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Gamebirds shot & dumped in Suffolk

More shot pheasants dumped in the countryside, this time in Suffolk.

These were photographed by @pjcantwell76 on 28th December 2020.

That’s Suffolk added to the growing list of areas where this disgusting behaviour has been reported, including  Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North Yorkshire (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here), Lincolnshire (here), Somerset (here) and Derbyshire’s Peak District National Park (here).

More to follow…..

Third buzzard found shot in Essex this year

Essex Police are investigating yet another shooting of a buzzard.

Details are sketchy at the moment but the buzzard is believed to have been shot overnight between 1st and 2nd December with ‘what is believed to be a shotgun’. There isn’t any information about whether the buzzard is alive or dead.

The offence is believed to have taken place on farmland near Blind Lane, Billericay, Essex CM12 9SN.

The police crime reference number is 42/1995748/20. Please contact the police on Tel 101 if you have information that can assist this criminal investigation. Thanks to Police Wildlife Crime Officer Jed Raven for the details.

This is the third buzzard to be reported shot in Essex this year – one was found in June (see here) and another in September (see here and here). A hobby was also shot in Essex in August this year (see here).

Shot gamebirds dumped in carpark in Peak District National Park

Further to the blog post on Xmas Eve documenting a binbag full of shot gamebirds that had been dumped by the roadside in Somerset (see here), here’s another load that have dumped, this time in a car park in the Peak District National Park. Nice, eh?

This bag containing pheasants and mallard was photographed by Dan Abrahams (@DanAbrahams3 on Twitter) on 22nd December 2020 at Monyash (Lathkill) car park inside the National Park.

So now Derbyshire can be added to the growing list of counties where shot gamebirds have been dumped, including Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North Yorkshire (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here), Lincolnshire (here) and Somerset (here).

Wherever next? Standby, ladies and gentlemen, more to follow….

Scotland’s beavers need your help

A short diversion from this blog’s theme, but an important one.

Scottish charity Trees for Life is making a legal challenge against NatureScot (formerly known as SNH), with the intention of taking the Government’s nature conservation agency to court for allowing too many beavers to be killed.

Legal challenges are not for the faint-hearted nor for the lazy. They are hard work and time-consuming. They also cost money.

Trees for Life has a crowdfunder which is open for another 7 days. They’ve raised over £25K so far, with a target of £40K. The crowdfunder also provides details about why this legal challenge is necessary.

If you can help them, please support it here.

For those interested in more detail about the beaver saga in Scotland, the links in this piece from The Ferret are illuminating.

Shot gamebirds dumped by roadside in Somerset

Here we go again….

Matt Collis (@Mattcollis9) has posted photographs on Twitter of a bagful of shot gamebirds that he found today, dumped on Withyditch Lane, Peasedown St John, Somerset:

Matt wrote:

‘I’m not against hunting. But there is no honour in sport shooting. No respect for the life taken. No honourable harvest. Certainly not from this person. Rest assured I will restore that respect, always grateful for what nature provides‘.

His next tweet:

Keep an eye out for piles of dumped shot gamebirds along hedgerows, roads, laybys, local woodland, fields etc. It happens every year, despite the desperate claims of the shooting industry reps who pretend that, “Every bird shot in Britain goes in to the food chain” (Tim Bonner, Countryside Alliance).

The annual photographs of dumped gamebirds suggest otherwise, e.g. see previous reports of shot dumped birds in Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North Yorkshire (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here) and Lincolnshire (here).

It seems to be a widespread problem, doesn’t it? That’s hardly a surprise when the game shooting industry is permitted to release as many non-native pheasants and red-legged partridge as it likes (estimated to be nearly 60 million EVERY YEAR), with minimal regulation, and no requirement to report on what happens to those birds once they’ve been shot for a bit of a laugh.

And let’s not forget this is the same game shooting industry that is responsible for the vast majority of illegal raptor persecution, done, it says, to protect gamebirds. That’ll be the gamebirds that are shot and then dumped, with no respect for the quarry and no respect for the local residents who’ll have to foot the bill to have the carcasses removed, unless decent, public-spirited individuals like Matt Collis find them first.

Ben Macpherson is latest Environment Minister after reshuffle

Scottish Environment Minister Mairi Gougeon has been appointed as Public Health Minister, to replace Joe Fitzpatrick who resigned last week.

As Mairi moves on, the new Environment Minister (or Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, to be precise) is Ben Macpherson, who moves from another Ministerial role in to this new position.

[Photo from benmacpherson.scot website]

The Scottish Government website has posted this bio:

Ben grew up in Edinburgh before studying a BA Honours degree in Philosophy and Politics at the University of York. After graduating he returned to Edinburgh and worked in a number of different roles before going on to complete a postgraduate LLB and a Diploma in Legal Practice at the University of Edinburgh. He then qualified as a solicitor and practised as a lawyer with one of Scotland’s large commercial firms. As well as his legal training, Ben has worked in financial services, for an NGO, in renewable energy, in a school and in hospitality.

Throughout his career, Ben has been a committed political activist. In 2016 this culminated in being elected as the MSP for the Edinburgh Northern and Leith constituency, where he lives.

As a backbencher, Ben has previously served on the Scottish Parliament’s Social Security Committee, Justice Committee and Sub-Committee on Policing. He was also a Parliamentary Liaison Officer to the First Minster between 2016-2018. In June 2018 he was appointed as Minister for Europe, Migration and International Development in the Scottish Government, before moving in February 2020 to his current role as Minister for Public Finance and Migration.

He is a committed internationalist and passionate about social justice and sustainable, inclusive economic progress. Beyond working and campaigning, Ben likes running, football and watching films and documentaries.

The news of Ben’s appointment was met with undisguised fury by some in the game shooting sector, who began hurling personal abuse at him on social media for, er, living in Edinburgh. Fortunately this foul vitriol was diluted somewhat by the warm welcome he received from many in the conservation sector.

This junior ministerial position is still overseen by Cabinet Secs Roseanna Cunningham (Environment, Climate Change & Land Reform) and Fergus Ewing (Rural Economy & Tourism). Roseanna is not standing for the 2021 election so there’ll be another new face for this portfolio in May, unless an old face returns…..

Paul Wheelhouse for Cabinet Secretary would be a bit of a result if the SNP retain power. A thoroughly decent guy with plenty of Ministerial experience, including a period as Environment Minister (2012-2014), where he was particularly active on pushing forward measures to combat illegal raptor persecution (e.g. general licence restrictions, wildlife crime sentencing review, instructions to Crown Office to utilise all enforcement tools available, review on gamebird management in European countries).

After the Scottish Government’s landmark decision last month (here) to finally introduce a licensing scheme for grouse shooting as soon as possible in the next Parliamentary session, assuming they are re-elected, there are interesting times ahead as the details of this scheme are still to be thrashed out.

Hen harriers doing well on Mar Lodge Estate but what happens when they leave?

Back in 2016, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) was celebrating the rare success of a hen harrier breeding attempt on the Mar Lodge Estate, the first such success for decades (see here).

[A young hen harrier fitted with a satellite tag on Mar Lodge Estate in 2016. Photo by Shaila Rao]

The NTS has just published an update on the return of hen harriers to Mar Lodge Estate, detailing further breeding successes in each year since (see here).

This is really, really encouraging news, but it’s only half of the story. Breeding success is meaningless if survival rates are low, and they are low, very low. The most recent national survey of hen harriers in Scotland, conducted in 2016, documented a 9% decline since the previous survey in 2010. It was the second successive decline in the Scottish hen harrier population revealed by national surveys, signalling a worrying trend. In the longer term, over a period of just 12 years, the number of breeding pairs had dropped by 27% in Scotland (see here). Illegal persecution connected to driven grouse moor management is widely acknowledged as being the most significant threat to this species’ conservation, not just in Scotland but across the UK (e.g. see here).

The NTS blog recognises this and states:

‘However, it’s not all good news. The success of hen harrier breeding at Mar Lodge Estate led to us being involved in the RSPB Hen Harrier Life Project and through this 14 harrier chicks from Mar Lodge Estate were satellite-tagged between 2016 and 2020. But of these 14 chicks, only one still survives in 2020 – a female named Tamara, who spends much of her time in Perthshire. Eight of the satellite tags stopped suddenly, with no trace of a bird or body found, raising suspicions of possible foul play‘.

Some of those young birds satellite-tagged at Mar Lodge didn’t even make it out of the Cairngorms National Park, ‘disappearing’ in suspicious circumstances on driven grouse moors – e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, joining a growing list of other sat-tagged hen harriers that have vanished or been found dead there (e.g. see here, here, here, here). Such is the extent of this issue, the Cairngorms National Park Authority has had to publish statements that illegal persecution continues to be a problem (e.g. see here).

Some of those young birds from the Mar Lodge Estate feature on the grim list of 45 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed illegally killed in the UK since 2018 – see here. I’m led to believe that this list is now out of date (see here).

Marsh harriers breed in Ireland for the first time in a century

Press release from Irish Raptor Study Group (15 December 2020)

Rare Marsh Harriers breed in Ireland for the first time in a century

The Irish Raptor Study Group, a voluntary organisation committed to the conservation of birds of prey, is delighted to confirm that two pairs of Marsh Harrier Cromán móna (Irish name) have successfully bred in Ireland in 2020. The Marsh Harrier was last known to have bred in the Republic of Ireland around 1917. The two pairs were confirmed from Co. Galway and Co. Westmeath with both pairs successfully fledging two young.

The Marsh Harrier is a large and dark coloured bird of prey with a long tail and light flight with wings held in a shallow ‘V’. Adult males have smoky grey tails and wings with chestnut belly and shoulders, while females are dark brown with a creamy head crown. Marsh Harrier can be found on open freshwater wetlands and extensive reedbeds, selecting to nest on piles of reeds surrounded by dense marshy vegetation. Marsh Harrier is a generalist wetland predator with a mostly aquatic diet including small birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

Marsh Harrier were adversely affected by prolonged persecution and widespread wetland/fen destruction during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Approximately 80% of the original extent of fens in the Republic of Ireland has been lost to drainage for peat extraction and reclamation for agricultural land. The cumulative impact of wetland loss due to the Arterial Drainage Act 1945 and the preparatory drainage across bogs in Galway and Roscommon for energy production by Bord na Mona from 1946 limited any real prospect of Marsh Harriers returning in Ireland.

Marsh Harriers are scarce summer visitors to Ireland but more likely to be seen in winter along the south east coast. The last 20 years has seen the recovery of the breeding population of Marsh Harrier along the east and south eastern coastal band of England to more than c.430 breeding pairs. The steady population recovery elsewhere in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, has almost certainly assisted the current increase in England, with a spill over of individuals into Ireland. However, the scale of habitat loss in Ireland may make recolonisation of breeding Marsh Harrier a very slow process.

The Marsh Harrier, like the Eurasian Crane Corr*, Osprey Iascaire Coirneach* and the Bittern An Bonnán Buí* is one of our lost wetland treasures. Recent ambition within our Programme for Government to rehabilitate and re-wet peatlands provides an amazing opportunity for ecological restoration. Both the €108 million funding for Bord na Móna rehabilitation plan and the European Innovation Partnerships Initiative (EIP) on the rewetting of farmed peatlands are strategic actions contributing to the governments climate change mitigation, however they also provide the chance to maximise other ecosystem service co-benefits such as protection of biodiversity and benefit our rare wetland species. These initiatives could also foster opportunities for re-establishing and/or reintroducing the Crane and Bittern.

*Irish name

ENDS

Andy Wightman MSP resigns from Scottish Greens

Andy Wightman MSP has resigned from the Scottish Greens as of today.

His letter of resignation, including his reasons for leaving, can be read here.

[Andy with golden eagle ‘Adam’, who later disappeared in suspicious circumstances on a grouse moor in Strathbraan (here). Photo by Ruth Tingay]

It’s reported in a number of papers (e.g. here) that he hasn’t ruled out standing as an independent, standing for another party, or indeed re-joining the Scottish Greens.

Andy has been a massive supporter of this blog right from the very early years and has been involved in addressing the issues highlighted on here in both a personal and professional capacity. I’m privileged to have worked with him on a number of platforms and look forward to finding new opportunities to continue.

UPDATE 28th February 2021: Andy Wightman to stand as Independent candidate for Highlands and Islands (here)

Poisoned red kite found dead on Scottish grouse moor – an interesting police investigation

Further to yesterday’s news from Police Scotland that a poisoned red kite had been found dead on a Scottish grouse moor at Moy (see here), news has emerged that this bird was also being satellite-tracked, which has implications for the police investigation and any potential sanction imposed on the estate as a result.

An article in today’s Strathspey and Badenoch Herald (here) published a photograph of the young kite with two of its siblings when they were fitted with satellite tags in 2019. The article also notes that this kite was from the first brood to fledge in the Cairngorms National Park, and the first successful brood in the Badenoch & Strathspey area since 1880 (thanks to blog reader Dave Pierce for posting this as a blog comment yesterday).

[The three red kite siblings, fitted with satellite tags, in the Cairngorms National Park. Photo Scottish Raptor Study Group]

It’s not often, these days, that a poisoned satellite-tagged raptor is found (although there are some notable exceptions, including this satellite-tagged white tailed eagle, found poisoned on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park earlier this year).

Since satellite-tagging became more routine, poisoning offences have dropped considerably, presumably because the presence of a satellite tag increases the probability of crime detection. Instead, the shooting and trapping of raptors have become much more prevalent killing methods because the perpetrator has more control over the crime scene (and can thus remove evidence quickly). What we usually get with satellite-tagged raptors these days is a sudden and inexplicable ‘stop’ in the tracking data, and both the tag and the bird ‘disappear’, never to be seen again (well, only if the criminal has hidden the evidence of the crime properly, unlike in this recent case where a golden eagle’s satellite tag was discovered cut off and wrapped in lead [to block the signal] and dumped in a river).

So the discovery of this poisoned satellite-tagged red kite at Moy is unusual, but also very helpful. Depending on the type of tag and it’s ‘duty cycle’ (i.e. the frequency with which the tag had been programmed to collect and transmit data), information should be available to Police Scotland to inform them of the kite’s recent movements. For example, had it been on this grouse moor for several days (in which case the likelihood of it being poisoned there would seem high) or had it travelled in from a distance elsewhere shortly before dying, which might indicate it was poisoned elsewhere?

Much will also depend on the type of poison used (which hasn’t been disclosed) and the dose and the toxicity. We know from the Police press release yesterday that it was a banned poison (one of eight listed on the Possession of Pesticides (Scotland) Order 2005, which are Aldicarb, Alphachloralose, Aluminium phosphide,  Bendiocarb, Carbofuran, Mevinphos, Sodium cyanide and Strychnine) but some of these poisons are incredibly fast-acting and others are less so, which might also give clues to where the poison had been placed.

Information also hasn’t been released about whether a poisoned bait was found close to the poisoned red kite. Sometimes they are (especially if the poison used is fast-acting) but other times the bait is not present, which might suggest the bird was poisoned elsewhere and managed to fly some distance before succumbing to death.

In other cases bait has been found placed out on estate boundary fences – this has been a common ploy by some estates that aims to obfuscate a police investigation and point blame to an innocent, neighbouring estate where the poisoned bird may have been found dead.

For obvious reasons, the Police haven’t released much of the details because the criminal investigation is ongoing. However, it is these details that will inform the decision-making process at NatureScot (SNH rebranded) as to whether a General Licence restriction order should be imposed on Moy Estate after the discovery of this poisoned red kite.

As regular blog readers will know, General Licence restriction orders are pretty impotent because estates can simply circumnavigate them with applications for individual licences instead, but nevertheless, that’s not a reason for not imposing them where merited.

This’ll be an interesting case to follow.

UPDATE 22nd June 2022: General Licence restriction imposed on Moy, a grouse-shooting estate, after discovery of poisoned red kite (here)