

Booking is now open for this year’s Northern England Raptor Forum (NERF) annual conference, which takes place at Northumbria University in Newcastle on Saturday 18th November 2017.

For further details and to book your place, please visit the NERF website here.

Two parliaments, two politicians, two questions, two very different attitudes to raptors

Dim-witted DUP dinosaur Jim Shannon MP (Strangford, Northern Ireland), a member of the Countryside Alliance and not known for having a sharp intellect, posed the following written parliamentary question on 5 September 2017:

Question 8483: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, if he will consider controls on the number of raptor birds in the countryside.

Answered by DEFRA Under Secretary of State Dr Therese Coffey, 13 September 2017:

Nature conservation is a devolved matter. In England all wild birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it an offence to kill, injure or take wild birds or to take or damage their eggs and nests. There are provisions under Section 16 of the 1981 Act that allow for the control of raptors for specific reasons, for example, to conserve other wild birds. Licence applications are dealt with on a case by case basis and priority must be given to non-lethal methods. The Government is not considering any further controls on the number of raptors.

Meanwhile, back in the 21st Century, yesterday in the Scottish Parliament Hen Harrier Species Champion Mairi Gougeon MSP (SNP, Angus North & Mearns) asked the following question:

Question # S50-01250: To ask the Scottish Government what role the police and the Crown Office have in dealing with wildlife crime.

Answered by Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham, 14 September 2017:

Wildlife crime is crime. Perpetrators will be investigated and, if there is sufficient evidence, prosecuted, as with any other crime. However, we are aware that there are characteristics of wildlife crime that mean that a specialised approach is required. For example, wildlife crime often takes place in remote areas where there are no witnesses, and of course there are usually no victims able to report what has happened to them. For those reasons, we are working with Police Scotland to expand the resources that are available to the police to tackle wildlife crime, with a pilot project to provide additional special constables in Cairngorms national park. The Crown Office also has a specialist wildlife and environmental crime unit to tackle such crime.

Mairi Gougeon followed up with a supplementary question:

The cabinet secretary will be aware of the recent shooting of a hen harrier on the Cabrach estate and the recent disappearance of Calluna, a satellite-tagged hen harrier, near Ballater. In the light of those incidents, what action is the Scottish Government taking to implement the recommendations of the satellite tagging review?

Roseanna Cunningham answered:

I am aware of those appalling incidents. In the light of the satellite tagging review, which was announced on 31 May, we will bring forward a number of measures, which include setting up an independently led group to look at grouse moor management practices and increasing Police Scotland resources, as I mentioned.

In accordance with that, good progress is being made on those areas; I will announce further details shortly. In the meantime, other work goes on—the police respond to and investigate reports that are received, and there are actions such as the further use of restrictions on general licences by Scottish Natural Heritage when wildlife crime is suspected to have taken place. We are determined to put an end to wildlife crime.

Three raptor workers short-listed for national conservation awards

Huge congratulations to Brian Etheridge, Andrea Hudspeth and Logan Steele, three Scottish Raptor Study Group members who have been shortlisted in this year’s Nature of Scotland Awards.

Brian Etheridge is on the shortlist for the RSPB Species Champion Award. To be shortlisted for this award ‘the entrant will have achieved something extraordinary to conserve a vulnerable or threatened species‘. Brian is indeed extraordinary, as are his achievements in the field of raptor monitoring and conservation. Through many decades of fieldwork he has accrued a vast knowledge on the ecology and conservation of a number of species, notably red kite and hen harrier but also merlin, common buzzard, honey buzzard, goshawk and golden eagle, but perhaps of greater significance is his ability and willingness to share that knowledge and experience with others. Brian’s expertise is always in high demand and he’s always, always generous with his time, encouragement and support. This has been beneficial not only to the species he studies, but also to an army of young, up-and-coming researchers, both amateur and professional, who’ve been fortunate to spend any time with him.

Andrea Hudspeth and Logan Steele have been shortlisted for the Political Advocate of the Year Award. This award is ‘to recognise a politician, campaigner or individual who has made a difference or significant impact on public policy for nature and wildlife‘. Andrea and Logan helped prepare the public petition, on behalf of the SRSG, calling for the licensing of gamebird shooting in Scotland. They gave measured, thoughtful and compelling evidence at two parliamentary committees last year, pushing the issue of raptor persecution higher up the political agenda. As a direct result of their efforts, the Scottish Government is undertaking a review of grouse moor management practices and, significantly, is considering the introduction of a licensing scheme. Also as a direct result of their efforts, they have both been subjected to a vile campaign of harrassment and intimidation from some disgraceful individuals within the game-shooting sector. Andrea and Logan have dealt with this appalling abuse with dignity and fortitude.

It’s fantastic to see these three people receive some well-earned recognition – well done, thank you, and good luck at the awards ceremony in November!