Category: 2022 persecution incidents

Press release from RSPB (16th March 2023)

MISSING HEN HARRIER HAD SATELLITE TAG CUT OFF

*Anu, a satellite tagged Hen Harrier, vanished after roosting near Upper Midhope in the Peak District National Park – on land managed for driven grouse shooting.

*RSPB Investigations Officers located the bird’s tag three days later and police forensics found it had been deliberately cut off the bird. Investigators fear the bird was illegally killed and his tag removed to hide the evidence.

*Anu joins a long list of birds of prey which have suspiciously disappeared or been killed in relation to land managed for driven grouse shooting. Licensing of grouse shooting as a meaningful deterrent to wildlife crime is needed in England, replicating current proposals in Scotland.

Yet another mysterious disappearance involving a rare Hen Harrier has been identified by the RSPB and South Yorkshire Police.

Anu, a young male, tagged in Bowland in 2021, was one of several young Hen Harriers fitted with a satellite tag by the RSPB: a small, unobtrusive device which enables scientists to monitor the movements of individual birds and gain greater understanding of this rare and criminally persecuted species.

Anu’s tag indicated that he was roosting on a grouse moor near Upper Midhope on 10 February 2022. However, the tag data showed unusual movement from the bird after 10.25pm that night, when Anu would normally have been stationary.

The tag’s next signal on 11 February was more surprising still, indicating the bird was dead. After an intensive search, the tag was found, some 9km away to the east, on 14 February at Wharncliffe Chase. But suspiciously there was no sign of the body.

This was reported to South Yorkshire Police and forensic analysis confirmed the tag harness had been cut by a human rather than bitten or pulled off. The RSPB suspects that Anu was killed, and the body and tag separated to remove evidence from the crime scene, with the tag then dumped. Anu’s body remains missing, and further enquiries have been unsuccessful.

Tom Grose, RSPB Investigations Officer, said: “To find Anu’s tag detached from his body, having been deliberately cut off, categorically shows human involvement. It is highly suspicious that he roosted on a grouse moor the night before, was unexpectedly active in the hours of darkness and hasn’t been seen since.

“We suspect that Anu was killed that night, his tag cut off and then the body dumped away from the grouse moor by someone trying to cover their tracks. The deliberate killing of a wild bird is illegal, yet sadly criminal persecution has been identified is the main reason driving Hen Harrier declines.”

A 2019 study of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers by Natural England revealed that 72% of 58 satellite-tagged Hen Harriers were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed. Furthermore, it found that Hen Harriers were ten times more likely to vanish mysteriously or die on a grouse moor than anywhere else.

Tom added: “When only a small percentage of Hen Harriers in the UK are tagged, you can’t help wonder what is happening to the other non-tagged birds. This is a species in trouble, and the UK population remains far below what it should be. As the nature crisis tightens its grip, illegal persecution of raptors must be stopped and that will only happen through the licensing of driven grouse moors – as is happening in Scotland – to bring accountability to this form of land management.”

The RSPB would like to thank South Yorkshire Police and the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) for their work on this case.

If you have any information about this incident, or know of anyone killing birds of prey, please call South Yorkshire Police on 101. The RSPB also has a dedicated confidential Raptor Hotline: 0300 999 0101. This is for information relating to crimes involving birds of prey only.

ENDS

The news of this latest ‘missing’ hen harrier coincides with the publication of some (more) propaganda from Natural England yesterday about how they’re planning to extend their dodgy hen harrier brood meddling trial. I’ll comment on that over the weekend, because that coincides with a recent FoI response I received about NE’s plans for brood meddling, but I won’t have time to write it before the weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ll just update the VERY long list of hen harriers that have been confirmed illegally killed or that have ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, mostly on or close to grouse moors, since the start of NE’s hen harrier brood meddling trial in 2018. We’re up to 77 and counting… I don’t see Natural England promoting those awkward but damning data.

Anu was already on the list of 77 – his suspicious disappearance was reported in February 2022 (here).

I’ve written many times about how the shooting industry is intent on manipulating the narrative surrounding the illegal killing of birds of prey. Whether that be by publishing blatant propaganda about the extent of these crimes, so distorted the truth is barely recognisable (e.g. here, here, here, here), or by simply choosing not to mention, let alone condemn, the ongoing criminal attacks on raptors by gamekeepers (e.g. see here, here, here). Sometimes there will be a condemnation but often it is quickly overridden by a sneering attempt to undermine the integrity and credibility of the investigators, usually the RSPB (e.g. see here and here).

Recently, this manipulation of the narrative around raptor persecution has manifested in attacks by the shooting industry on the police forces issuing appeals for information about suspected crimes (e.g. see here and here for two very recent examples).

Less obvious is the behind-the-scenes manipulation; the conversations that go on behind closed doors that the public rarely gets to see, usually within the so-called ‘partnerships’ such as the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative (e.g. see here and here) or the national Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG – see here). This sly under-handedness only comes to light after freedom of information requests by those of us who are unwilling to believe a word the shooting industry says when it comes to illegal raptor persecution.

And this leads me to the latest example of how the narrative is being manipulated. This time it relates to the media put out by the Yorkshire Dales Bird of Prey Partnership (another sham group) about the brutal stamping to death of a nest of hen harrier chicks last summer on a grouse moor on Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. To recap the details of that horrific story, which for some strange reason only emerged six months later in December 2022, please see here.

North Yorkshire Police issued an appeal for information about this crime on 14th December 2022 (see here). I want you to pay attention to the unequivocal words used by the police to describe this incident (underlined in red, below): that they suspected the nest of hen harrier chicks had been “deliberately destroyed by human activity“:

Prior to this appeal for information being published, the previous week North Yorkshire Police had sent a final draft to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) so they wouldn’t be unsighted by the news when it was published. We know this because a Yorkshire Dales resident, who also follows this blog, submitted a freedom of information request to the YDNPA in December to ask about internal comms within the Yorkshire Dales Bird of Prey Partnership about this crime. Everything that follows is a result of that FoI (thank you to the blog reader!).

On 14th December 2022, just after North Yorkshire Police had published its appeal for information, Mark Sadler, Communications Manager at the YDNPA sent around a draft press release to the Yorkshire Dales Bird of Prey Partnership’s communications sub-group and asked if all the partners would sign up to it. Here is his draft press release (please pay close attention to the words I’ve underlined in red):

It’s a strong statement, unequivocal in its condemnation, just as North Yorkshire Police’s statement was.

Here is the email Mark sent around to the ‘Partnership’ sub-group:

The first ‘partner’ to respond to Mark’s draft statement was the Moorland Association (the grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England). Here’s its response:

The next partner to respond, shortly afterwards, was BASC:

Right on cue, the next ‘partner’ to respond was the National Gamekeepers Organisation, as follows:

You’ll note that all three ‘partners’ from the shooting industry are intent on watering down North Yorkshire Police’s statement, moving the focus away from the police’s assertion that the stamping and killing of the hen harrier chicks in their nest was “deliberate“, and instead suggesting that it was “apparently deliberate“. They also want to big up the increase in the number of breeding hen harriers in the Yorkshire Dales/Nidderdale area that has happened as a result of the ludicrous brood meddling trial, carefully omitting to mention the ongoing persecution of hen harriers (77 illegally killed or ‘missing’ since the brood meddling trial began in 2018, a number of them in the Yorkshire Dales/Nidderdale area – see here).

The fourth ‘partner’ to respond was the RSPB, as follows:

The RSPB’s response starts strongly but then caves in and accepts the ‘apparently deliberate‘ narrative because it thinks its more important that the Partnership issues a statement and it knows that without a conviction, the police’s assertion that it was a deliberate act is contestable, even though the police’s view is based on having full sight of all the evidence. The RSPB asks for ‘three further small amendments’ to the draft text but I don’t know what those entailed because they weren’t included in the FoI response.

Mark Sadler from the YDNP adjusts the draft statement to incorporate the manipulations requested by the shooting industry ‘partners’ and he sends the final version to North Yorkshire Police:

North Yorkshire Police responds to this with a very, very clear message, reinforcing the view that whoever disabled the nest camera and then inflicted horrific injuries to those young hen harriers by stamping them to death, did so deliberately:

“Unfortunately there is no other plausible serious explanation for the injuries to all the 3 chicks and Natural England and the National Wildlife Crime Unit were all in agreement“:

Here is the Partnership’s final statement, which was published on the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s website on 15th December 2022. The parts I’ve underlined in red are the changes made between this final version and the original draft version:

As you can see, the changes are subtle, but are significant. The shooting industry representatives have introduced an element of doubt about the intention of whoever stamped on those chicks, despite North Yorkshire Police’s position (and that of Natural England and the National Wildlife Crime Unit) that the stamping was deliberate with the intention of killing the hen harrier chicks.

The insertion of a statement about increased breeding success for hen harriers and ‘focused efforts in the area to rebuild the population‘ leave the uninformed reader non the wiser about the ongoing illegal persecution of this species on grouse moors in the Yorkshire Dales, Nidderdale and beyond.

What does this charade tell us about the Yorkshire Dales Bird of Prey Partnership? Nothing we didn’t already know – despite a few earnest members, it’s another sham overrun by ‘partners’ with a vested interest in playing down the extent of raptor persecution in the area. It’s quite obvious that publicity about these crimes is bad news for the shooting industry – it damages their reputation and will, sooner rather than later, lead to statutory reform of game shooting as is now happening in Scotland, in large part because the public has been made aware of what’s going on and has demanded the Government takes action.