“The Moorland Association condemns all acts of wildlife crime and supports the prosecution of those who break the law.
We were not aware of the events leading to the release of this video clip but understand it is alleged to have been filmed in February. We learnt yesterday that since then the police have conducted their enquries and have decided to take no further action. We were not contacted as part of that investigation. From the clip, it is very difficult to make out any detail at all, either of a person or a decoy.
The identity of any person allegedly filmed is unknown, as is the location. No crime has been committed as far as we can see. Making judgements based on assumptions of the content of this clip, or indeed the intentions of those who have produced it, would be pure supposition and not something we are going to enter into“.
So there we have it. A predictable, complete and utter denial from the organisation representing grouse moor owners.
According to Amanda, she found it difficult to see the armed man or the decoy hen harrier. Perhaps she had a bit of medicated grit in her eye, and its toxic properties have corroded her retinal cells, because everyone else who’s seen the footage (or at least those who don’t have a vested interest in protecting the grossly damaging activities of the grouse-shooting industry) has been able to see an armed man sitting on a grouse moor, close to a decoy hen harrier.
Sure, the image quality is poor, but then it was filmed from a distance of 1km so all things considered, it’s actually pretty good. And it was good enough for the police to launch an investigation, it was good enough for the National Trust to launch an investigation, and it was good enough for the Chief Executive of the Peak District National Park Authority to tweet yesterday: “This video is alarming and suspicious“.
Perhaps we can all have a whip round to help pay for some urgent corrective eye-surgery for Amanda?
Actually, that would be pointless. No amount of surgery can help someone with wilful blindness, for that is what she, and the rest of the grouse-shooting industry, is suffering. This contrived ignorance is as deliberate as it is predictable.
We asked yesterday whether the Moorland Association’s claims about operating a zero tolerance policy towards hen harrier persecution were sincere or fake. The answer is evident.
All negotiations with this outfit should cease immediately. There’s no compromise to be had here, their intentions are clear. The Raptor Groups and the RSPB should pull out of the failed Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative charade and stop pretending that there’s any hope of effective partnership-working with these people. There isn’t.
There is hope for change though. And that comes in the form of getting a political debate on the future of driven grouse shooting. 100,000 signatures are needed to bring about that debate; we’re almost one third of the way there already. Make your voice heard, sign this petition and ask others to sign too (HERE).
Remember, this wasn’t just any old grouse moor. It was a National Trust-owned grouse moor, within the Peak District National Park, and a participant moor in the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative.
Statement from Jon Stewart, General Manager, National Trust (Peak District):
“As part of our High Peak Moors Vision and as a conservation charity, the National Trust is committed to protecting birds of prey and working closely with partners and tenants in managing the moors. We are aware of a report of a suspicious incident being investigated by the police, which took place in February this year on land in the Peak District which we own and lease out for grouse shooting. We have been awaiting the results of their investigation before following up ourselves. We now know the police have reviewed the footage but are taking no further action, so we will now be carrying out a full investigation of our own. We are treating this very seriously and will not be commenting further pending the results of that investigation.”
It’s good that they’ve bothered to issue a statement, and it’s good that they are launching their own ‘full investigation’, although it would have been better had they launched this investigation back in February, when they were first made aware of this video. They needn’t have waited for the results of the police investigation to launch their own internal investigation.
Nevertheless, they’ve said they’re investigating and they’ve said they are treating this “very seriously”, so let’s see just how seriously they’ll manage this. They know the identity of the estate where the footage was filmed (on the Snake Moors, according to a comment given by the NT to Mark Avery this morning), and presumably they have a contract with the shooting tenant of that estate that will allow them to take action against the tenant if there is evidence to suggest the tenant has breached the conditions of the contract.
As we understand it, the National Trust re-assessed its contracts with its three grouse moor tenants within the Peak District National Park following the earlier case of raptor persecution that was uncovered on the NT Howden Moor, resulting in the conviction of gamekeeper Glenn Brown (see here). It is rumoured that the revised contracts include a clause detailing the specific type of predator control techniques permitted on NT land. We wonder if the use of a decoy raptor was specifically mentioned in the new contract?
We await the findings of their investigation, and news of what action the NT will (or won’t) take with great interest. Let’s hope they get this right.
Thames Valley Police are appealing for information after the discovery of two injured red kites, both suffering from shotgun wounds.
Both kites were discovered in Oakley Wood, near Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. One was found on 29th March 2016 and the second was found on 5th April.
There’s an interesting editorial in the current edition of British Birds.
Written by RSPB Senior Investigations Officer Guy Shorrock, it’s about the use and role of social media in tackling the endemic problem of raptor persecution – see here.
On Wednesday 24th February 2016 at around 11am, two birdwatchers were out walking on the moors in Derbyshire hoping for a view of a ringtail hen harrier that had been reported in the area the day before.
One of these birdwatchers spotted a grey raptor with black wing tips, perched approx. 1km away and the observer believed he was looking at a male hen harrier. As he was explaining the location to his colleague so he too could see the bird, his colleague said: “An armed man dressed in camouflage has just jumped in to the heather no more than 10-20m from the bird”. Both observers scanned out from the bird and saw the armed man crouching in the heather, and they also noticed a green Land Rover parked on the moor, approx. 500m from the bird.
The two observers sat and watched for a few minutes while deciding what to do, and then managed to film some footage via digiscope. Here’s a still image from that footage:
As soon as the two observers had stopped filming, the armed man immediately ran over to the bird, picked it up and walked hurriedly away in the opposite direction to the observers.
What the two observers had witnessed was, of course, a fake hen harrier. Some might call it a decoy, but that would imply that the fake hen harrier was being used as a lure to draw in a real male hen harrier who would probably want to attack the decoy as part of his territorial defence strategy. While the real hen harrier was busy attacking the decoy, anybody crouched nearby with, say, a shotgun, would be given an easy opportunity to shoot and kill the real bird.
But surely that’s not what was happening on this moor. This isn’t just any moor. We’re not going to name the moor/estate because we need to protect the identities of the two observers and also the identity of the person who sent us the footage. However, Derbyshire Constabulary is aware of the location, as is the National Trust. What we can say is this moor is a driven grouse moor, on National Trust property, within the Peak District National Park. It is also part of the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative.
What’s the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative? It’s a partnership approach to restoring raptor populations in the area, established in 2011 following concerns (here and here) about declining raptor populations in the Dark Peak. The partners include the Moorland Association, Peak District National Park Authority, English Nature, National Trust, the RSPB, and more recently, Derbyshire Constabulary. So far the Initiative has failed spectacularly (see here).
But all is not lost, as according to a statement by Amanda Anderson, Director of the Moorland Association:
“We are renewing our action plan and redoubling our efforts to ensure that this brings improved results. The partnership has also agreed that this work needs to be extended to cover other species, notably goshawk and hen harrier, and to include the South West Peak.”
And Sarah Fowler, Chief Executive of the Peak District National Park Authority said:
“We will be using the new rigour and energy recently brought to the project to seek to restore breeding success of our iconic bird of prey species in the National Park. We will be seeking a greater level of commitment from partners in the Initiative to reverse the fortunes of birds of prey.”
Nope, nothing there about using a decoy hen harrier to lure in a real hen harrier so it can be killed, illegally, with ease, so there must be another explanation.
Perhaps the grouse-shooting industry will tell us that the decoy hen harrier was being used legitimately to lure in crows. Crows and other so-called ‘pest’ species would be attracted to a decoy raptor as they’d try to mob it in an attempt to harass the ‘predator’ into leaving the area. Luring in crows with a decoy would allow a gamekeeper to lawfully shoot the crows at close range. But hang on, let’s think about this. Gamekeepers already have several methods of luring crows, e.g. crow cage traps, Larsen traps, clam traps etc, all of which are effective techniques and don’t require the gamekeeper to be present for hours on end, thus freeing up his time to undertake other ‘vital conservation’ work such as torching the heather or spreading toxic veterinary medicines across the moor. And why choose a male hen harrier as the decoy species and go to all the trouble of having to make it? Why not use a readily available crow decoy that can be bought online for a couple of quid? Or a plastic eagle owl decoy, also cheap and readily available to buy at most garden centres? Nope, ‘It’s a hen harrier decoy to attract crows’ would be a wholly implausible explanation. There must be another reason why this armed man was observed crouching near a fake hen harrier and why he took off with it as soon as he realised he’d been seen.
Perhaps this armed man’s behaviour was part of DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Recovery Plan? Er, nope, can’t see anything in the plan that says sitting with a shotgun close to a fake hen harrier will contribute anything towards this species’ recovery. There must be another explanation. But what can it be?
Why don’t we ask some of the partners in the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative, and some of the organisations signed up to DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Recovery Plan, what, exactly, they think is happening in this video?
Do they think it might show the preparation of an imminent wildlife crime? Even though the footage doesn’t show illegal activity per se, the observed scene has all the hallmarks of potentially turning in to something much more sinister. Don’t know about you, but it makes us wonder about those five male hen harriers that ‘disappeared’ last summer.
All of these partners and organisations have said, repeatedly, that they operate a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to illegal raptor persecution, so now’s their opportunity to demonstrate it. What action, if any, do these organisations intend to take in response to this footage? Their responses (which we’ll publish here) will tell us whether they’re serious about implementing a zero tolerance approach or whether they’re just faking it.
So, two questions. How do the individuals (below) explain what is happening in this video, and what action do they intend to take? Emails please to:
For those of you who share our view of what was probably going on in this video, you might want to consider joining 31,000+ people who have had enough of this disgraceful charade by signing HERE
UPDATE 11.20hrs: Mark Avery’s view on what should happen next – here
UPDATE 27th April 2016: National Trust response to video here
UPDATE 27th April 2016: Moorland Association response to video here
UPDATE 28th April 2016: BBC news has an article on this story here
UPDATE 10th June 2016: National Trust pulls grouse shooting lease in Peak District National Park (here)
The following images appeared on social media a couple of days ago.
This is a goshawk that was found critically injured in Brockweir, Gloucestershire in April 2016 and was taken to Vale Wildlife Hospital. It had been shot in the head.
Unfortunately its injuries were so severe the decision was taken to euthanise the bird.
No further information available.
UPDATE Tues 26th April: Glos Police has today issued an appeal for info here
Scottish gamekeeper Craig Graham, 51, has been charged with repeatedly setting an illegal pole trap on an estate in the Angus Glens.
At a second court hearing yesterday (1st court hearing 31st March 2016), Forfar Sheriff Court heard that Head gamekeeper Mr Graham allegedly set and re-set a pole trap, baited with a pheasant carcass, on a tree stump, between 9th-17th July 2015. A further charge states that Mr Graham set the illegal trap with the intention of killing or taking a wild bird.
The offences are alleged to have occurred between Bridge of Brewlands and Kirkton of Glenisla. According to Andy Wightman’s Who Owns Scotlandwebsite, this area comprises part of the Brewlands and Kilry Estate.
Last month we blogged about an injured red kite that had been found in Malton, North Yorkshire. It had suffered shotgun injuries to the throat and was being cared for by wildlife rehabilitator extraordinaire, Jean Thorpe (see here).
After a few weeks of care and attention, that red kite was successfully released back to the wild yesterday (Photo by Robert Fuller)
Well done and thank you, Jean Thorpe, what a remarkable lady! Remember, Jean does this in a voluntary capacity with no government funding to support her work. Please consider making a small (or large!) donation to help her: HERE.
Of course, North Yorkshire isn’t the only location where red kites are routinely persecuted, either by illegal trapping, shooting or poisoning. There’s a poignant commentary on Mark Avery’s blog today, documenting the disgraceful persecution of red kites on the grouse moors of north east England and how this is suppressing the expansion of the reintroduced kite population. It’s an all too familiar story (e.g. see here).
Join the tens of thousands of ordinary people who are saying enough is enough: HERE
A Scottish gamekeeper is appealing his conviction for killing a buzzard.
In August 2015, gamekeeper William (Billy) Dick, now 26, was found guilty of killing a buzzard on the Newlands Estate, Dumfriesshire, in April 2014. Two witnesses had observed him striking the buzzard with rocks and then repeatedly stamping on it (see here). In September 2015 he was sentenced: £1,500 fine for killing the buzzard and £500 for possession of the dead buzzard (see here).
Dick had maintained his innocence throughout the trial and had claimed he was elsewhere when the offence took place (see here).
His appeal was due to be heard this week but has now been delayed until 13th May 2016:
The outcome of this appeal will be interesting on several levels, not just whether the evidence accepted in the original trial was good enough. The case is tied in with the prosecution of Newlands Estate landowner Andrew Duncan, who is charged with being vicariously liable for the criminal actions of gamekeeper Dick. Andrew Duncan’s case has been repeatedly adjourned while Dick’s appeal is heard (see here).
If Dick’s appeal is upheld, we might expect the allegations against Andrew Duncan to be dropped. If the case against the landowner is dropped, we might expect landowners’ lobby group Scottish Land & Estates (SLE) to reinstate the membership of Newlands Estate, and also reinstate the Newlands Estate accreditation to SLE’s Wildlife Estates Scotland initiative, which, you’ll recall, has been “voluntarily suspended” pending legal proceedings (see here).
There’s an interesting editorial in the current edition of British Birds.
Raptor Persecution UK 