Category: 2019 persecution incidents

Two more satellite-tagged eagles disappear on Scottish grouse moors

Press release from RSPB Scotland (4 Nov 2019):

Two satellite-tagged eagles disappear on the same day

Both last recorded on grouse moors

RSPB Scotland is appealing for information after two young satellite-tagged white-tailed eagles disappeared in highly suspicious circumstances. Transmissions from the tags of both birds ceased on 22nd July this summer, one last recorded over a grouse moor in Inverness-shire, and the other over an Aberdeenshire grouse moor.

[White-tailed eagle, photo by Ben Andrew]

The Inverness-shire grouse moor is in an area with a history of bird of prey persecution, including numerous suspicious disappearances of tagged golden eagles over several years. These incidents led the Scottish Government to commission an independent review in 2016 into the fates of satellite-tagged golden eagles in Scotland, with the subsequent report finding that a third of these birds had most likely been illegally killed.

The birds that disappeared in July were both from the first generation of chicks from breeding pairs in the tiny white-tailed eagle population in east Scotland. Illegal persecution lead to white-tailed eagles becoming extinct in Scotland in 1918. The birds have returned to this eastern part of the country through a reintroduction project run by RSPB Scotland, Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage between 2007 and 2012.

Ian Thomson, RSPB Scotland’s Head of Investigations, said: “Yet again, rare, protected birds of prey have disappeared in highly suspicious circumstances, with their last known locations on grouse moors. And yet again, we can be almost certain that these birds have been killed, with those responsible destroying all the evidence. The disappearance of these two eagles is more than a loss of two birds; it means any future breeding success they might have had, helping to boost the numbers of these rare birds, has also been destroyed. Illegal persecution is seriously undermining the re-establishment of a white-tailed eagle population in this part of Scotland.”

Satellite tagging technology allows conservationists to monitor the eagles as they establish and develop a breeding population following the reintroduction, as well as providing insight into the threats they face and how best to help them. The tags, designed to transmit regularly, even after a bird has died, are fitted by licensed, trained fieldworkers.  RSPB Scotland was monitoring the eagles’ tag data and, in both cases, they suddenly ceased transmitting, with no prior evidence of any technical issues.

The National Wildlife Crime Unit and Police Scotland were immediately notified and, under routine procedure, were provided with the tags’ data to allow them to make a separate independent assessment of the birds’ likely fates. Follow-up investigations by the police, including searches of the final known locations of the birds, have yielded no further information as to their likely demise. Neither bird, nor their transmitters, have been seen or heard from subsequently, strongly suggesting that they have been illegally killed.

Ian Thomson continued: “In 1999, Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first First Minister, described raptor persecution as a “national disgrace”, but twenty years on, it continues unabated. It’s clear that current legal deterrents aren’t working and is long overdue that the stain of raptor persecution was removed from our nation’s reputation by the introduction of robust regulation of a driven grouse shooting industry that is blighting our country’s incredible wildlife and contributing to its biodiversity crisis.”

White L was a male eagle tagged as a chick at a nest in in Fife in 2016. His tag last transmitted on a grouse moor a few miles from the famous Banchory to Fettercairn Road, in Aberdeenshire. The other chick fledged from a nest in Inverness-shire in 2018 and disappeared on managed moorland near Tomatin in the northern Monadliaths. As well as repeated disappearances of satellite tagged eagles, this area of Inverness-shire has seen numerous incidents of shooting, poisoning and illegal trapping of eagles, red kites and hen harriers.

The independent peer-reviewed report which followed the Scottish Government commissioned review of the fates of satellite tagged eagles provided unequivocal evidence of the link between the highly suspicious disappearance of satellite-tagged raptors and criminal activity associated with grouse moor management.

Anyone with information about either of these birds or any other wildlife crime is urged to contact Police Scotland on 101 or call the RSPB’s raptor crime hotline on 0300 999 0101.

ENDS

Live firing range chosen as release site for brood meddled hen harriers

Earlier this week we blogged about Natural England’s decision to fit the brood meddled hen harrier chicks with ‘untested’ satellite tags and how some of those tags were not functioning reliably in the weeks following the birds’ release (see here). As three of those hen harriers have since been reported as ‘missing’ it is impossible to assess whether they’ve been killed by criminal gamekeepers on grouse moors, as so many have previously, or whether the birds are actually fine, they’re just carrying faulty tags.

The brood meddling fiasco doesn’t end there.

It turns out that as late as June this year, Natural England and its panel of ‘experts’ on the brood meddling project management team had decided that a live firing range on Ministry of Defence land would be a great place to release the brood meddled hen harriers.

Yep, genius. What could possibly go wrong?

[Live firing range on MOD land in Yorkshire. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

Perhaps the team thought it would provide acclimatisation for the young harriers – get them used to the sound of gunshot….

Actually, we know that this live firing range was only chosen because no private grouse moor owner had stepped forward to host the five brood meddled chicks (er, even though we’ve been repeatedly told that by removing hen harriers as part of a brood meddling scheme grouse moor owners’ attitudes towards hen harriers would soften and instead of killing them they’d welcome them with open arms).

How desperate do you have to be to think releasing young hen harriers on a live firing range would be a good idea, just to save face that no grouse moor owners wanted the birds?

Mark Avery blogged about this live firing range in September as he published an email from the scientific committee chair (Prof Ken Norris) who was expressing his concerns about the site.

We now know that the live firing range wasn’t actually used as the release site – at the last minute an enlightened estate (Castle Bolton Estate) stepped in and offered to host the five young harriers – but it’s worth viewing the process and conversations of the brood meddling project management team to understand what a joke this trial is.

The live firing range was agreed as a release site during a project team phone call on 3rd June:

Jemima Parry Jones, a member of the project team and the person responsible for the captive rearing stage of the brood meddling trial, was the first (and only?) member of the team to raise concerns about releasing the birds on to a live firing range as she was worried about her reputation if it all went wrong:

Amanda Anderson’s response to these concerns:

On the same day, Richard Saunders (NE’s Principal Advisor) sent around this email discussing the possibility of conducting noise monitoring at the live firing range in an attempt to appease Parry Jones’s concerns:

At some point between 4th and 24th June, the idea of releasing the brood meddled hen harriers on to a live firing range had been abandoned (the FoI response we got from Natural England omitted any detail about the decision-making) and Castle Bolton Estate had stepped forward to play host:

The rest, as they say, is history. The five brood meddled hen harriers were successfully released and then three of them vanished in September and the other two have left the country.

Is SNH about to impose a General Licence restriction on Leadhills Estate?

Last week RSPB Scotland published a blog called ‘Why vicarious liability is failing to have an impact in Scotland‘.

Written by Duncan Orr-Ewing, Head of Species & Land Management, it’s the latest in a series, following on from the excellent blog challenging the Scottish Gamekeepers’ ignorance on satellite tags, written by Ian Thomson, Head of Investigations at RSPB Scotland.

Duncan’s blog is well worth a read. It questions the Crown Office’s recent decision not to prosecute anyone for alleged vicarious liability following the conviction of Scottish gamekeeper Alan Wilson for a series of barbaric wildlife crimes on the Longformacus Estate in the Scottish Borders.

It also considers the potential benefits of having the threat of a vicarious liability prosecution, and how this may have driven down the use of illegal poisons as a method of killing raptors, but been replaced by shooting and trapping methods which are much harder to detect.

The really interesting part of the blog, as far as we’re concerned, is the section on the Leadhills Estate in South Lanarkshire. Blog readers will recall this is where a male hen harrier was found with an almost severed leg caught in an illegally-set spring trap next to his nest earlier this summer. Despite the heroic efforts of a number of experts, he didn’t survive. The estate denied all knowledge and responsibility and nobody has been charged.

[The trapped hen harrier found on Leadhills Estate. Photo by Scottish Raptor Study Group]

Regular blog readers will know this poor hen harrier is not the only victim reported from the Leadhills Estate. The list is long and goes back more than a decade (e.g. scroll down this page). Duncan’s blog discusses some of the most recent incidents including the witnessed shooting of a hen harrier in May 2017; the witnessed shooting of a short-eared owl just a few weeks later and whose body was recovered; the discovery of a buzzard in 2018 that was found to have been shot twice; and the filmed buzzard that according to the RSPB was likely killed in a crow trap in January 2019.

Nobody has been charged for any of the above, but significantly, Duncan’s blog says this:

“We are advised that only now is an Open General Licence restriction, another sanction in the public authority wildlife crime “toolbox”, to be imposed here”.

SNH has had the power to impose General Licence restrictions since 1 January 2014. This was instigated by former Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse in response to continuing difficulties of securing criminal prosecutions and was an instruction to SNH to withdraw the use of the General Licence (available for legal predator control) on land where crimes against raptors are believed to have taken place but where there is insufficient evidence to instigate criminal proceedings. The decision to withdraw the licence is based on the civil standard of proof which relates to the balance of probability as opposed to the higher standard of proof required for a criminal conviction.

This measure is not without its limitations, particularly as estates can simply apply for an individual licence instead which allows them to continue predator control activities but under slightly closer scrutiny.

SNH has only imposed four such restrictions since 2014 – a pathetically small figure when we are aware of at least a dozen other cases where a restriction should have been applied. SNH has claimed it is ‘not in the public interest‘ to explain those failures.

We’ve looked on the SNH website to see whether Leadhills Estate has been listed as having a General Licence restriction imposed (SNH does publicise the details when it imposes the restriction) but so far Leadhills Estate is not named. Potentially the estate has been notified and is currently in the period where it may challenge SNH’s decision, as per the framework for a General Licence restriction.

Watch this space.

UPDATE 26 November 2019: SNH imposes General Licence restriction on Leadhills Estate (here)

Police called as grouse shooting supporters threaten disruption at Packham gig in Harrogate

A small gaggle of anti-Chris Packham pro-grouse shooting protesters turned up in Harrogate last night to demonstrate outside the theatre where Chris Packham was presenting a show to help raise awareness of wildlife in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

Much to the bemusement (and amusement) of theatre-goers, the protesters held banners aloft claiming ‘Packham’s lies are destroying moorland communities‘ and ‘Pack it in Packham you are destroying our jobs‘.

Er, no, that’ll be the unidentified criminals in Nidderdale, who not only are poisoning and shooting red kites, hen harriers, buzzards, marsh harriers on Nidderdale grouse moors (as reported by the AONB partnership just last month), but who have also managed to turn the local community against them, all by themselves. Unsurprising really, when according to the Chair of the Nidderdale AONB these crimes are “starting to have a damaging effect on tourism businesses”. 

Here’s a map we produced a while ago showing the boundary of the Nidderdale AONB (yellow line), illegally killed red kites (red dots), missing satellite-tagged hen harriers (orange stars), shot hen harrier Bowland Betty (red star), shot hen harrier River (red triangle, which we now know should be closer to the red star on the Swinton Estate).

According to one of the organisers of Chris’s event at the theatre yesterday, she told us that her social media accounts promoting the event had been “inundated with a relentless list of abusive responses” from those within the game-shooting industry and how shocked she’d been at the “depth of hatred and nastiness” from the pro-shooting trolls. They’ve got a lot to learn about winning friends and influencing people!

It’s not known if any of those abusive trolls were present at the protest last night but she told us that when she went outside to speak to the protesters about their “aggressive chanting” and to ask them to be respectful of theatre-goers she was told that they intended to come inside and disrupt the event to make sure they were heard. The police were called to ensure the protesters didn’t turn violent.

It’s believed a few of them did have tickets to enter the theatre but no trouble was reported. Not even when Chris started talking about Nidderdale’s reputation as being one of the worst raptor-killing hotspots in the entire country; not a claim he’d made up at all but a factual statement that has been robustly evidenced, including by the AONB Partnership’s very own report.

So who were last night’s protesters?

Well, it turns out they’re quite an interesting bunch. According to this website it’s a newly formed group called ‘Campaign 4 Protection of Moorland Communities’. Here’s a copy of the group’s web report about last night’s protest:

Moorland communities protest in Harrogate against unjust attacks on their livelihoods

Demonstrators from the Yorkshire Moorland Communities braved the weather to take a message to BBC Presenter Chris Packham as he arrived at the Royal Hall in Harrogate to give a talk this evening (Saturday, 19th October).

That message could not have been clearer: livelihoods and whole communities are under threat by misleading statements and actions by the likes of Chris Packham.

A famously outspoken critic of driven grouse shooting, the presenter, campaigner and author was met outside the theatre by over 100 fed-up members of the moorland communities, who depend on moorland activities for their livelihoods. They held placards reading “Chris Packham – ignoring science since 04.05.1961!” (Packham’s date of birth), and a large banner declared: “Moorlands are our lives, our livelihood and our community. We stand in unity to protect them.”

Chris Packham and his followers are wilfully misrepresenting facts and distorting clear scientific evidence” said Roy Burrow’s, estate manager at a nearby moorland. “These are large communities who live and work in these uplands, and rely on the moorland for their livelihoods. The simple fact is that stopping grouse shooting, or rewilding the moor, could destroy many local businesses, local livelihoods and the very social fabric that makes the moorlands such a wonderful place to live in and to visit.”

Packham makes no secret of his dislike for grouse shooting, frequently posting about it on social media. He even spoke at last month’s Green Party conference about his campaign to ban driven grouse shooting. However, many argue that the BBC should not allow him to use his platform to promote his personal agenda when there is extensive scientific evidence available to show the environmental and conservational benefits brought from well managed moorlands.

The protestors sang chants including: “From bus drivers to gamekeepers, together we thrive, we need to protect, moorland community lives”.

A spokesperson for The Campaign for the Protection of Moorland Communities, said: “The moorland management system which grouse shooting sustains creates a unique landscape that encourages rare and endangered wildlife, as well as being the foundation of the moorland area’s rural economy. This is reinforced by clear scientific evidence, which is too often wilfully ignored by our opponents. The facts are very clear: without grouse shooting these areas would lose millions of pounds in investment each year causing lives and livelihoods would be destroyed, alongside one of Britain’s most unique habitats. It is disgraceful that a rich celebrity from Hampshire thinks it is okay to dictate to the hard-working people of Yorkshire how we should live our lives. Moorland and other rural communities seem to be the only cultural minority Chris Packham and others think it is okay to abuse. Enough is enough.”

ENDS

It’s ironic that the group accuses Chris of abusing a cultural minority. According to our own research, one of the main instigators behind this new group appears to be someone called Simon Grace, ‘a shooting enthusiast’ from Yorkshire whose activities have previously been promoted by articles in Shooting Times and on the Fieldsports TV website.

Simon Grace’s twitter feed makes for a fascinating read and perhaps explains why he’s managed to attract only four followers since June 2016.

He’s not a racist, homophobic xenophobe abusing cultural minorities. No siree Bob. Not at all.

What is it about game shooting and hunt supporters that attracts the right wing mob? There’s probably a PhD topic there for someone.

Decision on next Hen Harrier brood meddling licence to ‘take into account the results to date’

Yesterday, before the news that a fourth satellite-tagged hen harrier had vanished in suspicious circumstances this autumn (see here), DEFRA published the following blog:

We’re still waiting to learn from Natural England what, exactly, is the exit strategy for the hen harrier brood meddling trial and specifically, what are the criteria for making that decision?

Well what a relief to learn that the decision on whether to renew the hen harrier brood meddling licence ‘will take into account the results to date‘.

Those ‘results’ will be the suspicious disappearance of three of this year’s five brood meddled hen harriers (we understand the two surviving brood meddled birds have flown off to France) plus the suspicious disappearance of at least one other satellite-tagged hen harrier (Rosie) in recent weeks and there’s absolutely no doubt there’ll be more before this year is out.

The decision whether to renew or not should be easy and it should already have been made. Nobody in their right mind can think that brood meddling has (a) been successful and (b) is in any way helping hen harrier conservation.

But then look at that last paragraph in the DEFRA blog, above. It claims that the ‘ultimate aim’ of the DEFRA Hen Harrier (In)Action Plan, of which brood meddling is a part, is to ‘reduce hen harrier predation of grouse chicks on driven grouse moors……’

Eh?

Why is a Government department (DEFRA) and the statutory conservation agency (Natural England) focusing on protecting excessive numbers of red grouse (that are going to be shot for fun) at the expense of a protected red-listed bird of prey in population free-fall due to illegal killing on aforementioned grouse moors?

Still waiting for Werritty

Autumn is here; Werritty’s report is not.

For new readers, the long anticipated and long overdue Werritty Review is a Government-commissioned report on grouse moor management in Scotland. Environment Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham commissioned it following the publication of the authoritative, ‘exemplary and thorough‘ Golden Eagle Satellite Tag Review in May 2017, which revealed the magnitude of ongoing raptor persecution on some Scottish grouse moors (read that report here).

The Werritty Review Group was announced in November 2017 and we were told to expect the report by spring 2019.

Spring 2019 came and went, the report didn’t appear, but we were told that Professor Werritty was ill and the report would be delayed by two months (new expected date: June 2019). Fair enough.

June 2019 came and went, the report didn’t appear.

Then we heard it would arrive in July 2019.

July 2019 came and went, the report didn’t appear then we heard from Professor Werritty himself that it’d be submitted ‘during the summer‘.

At the end of July, in response to public fury about on-going illegal raptor persecution on Scottish grouse moors, a Government spokesperson told us the report ‘was due in the next few weeks’ (see here).

It’s now mid-October and the report still hasn’t appeared. According to Environment Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham, writing to an MSP in response to a query about the publication date by a constituent (and blog reader!), the report is “expected within the next couple of weeks“!!

To be perfectly frank, events this year have overtaken whatever recommendations Professor Werritty might suggest – the discovery of this spring-trapped hen harrier on a grouse moor in Perthshire, this spring-trapped hen harrier caught next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire, this spring-trapped golden eagle photographed flying above a grouse moor in Royal Deeside, and the suspicious disappearance of two more satellite-tagged golden eagles from a grouse moor in Perthshire have demonstrated that we now need a radical approach to bring this to an end.

Nevertheless, we’re still keen to see the Werritty report appear because until it does, the Scottish Government has the perfect excuse, that it has used repeatedly since May 2017 when the review was first commissioned, to do absolutely naff all to tackle these ongoing serious organised crimes.

“It is right and sensible that Scottish Government should wait for that report“, says Roseanna Cunningham. How can it possibly be “right” or “sensible” that the Government should continue to sit on its hands and watch these atrocities taking place, suggesting it’s powerless to act?

 

3rd brood meddled hen harrier ‘disappears’ in suspicious circumstances

Following the news that two of this year’s five brood meddled hen harriers had ‘vanished’ on grouse moors in the north of England in September 2019 (one in County Durham here and one in the Yorkshire Dales National Park here), we now learn that a third harrier has disappeared, also in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

[Hen harrier photo by Laurie Campbell]

Here’s the press release from North Yorkshire Police, published today:

Second satellite-tagged hen harrier goes missing in North Yorkshire

Police appealing for information about whereabouts of hen harrier

North Yorkshire Police is appealing for information after another satellite-tagged hen harrier has gone missing in the region just weeks after another one also stopped transmitting a signal.

The hen harrier is a young female bird tagged at the release site in the Yorkshire Dales on 30 July 2019 as part of the hen harrier brood management scheme. The bird has not been named and is known to the Natural England monitoring team as 183703.

It is known from satellite tag data that the bird had the bird stayed in the Hawes area since her release, with one excursion to the Sedbergh area on 16 September, then south to the West Pennine Moors near Horwich 17-19 September before returning to land near Semerwater where she had remained for at least a fortnight.

The last transmission from the bird’s satellite tag was received on the 29 September on Thornton Rust moor, 3.37km east of Semerwater, but the bird could have flown on for some distance since the last transmission.

Since then no further transmissions have been received from the tag. Natural England field staff have carried out checks with a hand-held scanner and monitored the area with no findings and North Yorkshire Police have also searched the area with colleagues from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Ranger team, as well as making extensive local enquiries.

The bird is a juvenile female, brown in colour and ringed with the BTO ring number FJ48404.

This appeal for information sadly follows the disappearance of another satellite-tagged hen harrier in the area, this one a juvenile male known as 183704 who was last known to be in the area of Askrigg Common on 19 September.

At this time North Yorkshire Police are keen to locate both birds safe and well, but if found deceased the birds can be subject to post mortem to establish if the cause of death was from natural causes or if criminal activity was involved.

If you find the bird or have any information please contact North Yorkshire Police on 101 and quote reference number 12190186540.

ENDS

Here is an RPUK map showing the approximate last known locations of the three brood meddled satellite-tagged hen harriers that have ‘disappeared’ this year: 1 = the HH that vanished on 9th September; 2 = the HH that vanished on 19th September; 3 = the HH that vanished on 29th September:

Here is an RPUK map showing the approximate last known locations of the two brood meddled hen harriers that have disappeared on moors in the Yorkshire Dales National Park:

So within weeks of those five brood meddled hen harriers being released back in to the uplands of northern England, three of them (60%) have disappeared without a trace.

This isn’t unusual nor is it unexpected – we know from authoritative research published earlier this year that 72% of young satellite-tagged hen harriers will disappear in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in northern England, probably having been killed illegally.

What this is, though, is a bloody joke. This brood meddling ‘trial’, sanctioned by DEFRA and carried out by Natural England, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England, is supposed to test whether those people responsible for killing hen harriers illegally would stop if the chicks were brood meddled (removed from the grouse moor in June at the critical grouse-rearing stage and then returned to the wild in August). We all knew this wouldn’t work because we know that young hen harriers are killed routinely during the grouse shooting season, and especially in September and October and yet still DEFRA, Natural England and their grouse shooting mates pressed ahead.

No doubt we’ll now have to endure more bollocks from Natural England, DEFRA, the Moorland Association and all the rest of the persecution deniers, pretending that nothing’s going on, everything’s fine and isn’t the grouse shooting industry doing great things for conservation.

What we will be doing is asking Natural England, again, what its exit strategy is for the hen harrier brood meddling trial and when will it implement it? We’ve asked several times, including at direct face to face meetings with senior staff, most recently last week. We were promised an answer – we haven’t had it yet.

Well done and thank you, North Yorkshire Police, for publishing a relatively swift appeal for information and for including enough detail to make it useful. And also for not including any grouse shooting propaganda in the appeal this time, in contrast to a previous appeal for info.

Buzzard shot dead in North Yorkshire

Appeal for information from North Yorkshire Police (11 October 2019):

APPEAL FOR INFORMATION AFTER BUZZARD FOUND SHOT NEAR SHERBURN IN ELMET

North Yorkshire Police is appealing for information after a dead buzzard was found by a member of the public at 11.45am on 3 October on a footpath close to Hagg lane near Sherburn in Elmet.

The bird was recovered and taken to a local vets to be x-rayed which revealed it contained what appeared to be eight pieces of shot.

A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police said: “This is sadly yet another example of the unacceptable bird of prey persecution which blights our region. Killing wild birds is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act and we are committed to putting a stop to this deplorable crime.”

North Yorkshire Police have carried out extensive enquiries in the local area. Officers are appealing for anyone with any information, or who may have witnessed anything taking place in relation to this bird to call 101 quoting ref: 12190183166

ENDS

 

North Yorkshire Police appeal for info after Marsh Harrier found shot nr Scarborough

North Yorkshire Police have issued the following appeal for information:

Police appeal after an injured marsh harrier was found near Scarborough

8 October 2019

Police are appealing for information after an injured marsh harrier was found near Scarborough.

The bird was found at 4pm on Sunday 18 August 2019 by a member of the public in a stubble field close to the village of Hutton Buscel near Scarborough.

It was taken to local wildlife rehabilitator Jean Thorpe for care, and was subsequently taken to a veterinary practice for examination. The marsh harrier was found to have a broken left wing with a shotgun pellet lodged next to the fracture, which shows the bird had been subjected to persecution.

[Photo from Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve, where it was subsequently released after being helped by Jean Thorpe and veterinary specialists at Battle Flatts Veterinary Clinic]

A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police said: “Sadly, North Yorkshire is the UK’s worst hotspot for confirmed cases of bird of prey persecution. This magnificent bird has been very fortunate to survive, largely thanks to the dedication and care given by Jean Thorpe, but is yet another example of a wildlife crime having taken place against our birds of prey.”

North Yorkshire Police have carried out extensive enquiries in the Hutton Buscel area. Officers are appealing for anyone with any information, or who may have witnessed anything taking place in relation to this bird, to contact PC Mark Atkinson at Malton Police Station by dialling 101, quoting reference number 12190155625.

ENDS

We believe this Marsh harrier is the one we blogged about on 18 September 2019 (here), having been found injured on a game-shooting estate near Scarborough in August, rescued, rehabbed and then released.

It’s not the first time a Marsh harrier has been found targeted on a game-shooting estate in Yorkshire. This one was found with shotgun injuries next to a partridge release pen on an East Yorkshire sporting estate in 2016 and this breeding pair was shot at and had their eggs removed by men dressed as gamekeepers on a grouse moor in North Yorkshire in 2017.

In 2017/2018 Amanda Anderson (Moorland Association) denied that her members were interested in obtaining licences permitting them to kill Marsh harriers but several witnesses said otherwise.

Legal challenge against hen harrier brood meddling goes back to court

Fantastic news!

Mark Avery is going back to the Royal Courts of Justice in London after being given permission by the Appeal Court to challenge an earlier court decision that hen harrier brood meddling is legal.

[Back to the High Court for Mark and his brilliant legal team. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

The RSPB has also been given permission to appeal.

As Mark explains on his blog today (here), details of the exact grounds for an appeal have not yet been given, nor has a court date, although according to this public notice record it should be before 6th July 2020!

I wonder how many more brood meddled hen harrier chicks will have vanished in suspicious circumstances by then? Two of them disappeared within weeks of being released from captivity back in to the uplands this year: one on a grouse moor in County Durham on 9th Sept (here) and one ten days later on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park on 19 Sept (here).

We don’t know what’s happened to either of them, although an informed and educated guess would suggest they’ve both been illegally killed, exposing the sheer stupidity and futility of the brood meddling scheme.

Well done Mark and the RSPB for continuing the fight.