Tag: hen harrier

Has the Hen Harrier brood meddling sham finally collapsed?

Over the last few months I’ve heard from various well-placed sources that hen harrier brood meddling has not taken place this year.

For new blog readers, hen harrier brood meddling is a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involves the removal of hen harrier chicks and eggs from grouse moors, rear them in captivity, then release them back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where they’ll be illegally killed. It’s plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.

Photo: Laurie Campbell

I’ve asked Natural England (the licensing authority for hen harrier brood meddling) about the status of brood meddling this year but they haven’t responded yet.

If the rumours are true, and brood meddling hasn’t taken place this year despite there being broods available to meddle with, it raises a lot of questions, not just about what happened this year but also about any future prospects for brood meddling, whether that be as part of the continuing so-called scientific trial or the full roll-out of brood meddling as a recurrent annual practice, which is what the grouse shooting industry wants (laughingly calling it a ‘conservation licence’)!

Long-term blog readers will know that the initial brood meddling trial ran for five years from 2018-2022 inclusive. At the end of that trial, the brood meddling project board (which unbelievably includes vested-interest representatives from the grouse shooting industry such as the Moorland Association and GWCT, as well as the licence applicant, Jemima Parry Jones, who’s paid by the MA to do the brood meddling) decided it wanted to extend the trial and Natural England agreed to a further five year trial period (here).

An initial two-year extension licence was granted for 2023 and 2024 (NE isn’t permitted to grant a licence for longer than a two-year period in one go) with a few changes to the licence conditions as requested by the ‘project board’, including:

  • An increase in the number of times a pair of breeding hen harriers can have their nest brood meddled (previously, intervention was restricted to prevent the same pair being brood meddled in successive years – this time intervention was permitted in successive years);
  • No further requirement to satellite tag ALL the brood meddled chicks, only a sub-sample;
  • In the case of the North Pennines Special Protection Area (SPA) Southern Zone, no further requirement for brood meddled birds from this Zone to be released back into this Zone specifically, but still must be released into the wider North Pennines SPA (the project board had sought to remove entirely the requirement for brood meddled birds to be returned to the same SPA from where they were originally removed – this is important, I’ll come back to this point below).

For more detail about the changes to the licence conditions for 2023/2024 extension, see this Case Submission to Natural England’s High Risk Casework Panel in April 2023 and released to me under FoI:

Document 28 – 2023.04.12 – HRCP Case Submission paper_RedactedDownload

So if the brood meddling ‘project board’ was so keen for an extension to the brood meddling trial/sham, why would they only take advantage of the extension for one year (2023) instead of the two years for which it was licensed? Just adding a one year extension to the trial doesn’t seem sufficient time (to me) to provide the data required to address the questions the so-called scientific trial was seeking to address, which is why NE approved a two-year licence extension within an extended five-year trial extension.

Well, there are a few hypotheses circulating about that. Of course these are all speculative at the moment because we don’t know for sure that brood meddling didn’t take place this year, but let’s assume for now that it didn’t.

The first hypothesis is that the grouse shooting industry simply hasn’t been able to find sufficient ‘receptor sites’ where the brood meddled chicks would be released post-captivity. We know, from an official internal NE report released via FoI, dated April 2022 (heading into the last year of the initial five year trial), that only four estates had been involved as ‘intervention sites’ (i.e. their hen harriers were brood meddled: one nest in 2019, two nests in 2020 and two nests in 2021) and only three estates had functioned as ‘receptor sites’. That’s not very many estates willing to engage in hen harrier brood meddling, is it?

Incidentally, data from the 2022 breeding season show there were four broods meddled with that year and six broods meddled with in 2024. I haven’t seen any information about how many estates were involved (as intervention or receptor sites) but the figure must still be staggeringly low.

Out of a purported 190 grouse moor member estates, the Moorland Association seems only to have found a handful willing to participate in the brood meddling trial, whether as an ‘intervention’ site or a ‘receptor’ site. I wonder why that is?

It could be that a lot of grouse shooting estates don’t see the point of getting involved in brood meddling because they’ve already got a tried and tested way of removing hen harriers from their moors (i.e. illegally killing them) and the chance of getting caught and prosecuted for it is virtually nil (see here).

It could be that a lot of grouse shooting estates won’t get involved in brood meddling unless it’s guaranteed that after the ‘trial’ period, brood meddling will be rolled out as a standard, legal technique that grouse moor owners can use every year to get rid of hen harriers. There’s some evidence that this hypothesis is more than speculative, as follows:

Cast you minds back to Valentine’s Day 2023 when the Natural England Board and some of its senior staff had a day out at Swinton Estate in Nidderdale (an estate at the epicentre of hen harrier brood meddling and also an estate with a long track record of confirmed and suspected raptor persecution offences, including some relating to hen harriers). I wrote about that day out (here and here).

After their soiree on the Swinton grouse moors, Natural England’s Board and senior staff went out to dinner and invited some fascinating guests. The NE Board had been issued with an internal briefing document to help them navigate what were described as “elephant traps and tricky issues”, which included hen harrier brood meddling. Here’s the briefing document, released to me under FoI – pay attention on page 3 under the heading Future of Brood Management, where it says this:

“NE Board has taken the in-principle decision to continue participation I [sic] brood management on a scientific trial basis. The MA is the principal partner in the trail [sic], promoting participation by estates, organising and funding release facilities and enabling access for our fieldworkers to tag and monitor chicks. Along with all our brood management partners, they are rightly proud of the success so far and are clear that an estate’s appetite for tolerating or welcoming breeding hen harriers is directly related to the availability of brood management as a ‘pressure valve’ to avoid a build-up of breeding hen harriers. The MA has supported the proposal of extending the trial but is clear that this should lead to the eventual wide availability of the technique as a practical and affordable tool“. (Emphasis added by me).

Board Member Briefing Swinton Estate site visit Feb 23_RedactedDownload

Also of interest in this internal briefing document is the news that the Moorland Association had asked for a ‘fixed release site’ (for brood meddled hen harriers) instead of having to release the birds back the same SPA from where they were removed. The MA had suggested Moorhouse NNR in Upper Teesdale or Ingleborough NNR in the Yorkshire Dales National Park as potential fixed sites. NE didn’t support this and the briefing document states:

“[REDACTED] judgement is that this represents too great a risk to the ‘NNR-brand’ as a whole and individual sites as long as illegal persecution remains a real threat to any hen harrier nest: additionally the MA should have sufficient contacts with access to vast tracts of suitable land if a long term commitment to hen harrier recovery is their goal“. [Emphasis is mine].

So there’s that issue I flagged earlier about the difficulty the MA appears to be having in providing ‘receptor’ sites. Funnily enough, this issue has also been raised again this year in a Moorland Association blog posted on 12 April 2024 (here), where there is quite a lot of moaning about having to release brood meddled hen harriers back in to the same SPA from where they were removed, and of course the now obligatory veiled threat about this potentially being in breach of IUCN guidelines, an argument the MA has also used recently in relation to the Police-led Hen Harrier Taskforce and one that the National Wildlife Crime Unit has summarily dismissed (see here).

A further hypothesis that’s been put forward about why the hen harrier brood meddling sham appears to have collapsed this year is that the Moorland Association probably doesn’t want to have to keep spending a fortune on paying for satellite tags when those tags are the primary source of evidence that demonstrate that brood meddling has not put an end to hen harrier persecution – indeed, last year (2023) was the worst on record since the brood meddling sham began in 2018, with 33 individual hen harriers reported as being illegally killed or to have disappeared in suspicious circumstances, including 13 brood meddled birds, and most of them on or close to driven grouse moors:

Over the next few weeks there should be more information available about this year’s hen harrier breeding season, including the number of breeding attempts, breeding failures and successes, the number of hen harriers satellite-tagged by Natural England and by the RSPB in various regions, the number of dead/missing hen harriers reported so far this year, and whether brood meddling did take place this year or whether the whole sham has just come tumbling down.

Whatever has happened this year, Natural England’s two-year extended brood meddling licence (2023-2024) has now expired and we can expect a substantial review of the seven-year ‘scientific trial’ which will be used to determine whether the trial is now closed or extended again, whether the grouse shooting industry will get a permanent ‘conservation licence’ (ha!) to continually remove hen harriers from the grouse moors, or whether the new Government will be pressed into dropping the whole sorry pantomime and instead focus its attention (and our money) into taking more effective action against the hen harrier killers.

Watch this space.

Hunt saboteurs disrupt Inglorious 12th grouse shoot on Wemmergill Estate, Co Durham

As they’ve done in previous years (e.g. see here), members of the Hunt Saboteurs Association were out in force today in northern England to disrupt grouse shooting on the Inglorious 12th.

Today they were on the Wemmergill Estate in County Durham. If Wemmergill sounds familiar it’s because it’s previously featured on this blog (here, here and here) and on Mark Avery’s blog (here).

Here’s what the Hunt Sabs got up to today:

Further details on the Hunt Sabs’ website here.

I wonder if they’ll be out again this week and if so, where…?

UPDATE 17 August 2024: Hunt Saboteurs disrupt grouse shoot on Stean Moor in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire (here)

Four young hen harriers satellite-tagged after crowdfunding by Hen Harrier Action

Press release from Hen Harrier Action, 7th August 2024:

FOUR YOUNG HEN HARRIERS SATELLITE TAGGED THANKS TO GENEROSITY OF WILDLIFE CHARITY SUPPORTERS

Uplands conservation charity Hen Harrier Action has just released full details of the four young Hen Harriers satellite tagged with funds raised by the charity’s supporters in a Christmas Appeal. The appeal aimed to raise enough money to fund four tags, and the donations poured in. In just 10 days the Christmas Appeal reached, and then exceeded, its ambitious target.

The satellite tags have been fitted to four young Hen Harriers, two that fledged in England, one in Wales and one in Scotland.

The tags, fitted by experts from the RSPB and Northern England Raptor Forum, will allow dedicated staff at the RSPB to monitor the birds’ movements throughout their lifespan.

Two English Hen Harriers fledged in the Forest of Bowland

The two English Hen Harriers, Sita and Binbeal, fledged in the Forest of Bowland. Sita, a female, is named for the Hindu Goddess of self-sacrifice and dedication – a fitting name for a female Hen Harrier who will hopefully go on to breed and fiercely defend her chicks.

And Binbeal, a male, is named for the Australian Aboriginal spirit of rainbows. In the mythology, he is the son of Bunjil, the creator deity often depicted as a Wedge-tailed Eagle.

Scottish and Welsh Hen Harriers

The Scottish Hen Harrier, a female, named Gilda by the Scottish Raptor Study Group, fledged at the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, the ambitious community-led rewilding project. One of four chicks, Gilda has two sisters and a brother. In Old English, the name means golden.

And the Welsh bird, a male called Adar, fledged in North Wales, named after the medieval Welsh word for birds.

Battling the British Weather

After the unusually wet and dreary Spring and early Summer, it was challenging for the teams out in the field fitting satellite tags to the young Hen Harriers in the nest.

Steve Downing, Chair of the Northern England Raptor Forum and a veteran of satellite tagging projects, commented on the challenges: “It is always challenging and this year was no different with the occasional hot day; but predominantly the weather was dominated by cold, persistently wet days throughout the breeding season. Now we wish them and the other members of the 2024 cohort fair weather and a following wind to take them away from the threat of persecution and on to a long and successful life.”

More information is available here.

ENDS

For those who want to find out more about hen harriers and their illegal persecution in the UK, this year’s Hen Harrier Day, organised by Hen Harrier Action, takes place this Saturday (10th August) at Carsington Water in Derbyshire. For more details about this free event, please click here.

Criminal investigations into deaths of two Hen Harriers

Two criminal investigations are underway following the discovery of two dead hen harriers earlier this spring.

According to Natural England’s most recent update on the fates of its satellite-tagged hen harriers (updates are periodical – the most recent was April 2024), the following two harriers have been found dead, one at an undisclosed location in Northumberland and another at an undisclosed location in Devon:

Hen harrier ‘Susie’, female, Tag ID: 201122, satellite-tagged in Cumbria on 21 July 2020. Date of last transmission: 12 February 2024 in Northumberland. Notes: “Recovered awaiting PM” [post mortem].

Hen harrier R2-M1-23, male, Tag ID: 213927, satellite-tagged as part of the brood meddling trial /sham on 19 July 2023 at site BM-R2-Cumbria. Date of last transmission: 7 March 2024 in Devon. Notes: “Recovered awaiting PM”.

Hen harrier photo by Pete Walkden

You might remember ‘Susie’ – she’s the hen harrier whose chicks were brutally stamped on and crushed to death in their nest on a grouse moor in Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in June 2022 (here).

I hadn’t seen any media about the latest two dead hen harriers so in May I submitted an FoI to Natural England to ask for the details of the post mortem reports to determine whether they’d been killed illegally.

Natural England responded in June and told me the information was being withheld under Regulation 12(5)(b) which states:

“A public authority may refuse to disclose information to the extent that its disclosure would adversely affect: (b) the course of justice, the ability of a person to receive a fair trial or the ability of a public authority to conduct an enquiry of a criminal or disciplinary nature”.

Natural England also told me:

“Natural England can confirm the investigations for the two Hen Harriers cases are live. As such it is our view that this exception covers the information we hold in scope of your request and therefore we are withholding because if it were to be disclosed at this stage it could comprise the result and have a serious impact on the ongoing process and proceedings“.

Natural England’s response suggests that criminality is indeed suspected but I’ll await confirmation before adding these two to the ever-growing list of hen harriers that have been illegally killed / disappeared in suspicious circumstances since the brood meddling sham began in 2018 (the running tally currently stands as 123 hen harriers).

These are the second and third known investigations this year, following the suspicious disappearance of a hen harrier called ‘Shalimar’ on a grouse moor in the Angus Glens on 15 February 2024 (see here).

Although I was at a wildlife crime forum in London last month where a police officer from the NWCU’s Hen Harrier Taskforce told the audience that there were currently five investigations ongoing, although no details were provided.

Police call out Moorland Association for “wasting time & distracting from the real work” of Hen Harrier Taskforce

Last week I blogged about how the Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England) had been booted off the ‘partnership’ designed to tackle illegal raptor persecution in England and Wales (the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group – RPPDG), after the Moorland Association had published an inflammatory blog that looked to be an attempt to sabotage the National Wildlife Crime Unit’s (NWCU) new Hen Harrier Taskforce (see here).

Grouse shooting butts in Yorkshire Dales National Park. Photo by Ruth Tingay

It seems that the Moorland Association’s inflammatory blog wasn’t an isolated incident, but more like the last straw for the NWCU.

A series of FoI responses has revealed some fascinating correspondence between the Moorland Association and the NWCU, about the Hen Harrier Taskforce, in the run up to the Moorland Association being booted out of the RPPDG last week.

I’ll post some of the correspondence below (there’s more to come) and although the names of the individuals have been redacted, it’s clear to me (from some other information released) that the Moorland Association’s correspondent is CEO Andrew Gilruth.

You can see that the Moorland Association is following a familiar line that we’ve seen from shooting industry organisations in recent years – that of putting pressure on the police to change the narrative on raptor persecution crimes (e.g. BASC did it here; National Gamekeepers Organisation did it here and again here) but this time the NWCU has called it out and has suggested that the Moorland Association is “wasting time and distracting from the real work” [i.e. that of tackling illegal raptor persecution, in this case hen harriers].

The Moorland Association’s response is to accuse the NWCU of “entirely unprofessional conduct” (cue official complaint). From what I’ve read, the NWCU has acted with patience and professionalism in the face of an arrogant and disruptive influence.

The following two files show correspondence between the NWCU and the Moorland Association from 21 December 2023 – 10 June 2024 and from 20 June 2024 – 8 July 2024:

MA_NWCU Correspondence1 HH Taskforce_21Dec2023_10June2024RedactedDownload

MA_NWCU Correspondence2 HH Taskfoce 20June2024_8July2024RedactedDownload

UPDATE 22 November 2024: Revealed: letter of expulsion to Andrew Gilruth (CEO, Moorland Association) from Head of National Wildlife Crime Unit (here)

Hen Harrier Day – 10 August 2024 at Carsington Water, Derbyshire

This year is the 10th anniversary of Hen Harrier Day and it’ll be marked by an event at Carsington Water in Derbyshire on Saturday 10th August.

This year’s event is organised by the charity Hen Harrier Action and runs from 11am – 4.45pm on Saturday 10th Aug. Entry is free although you’ll have to pay for parking (calculated by the hour, max of £7 for the day).

The programme for the day looks like this:

In addition to events on the main stage, there’ll be over 20 stalls from the following organisations:

I’ll be there with my fellow co-directors from Wild Justice – Mark Avery and Chris Packham, and we’ll be looking back on the first ten years of Hen Harrier Day campaigning and looking forward to what comes next.

I hope to see some of you there – especially any of the #Sodden570 who were there when it all began amidst Hurricane Bertha at Derwent Dam!

For full details of this year’s event at Carsington Water please click here.

Hen Harrier breeding success continues on Tarras Valley Nature Reserve

Eight hen harrier chicks have fledged on the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve this year, continuing to buck the trend in south Scotland.

The results of last year’s national Hen Harrier Survey demonstrated a steep regional population decline of 32% across the Southern Uplands and of four Special Protection Areas (SPAs) designated for hen harriers in this region, they were only breeding successfully in one – Tarras Valley.

Three of this year’s eight chicks have been satellite tagged – two females (siblings) and a male – with funding provided by the RSPB and charity Hen Harrier Action.

The three were named Ceilidh, Gilda and Red by Langholm Academy’s Head Girl and Boy and members of the raptor group and were tagged by licensed fieldworkers from the RSPB.

Photos of Ceilidh, Gilda and Red, copyright RSPB Scotland:

Tarras Valley was previously a driven grouse moor (known as Langholm Moor) but was bought from Buccleuch Estate a couple of years ago after an epic fundraising effort and is now a community-owned nature reserve, supported by the Langholm Initiative.

The Tarras Valley Nature Reserve team is working towards the development of a five-year action plan and many restoration projects are already underway – have a look around the TVNR website here to see what’s already been started and what else is planned.

Unsurprisingly, there are some in the grouse shooting industry who have been, and continue to be, critical of this community-owned project and seem desperate for it to fail, or at least for it to be perceived as a failure.

I mentioned last month that the Chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, Alex Hogg, recently told a Parliamentary Committee that the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve was a “species desert” and “there is nothing there at all” [now that it’s no longer being managed as a driven grouse moor].

His assessment seemed to be based not on any detailed surveys he’d undertaken, but on a single car journey he made recently over the moor. He obviously missed the hen harriers and all the other resident and visiting birds, not to mention all the other species that have been recorded on site in the last couple of years.

TVNR Bird List2Download

It’s a common theme, this slagging-off former grouse moors that are now part of a significant rewilding effort, because the gamebird shooting industry wants everyone to believe that managing a moor for grouse is the best and only suitable option for the land.

Some grouse moors do have big numbers of wader species, that’s without doubt, but it’s not a good indicator of wider biodiversity on the moor. The main reason those waders do well is because predators are ruthlessly and systematically destroyed, some legally, others illegally, for the benefit of producing an artificially-high population of red grouse for paying guests to shoot at. The benefit to the waders is simply a convenient by-product of that.

Well done to the team at Tarras Valley Nature Reserve and the army of volunteers who are helping to encourage a wide suite of habitats and species to re-establish and thrive here, including those hen harriers.

Moorland Association booted off the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG)

Some excellent news!

The grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England, the Moorland Association, has at long last been booted off the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG), the so-called partnership for tackling raptor persecution crimes in England & Wales.

The trigger for this expulsion seems to have been the Moorland Association’s inflammatory blog earlier this month where it looked to be trying to sabotage the work of the police’s new National Hen Harrier Taskforce (I wrote about it, here).

Hen harrier photo by Pete Walkden

The Moorland Association has now posted a new blog (here) where it claims to be ‘perplexed’ about its expulsion from the RPPDG:

Hilariously, in addition to being ‘perplexed and ‘bemused’, the Moorland Association’s response includes this line, which made me laugh out loud:

“We regret this decision, as the Moorland Association has been a loyal member of the group since it was established and has arguably achieved more than any other partner in reducing wildlife crime, with bird of prey numbers at record highs“.

I’ve written about the failure of the RPPDG many times since its inception in 2011, and have argued that it simply won’t work when there is a clear conflict of interest amongst some of the ‘partners’ whose sole intention seems to be to undermine progression on tackling these crimes. We’ve seen similar when the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative collapsed last year (here).

From the beginning, the RPPDG has been dominated by organisations from the game shooting industry and the group’s perpetual lack of results (it’s achieved precisely nothing in terms of effectively tackling raptor persecution) has been consistently supported by a series of Tory DEFRA Ministers whose wilful blindness has been off the scale (e.g. Therese Coffey here, Rebecca Pow here, Richard Benyon here, Rebecca Pow again here, Richard Benyon again here, and Trudy Harrison here).

Let’s see what happens with the RPPDG now the Moorland Association has been removed from its position of influence.

Well done to Chief Inspector Kev Kelly, head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (and current stand-in Chair of the RPPDG) for a courageous (and in my view, long overdue) decision to remove the Moorland Association from the RPPDG. I imagine he considered the consequences of making such a decision (i.e. a nasty, spiteful backlash from certain quarters) but decided the potential benefits to the partnership outweighed the cost. It’s an impressive example of integrity and I applaud him for it.

UPDATE 1 August 2024: Police call out Moorland Association for “wasting time & distracting from the real work” of Hen Harrier Taskforce (here)

UPDATE 22 November 2024: Revealed: letter of expulsion to Andrew Gilruth (CEO, Moorland Association) from Head of National Wildlife Crime Unit (here)

Is the Moorland Association already trying to sabotage the police’s new National Hen Harrier Taskforce?

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the new National Hen Harrier Taskforce – a police-led initiative to tackle the ongoing persecution of hen harriers on driven grouse moors (see here).

This hen harrier was euthanised after suffering catastrophic injuries in an illegal trap set next to its nest on a grouse moor in 2019. Photo by Ruth Tingay

The Taskforce’s proposed strategy for tackling hen harrier persecution on grouse moors is based on a new framework designed to tackle all types of Serious Organised Crime that was launched by the Home Office last year (see here). It’s based on a three-step plan of ‘Clear, Hold, Build‘.

Step one (‘Clear‘) involves police officers relentlessly pursuing organised crime members within a community (or in this case, an industry), using all available powers to ‘clear’ the offenders from specific locations.

Step two (‘Hold‘) sees officers undertake continued high visibility activity to ensure other serious organised criminals can’t move in and operate in the vacuum created by step one.

Step three (‘Build‘) relates to building local community resilience and trust, through partnership-working, to ensure that Serious Organised Crime doesn’t reoccur at that location.

When I wrote about the Taskforce a few weeks ago (here) I mentioned a similar police initiative, called Operation Artemis, that was launched to tackle hen harrier persecution on grouse moors in 2004, some twenty years ago. That initiative crashed and burned within three years because grouse moor owners refused to cooperate with the police. The new Taskforce has a more sophisticated theoretical approach and stronger enforcement support, but the basic premise is the same: establish a partnership between landowners and the police to target the hen harrier killers.

However, as we’ve come to learn, partnership-working is only successful if all partners have the same objective and there are no conflicts of interest.

In an extraordinary blog posted on the Moorland Association’s website on 8 July 2024, (the Moorland Association is the lobby group representing grouse moor owners in England), it is suggested that the police are ‘bypassing regulation’ by asking grouse moor owners to sign a letter giving permission for the police to enter land at any time and use equipment for the prevention and detection of crime. This includes the installation of cameras, proximity alarms and other equipment on and around hen harrier nest and roost sites.

The Moorland Association is advising its members not to sign any letters authorising police access without first taking legal advice because, it suggests, this is an attempt to ‘bypass regulation on surveillance’.

I don’t see any issue with the Moorland Association advising its members to seek legal advice – that’s standard due diligence – but to state that the police are ‘bypassing regulation on surveillance‘ seems to me to be incendiary.

Here is a copy of the Moorland Association’s blog, screen grabbed here because it has already been altered from its original version (more on that below).

I’m not sure who wrote the Moorland Association’s blog because there’s no name attached to it but my money would be on the author being the Moorland Association’s CEO, Andrew Gilruth. Why do I think that? Well Mr Gilruth built an impressive reputation for presenting distorted information when he worked as Director for Communications for the GWCT (e.g. see here, here and especially here) and the Moorland Association’s blog has all the familiar hallmarks.

For example, the opening paragraph of the Moorland Association’s blog goes like this:

‘Most will remember the irony of RSPB staff falling foul of the courts in order to try and catch others breaking the law – and then expressing outrage when their evidence was thrown out of court here. In short, judges felt the police could not use others to circumvent the law on covert surveillance‘.

I’m not sure of the relevance of including this statement about the RSPB’s video evidence in the context of the Moorland Association’s blog about police surveillance, other than to (a) try yet again to undermine the credibility of the RSPB and (b) contrive an image that the police have previously ‘used others’ to ‘circumvent the law on covert surveillance‘.

It is accurate for the Moorland Association to point to the court case in 2015 where the judge ruled the RSPB’s video evidence as inadmissible. As regular blog readers will know, there have been a number of court cases where the RSPB’s evidence has been ruled inadmissible (e.g. here and here) but what the Moorland Association’s blog conveniently fails to point out is that there have also been a number of cases where the RSPB’s video evidence has been accepted by the courts and has, in fact, been crucial to the conviction of criminal gamekeepers, including these recent cases in 2022 here, again in 2022 here, and in 2023 here.

Far from the police ‘using others to circumvent the law‘, the police have worked legitimately and lawfully in partnership with the RSPB many times to convict criminal gamekeepers, both with and without the use of covert surveillance.

This successful partnership really agitates many in the game-shooting industry and I’d argue that’s the reason the Moorland Association’s blog opens with that paragraph – to infer that the police have a track record of ‘circumventing the law on covert surveillance‘ and to place this thought firmly in their members’ minds before moving on to discuss why the Moorland Association believes the police’s latest tactics on the Hen Harrier Taskforce are of ‘concern‘.

The rest of the blog appears to be a distortion of what the police are asking landowners to do. It’s surely obvious that the police aren’t asking landowners for permission to undertake covert surveillance – it would hardly be ‘covert’ if they’re telling the landowner that’s what they intend to do!

Rather, what it seems the police are actually asking for is permission to visit the moor at any time (Step one of the three-step strategy) and to install equipment (including proximity alarms and cameras) ‘on and around nest and roost sites‘, to catch the criminals that are killing hen harriers. You know, the criminals that the landowners and their gamekeepers claim to have no knowledge of, but who are repeatedly turning up on their estates, armed, to commit serious crime.

This isn’t covert surveillance in the sense of spying on people who live and work on that estate – hen harriers don’t tend to nest close to people’s houses and, as hen harriers are a Schedule 1 protected species, nobody should be anywhere near their nest sites without a disturbance licence anyway, so the likelihood of a landowner or their employees being ‘covertly surveyed’ by a nest camera is pretty implausible, assuming they’re not involved in the crimes being committed at those sites.

I note that the Moorland Association blog appears to have been edited since it first appeared on 8th July – it now includes a ‘note’ (under the sub-header ‘Should I sign one of these letters?‘) to clarify the police’s position that what they are asking for does not amount to covert surveillance. That’s an interesting edit. I wonder if it’s been added on legal advice to try and soften the Moorland Association’s accusations against the police? I imagine the police’s reaction to the Moorland Association’s original blog would not be favourable, given that it’s not conducive to partnership working and also seems to be verging on defamation.

The wider context of this Moorland Association blog is of most interest to me. Here is an organisation that repeatedly claims to have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy against raptor persecution, and yet here it is giving a pretty good impression of an organisation intent on sabotaging the police’s attempts to tackle raptor persecution (as well as other Serious Organised Crime) on grouse moors.

If I was a landowner, and armed criminals were repeatedly coming on to my estate to kill protected wildlife, I’d be on the phone to the police without hesitation, asking them to respond. Not just for the sake of the wildlife but for the safety of my family, my employees, my neighbours and the visiting public. I’d be asking for an armed response unit and would give them permission to do whatever they thought necessary, for however long it took to catch the gunmen. Wouldn’t this be the response of any reasonable, law-abiding citizen who had nothing to hide?

It’ll be fascinating to see what the police’s response is to the Moorland Association’s blog, assuming they’ve seen it. From the presentations I’ve heard from DI Mark Harrison, the officer from the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) leading the National Hen Harrier Taskforce, he’s playing strictly by the rules, being transparent, and initially taking a softly, softly approach with landowners, refusing to embarrass estates by naming them publicly as hen harrier persecution hotspots because he wants to work in partnership with them.

Hen Harrier Taskforce approach, presented by DI Harrison at a recent seminar. Photo: Ruth Tingay

I’ve been cynical of his ‘partnership’ approach and have suggested that all he’s doing is shielding the criminals. However, DI Harrison has been very clear that his tactics are part of a longer-term strategy and that if landowners refuse to cooperate, it makes it easier for him to take the next step and upgrade the tactics to something far more serious.

The Taskforce isn’t just looking at wildlife crime. It is also intent on tackling offences such as theft (of satellite tags), criminal damage (of satellite tags), fraud offences, criminal use of firearms, and potential conspiracy offences relating to encouraging or assisting crime. Some of these are very serious offences, triable either way (i.e. can be heard in a higher court that has greater sentencing powers than a magistrates court) and thus there are more serious consequences for anyone convicted of these offences than being convicted for a wildlife crime offence.

The tactics that he’ll be empowered to use are far more intrusive than anything these grouse moor estates will have faced before, he won’t need their permission to deploy them and they won’t know what’s happening until it’s too late.

Let’s see if the Moorland Association’s inflammatory blog will trigger a response from DI Harrison and the NWCU, resulting in the Taskforce ramping up its tactics on any grouse shooting estates where a landowner refuses to sign up.

UPDATE 23 July 2024: Moorland Association booted off the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG) here

UPDATE 22 November 2024: Revealed: letter of expulsion to Andrew Gilruth (CEO, Moorland Association) from Head of National Wildlife Crime Unit (here)

Why Scottish grouse moors will have to stop slaughtering golden eagles – opinion piece in The Scotsman

The Scotsman has published my opinion piece today about the potential impact of the new licensing scheme for grouse shooting in Scotland.

You can read it on The Scotsman website (here) and it’s reproduced below:

I call them ‘The Untouchables’. Those within the grouse-shooting industry who have been getting away with illegally killing golden eagles, and other raptor species such as hen harriers, buzzards and red kites, for decades.

They don’t fear prosecution because there are few people around those remote, privately owned glens to witness the ruthless and systematic poisoning, trapping and shooting of these iconic birds. If the police do come looking, more often than not they’re met with an Omertá-esque wall of silence from those who, with an archaic Victorian mindset, still perceive birds of prey to be a threat to their lucrative red grouse shooting interests.

For a successful prosecution, Police Scotland and the Crown Office must be able to demonstrate “beyond reasonable doubt” that a named individual committed the crime. As an example of how difficult this is, in 2010 a jar full of golden eagle leg rings was found on a mantelpiece during a police raid of a gamekeeper’s house in the Highlands. Each of those unique leg ring numbers could be traced back to an individual eagle.

The gamekeeper couldn’t account for how he came to be in possession of those rings, but the police couldn’t prove that he had killed those eagles and cut off their legs to remove the rings as trophies.

Despite the remains of two red kites, six illegal traps, an illegally trapped hen harrier and poisoned bait also being found on the estate, the gamekeeper was fined a mere £1,500 for being in possession of one dead red kite, that was found mutilated in the back of his estate vehicle.

In another case in 2010, three golden eagles were found poisoned on a grouse-shooting estate in the Highlands over just a few weeks. Even though the police found an enormous cache of the lethal poison – carbofuran – locked in a shed to which the head gamekeeper held a key, they couldn’t demonstrate that he was the person who had laid the poisoned baits that had killed the eagles. This meant he was fined £3,300 for the possession of the banned poison, but wasn’t prosecuted for killing the eagles.

In recent years, researchers have been fitting small satellite tags to young golden eagles which allows us to track their movements across Scotland, minute by minute. Analysis has shown that between 2004 and 2016, almost one third of tagged eagles (41 of 131 birds) ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, mostly on or next to grouse moors. 

Satellite-tagged golden eagle prior to fledging. This eagle was tagged in 2014, ‘disappeared’ on a Strathbraan grouse moor in 2016 and it’s satellite tag was found wrapped in heavy lead sheeting in the River Braan in 2020. Photo by Duncan Orr-Ewing

The lengths the criminals will go to avoid detection were exposed in 2020 when a walker found a satellite tag that had been cut off an eagle, wrapped in heavy lead sheeting – presumably to block the signal – and dumped in the River Braan. The tag’s unique identification number told us it belonged to a young eagle tagged in the Trossachs in 2014. This eagle had disappeared without trace from a Perthshire grouse moor in 2016, in an area where eight other tagged eagles had vanished in similar suspicious circumstances. Nobody has been prosecuted.

The remains of the satellite tag that had been cut off the eagle, wrapped in lead sheeting and dumped in a river. Photo by Ian Thomson, RSPB Scotland

The most recent disappearance of a tagged eagle happened just before Christmas 2023, close to the boundary of a grouse moor in the Moorfoot Hills. ‘Merrick’ was translocated to the area in 2022 as part of the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project. Her tag data told us she was asleep in a tree immediately before she disappeared. Police found her blood and a few feathers at the scene and concluded she’d been shot. Who shoots a sleeping eagle? Again, no one has been prosecuted.

This situation has persisted for decades because although golden eagles have been afforded legal protection for the last 70 years, to date there hasn’t been a single successful prosecution for killing one. The chances of getting caught and prosecuted have been so low that the risk of committing the crime has been worth taking, over and over again. Until now. 

Earlier this year, the Scottish Parliament passed new legislation, the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024, which introduces a licensing scheme for grouse shooting. For the first time in 170 years, red grouse shooting can now only take place on estates that have been granted a licence to shoot. 

How will this stop the slaughtering of golden eagles and other birds of prey on Scotland’s grouse moors? Well, the licence can be revoked for up to five years if there is evidence of wildlife crime on the estate. Significantly, this will be based on the civil burden of proof which has a lower evidential threshold than the criminal burden of proof. 

This means that instead of the police having to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that a named individual was responsible, they now have to prove that it’s based only on the ‘balance of probability’. This is a real game-changer because instead of being perpetually ‘untouchable’, now there are real, tangible consequences for the grouse shooting industry if these crimes continue. Estates will no longer be able to rely on the implausible protestation that ‘a big boy did it and ran away’.

As with any legislation, it will only be effective if it is strongly enforced. The jury’s out on that and we’ll be keeping a close eye on performance, but as the licensing scheme is based on a policy of mistrust, the Scottish Government has sent an unequivocal message to the grouse shooting industry. We all know what’s been going on and the public will no longer tolerate it.

ENDS