The judicial review brought by a Northumberland gamekeeper to question whether Natural England followed due process when they refused to give him licences to kill buzzards and sparrowhawks, has finished.
We now await the written decision of the judge, which can take weeks.
Useful background information about the judicial review process here and here.
It took the GWCT quite a while to post anything on their website about the CBE that their Chief Executive, Teresa Dent, was awarded in the Birthday Honours’ List. Maybe they were as surprised as the rest of us.
Whilst RPS has nothing against Teresa Dent personally (we’ve never met), it’s a bit difficult to know quite what she and GWCT have done to deserve this ‘honour’. After all, the emblem of the GWCT, the Grey Partridge, is at rock-bottom despite a pile of good research and a GWCT membership of large landowners who ought to be implementing all of the GWCT’s bright ideas on the subject. Not exactly the biggest conservation success story is it? I’d rather be in charge of an organisation with the Avocet as its logo (whatever cricketing legends might say about it)!
The GWCT spouts a lot about its scientific reputation but, as Mark Avery pointed out on his blog years ago, they seem to be resting on their past laurels rather a lot (see here and here). But they are still going on about how they are a (?) or the (?) ‘leading wildlife research charity’ (e.g. see here), a name-tag rarely given to GWCT by anyone else these days. What science has GWCT contributed to the Hen Harrier debate recently? They don’t even seem to believe the results of their own eyes and their own research at Langholm – rating the project as a failure (see here) when others rate it as a clear success (see here). GWCT really have lost the plot!
It’s difficult to know what Teresa Dent thinks about anything as she is rarely seen in public outside of shooting circles. It is much more common to hear the GWCT’s Andrew Gilruth spouting nonsense about Hen Harriers, brood meddling and re-tweeting YFTB nonsense on Twitter.
The GWCT news item about Teresa Dent’s CBE can’t even explain what she has done! It rather cryptically says she has told people things they don’t want to know. Could this possibly mean that she sits her chairman, Ian Coghill, down and tells him that lead ammunition ought to be banned and he ought to get used to the idea? Or maybe it means that she has a word with Hawk and Owl Trust Chair Philip Merricks and tells him that brood meddling is a daft idea? Or does she tell the Moorland Association (‘a sad morons’ coalition’, for you anagram fans) and Scottish Land and Estates (‘dated tactless shits, anon’) that their members had better start getting out of driven grouse shooting before land prices drop as a ban approaches? No? Probably not.
The news item seems to think that the GWCT Council were announcing something – the announcement was made a couple of days ago by Number 10 – we all noticed it then, but the GWCT spent the weekend dozing, or dreaming of days gone by when the world outside of shooting cared what they said, and cared a little for them too.
The news item sums up the GWCT these days: vague, self-congratulatory, wrong and late.
Henry’s arrived in the Cairngorms National Park.
You might think he’d be safe here, what with it being a National Park and all that.
You’d be wrong.
Almost 45% of the CNP is covered by ‘managed moorland’ and raptor persecution here has been so prominent that last year it led to the Convenor of the Cairngorms National Park Authority declaring that “it threatens to undermine the reputation of the National Park as a high quality tourist destination” (see here and then here).
It sounds like an odd thing to say, but something good has stemmed from the ‘disappearance’ of five breeding hen harrier males this year, and that’s the amount of media coverage generated by these incidents.
The national press has been all over these crimes (and yes, we are calling them crimes because you’d have to be either pretty dense and/or wilfully obstructive to claim that these ‘disappearances’ are the result of anything else) with plenty of column inches in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and Express, as well as TV broadcasting on the BBC News and Channel 4 News. Social media has also been busy, with massive coverage on Twitter and Facebook in addition to constant coverage on several well-read personal blogs, all with a wide social reach.
Instrumental to all this media attention was the release of the information in the first place, and for that we have the RSPB to thank. As a result, the RSPB find themselves at the centre of (another) targeted slur campaign, funded by the industry with the most to lose in terms of public perception when news gets out about another ‘missing’ hen harrier in yet another area managed for driven grouse shooting. The funny part is, the more they smear the RSPB, the more that news editors will want to run the story, so the more people are going to hear about what’s going on.
Some may worry about what’s been written in some of the papers – the Daily Mail coverage was, well, pretty much what you’d expect from the Daily Mail (with it’s grouse moor-owning proprietor), but did that matter? Apparently not. The plight of the hen harrier has never been so high profile and never have so many people raised their voices in support of this species – it’s inconceivable that just a couple of years ago the hen harrier would have been voted the nation’s 9th favourite bird (as it was this week) – it would have been lucky to have made the Top 100, let alone the Top Ten. That’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider that the grassroots campaign in support of the hen harrier is still pretty young – it’s only really just got started.
There’s even more media coverage this weekend, with this article in the Independent. It doesn’t really tell us anything new, apart from learning that United Utilities had ‘banned’ the reporter from visiting the one remaining hen harrier nest in Bowland because the issue had become “too political”, whatever that means. But the content of the article isn’t really what’s interesting – what is interesting is that the Independent thought this issue newsworthy enough to send a journalist all the way from London to Cumbria to look at the now abandoned hen harrier nest on the Geltsdale Reserve. The accompanying text is largely irrelevant (although undoubtedly it will have been read by some people who were previously unaware of hen harrier persecution on driven grouse moors, so that’s good); it’s the fact that the story is being published in the mainstream media, again, that’s important.
Not only does extensive media coverage reach an ever-increasing audience, it also helps to build pressure on the authorities who are in a position to do something about these seemingly untouchable raptor killers, but so far have managed to do virtually nothing, or at least anything meaningful.
A few days ago the UK Government’s statutory nature conservation agency, Natural England, published a statement in response to the news that five breeding male hen harriers have ‘disappeared’. You can read it here. It tells us how ‘concerned’ they are, but other than that, it seems to be business as usual. More satellite-tagging to “provide even more detailed information on how birds move around the landscape and the factors currently limiting the population”.
That’ll be the same satellite tag information they’ve been collecting for the last eight years and have yet to publish in any detail.
Another day, another location (Perthshire this time), another grouse butt to occupy!
Check out BAWC’s new Hen Harrier Day website and submit your photos – get involved!
An important judicial review is underway at the High Court this week. It concerns the legal question about whether Natural England acted fairly when it refused licences to a gamekeeper to allow him to kill buzzards and sparrowhawks to protect his pheasants.
The JR has been brought by Northumberland gamekeeper Ricky McMorn and is backed by the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation.
Article in the Chronicle here.
We’ve blogged extensively about this over the last three years. See here for earlier posts, which include discussions about whether DEFRA/Natural England should entertain a licence application from a gamekeeper with a previous conviction for possession of a banned poison (apparently that’s not a problem), whether the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation should expel a member with a conviction for possession of a banned poison (apparently not), and whether there’s any scientific evidence to demonstrate buzzards (and sparrowhawks) have a substantially detrimental effect on game bird shoots (there isn’t).
Henry’s entering South Lanarkshire. You might know it from the annual raptor persecution maps – there’s usually a dirty great big red spot indicating that this is a raptor persecution hotspot.
You don’t need a map to tell you that, though. Just look at the landscape and the tell-tale muirburn strips of burnt heather on the hills will tell you all you need to know. This is driven grouse moor country.
Last month somebody stole a clutch of eggs from a Marsh harrier nest in Norfolk (see here). Around the same time, eggs were also stolen from a Kestrel’s nest and a wagtail’s nest. Norfolk Constabulary are linking the three thefts.
In response, local businessman Mervyn Lambert is offering a £5,000 reward for information, adding to the other £2,000 already available (£1K from the Eastern Daily Press and £1K from the Hawk & Owl Trust).
However, Mr Lambert isn’t limiting his offer to these three crimes. “I’ll give £5,000 for any information, not only about stealing birds’ eggs but poisoning, trapping and shooting protected birds“.
Good stuff.
Further details in the Eastern Daily Press here.
Henry paid a visit (under heavily armed guard) to the RSPB’s Geltsdale reserve in Cumbria, scene of the latest hen harrier ‘disappearance’.
A team from Channel 4 News was also at Geltsdale to talk about ‘disappearing’ hen harriers – that programme aired on Tues evening (9th June). If you missed it, it’ll appear on Channel 4 Catch Up in the next few days.
It was good to see the issue of hen harrier persecution featuring on a national news programme and it was even better to see who the grouse-shooting industry had put forward as their spokesman – one Duncan Thomas, ex-Police Wildlife Crime Officer (Bowland) and currently working for BASC. Some of you may remember him from last year’s Countryfile – we blogged about his performance here.
Here’s what he had to say on last night’s programme:
“There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these birds have been persecuted. They could merely have moved on or died from natural predation. We’ve had a horrendous spring up here, many many species have suffered as a result, as a direct result of that, and in all the time that I was [Police] Wildlife Crime Officer and doing this job [BASC], I’ve not seen direct evidence of human persecution. I’m confident that everybody up here is doing their bit to make this work. What we need is the Hen Harrier Recovery Plan to be able to reintroduce and to spread this species in to suitable habitat and to get the population back to a level where everybody’s comfortable with“.
‘No direct evidence’ is probably the line used by those defending Jimmy Savile for all those years. Truth will out in the end – it always does, and we are all well on the way to exposing that truth to a much wider audience than ever before.
What Mr Thomas forgot to mention is the management of the grouse moors adjacent to the Geltsdale reserve. Wonder who owns those and perhaps more interestingly, who the sporting agent is?
The presenter, Tom Clarke (Science editor, C4 News) chose his words carefully and did a reasonably good job, although he needs to check his research when he claims that ‘hen harriers are doing quite well in Scotland’ – they’re actually not – see here.
A farmer in Spain has been found guilty of laying out poisoned baits and poisoning at least 11 red kites, five dogs, six foxes, a cat, a raven, a buzzard and four vultures.
His sentence? Two years in prison, two years disqualification from farming or any other profession relating to animal husbandry (post release), four years disqualification from hunting (post release), a fine of 90,270 Euros plus an additional fine of 28,500 Euros to be used specifically to monitor red kites in the local area for the next three years (see here).
Now THAT’S a deterrent!
Spain is one of several European countries way ahead of the game when it comes to tackling raptor persecution. Amongst other measures, they have a dedicated dog unit that utilises specialist sniffer dogs trained to detect poison and poisoned baits. These dogs are so good they can even detect the location where a poisoned bait has been laid previously but has since been removed. These dog units are not just deployed to a site of a suspected incident; they are routinely deployed to undertake spot checks wherever they want and whatever time they want. There’s none of this ‘you need landowner permission’, or ‘you need a warrant’.
Remember this the next time you hear the Scottish Government or the UK Government say they are tackling raptor persecution and are treating this crime seriously.
Raptor Persecution UK 