Tag: hen harrier

Lochan Estate in Strathbraan loses its appeal against General Licence restriction imposed for wildlife crime

Lochan Estate, a pheasant and grouse-shooting estate in the notorious Strathbraan region of Perthshire has lost its appeal against a General Licence restriction that was imposed on the estate in January 2022 after Police Scotland provided the licensing authority (NatureScot) with evidence of wildlife crime against birds of prey on the estate.

Regular blog readers will know that the three-year General Licence restriction on Lochan Estate took effect on 25th January 2022, prohibiting the use of General Licences 01, 02 and 03 on the estate until 25th January 2025 (see here).

NatureScot stated the restriction was imposed after the discovery of a dead hen harrier (named Rannoch) on the estate’s grouse moor in May 2019. Her foot was still caught in the jaws of a spring trap (see here).

[Photo by RSPB Scotland]

Lochan Estate’s response to the restriction came swiftly and an unnamed spokesperson was quoted as follows:

“The estate categorically rejects any suggestion of wrongdoing in relation to the welfare of wildlife.

We made very robust representations five months ago and only received the notification this week, which we found surprising given the material we produced.

We will therefore be appealing this decision.”

On 1st March I noticed that the official restriction notice on NatureScot’s website had disappeared so I assumed that was an indication that the estate had formally appealed the decision (NatureScot’s protocol seems to be to retract the restriction during the appeal process). This was confirmed when I contacted NatureScot’s licensing team to query the missing restriction notice and I was told the estate’s appeal had been lodged on 22nd February 2022.

Yesterday, the official restriction notice re-appeared on NatureScot’s website, which I assume to mean that the estate’s appeal has been rejected and the restriction now stands until it expires on 25th January 2025.

This is the area of restriction:

As many of you already know, this restriction is barely worth the paper it’s written on, because the estate can simply apply for ‘individual licences’ (instead of relying on the General Licences) to continue its activities as before, albeit with the minor inconvenience of having to have a bit of a paper trail. This has been a major criticism of the General Licence restriction process ever since it began in 2014. This, combined with the shooting industry’s apparent reluctance to shun any estates where restrictions have been imposed for wildlife crime, means that the General Licence restriction is an utterly ineffective sanction (e.g. see here).

You may remember that last month Scottish Greens MSP Mark Ruskell asked Parliamentary questions about this absurd so-called sanction (see here); more on that shortly.

Meanwhile, the General Licence restriction imposed on Invercauld Estate in January 2022 (following the discovery of a poisoned golden eagle and poisoned baits (see here) has also been challenged by the estate and a decision on that appeal is due imminently.

UPDATE 7th April 2022: Invercauld Estate in Cairngorms National Park loses appeal against General Licence restriction imposed for wildlife crime (here).

67 hen harriers confirmed ‘missing’ or illegally killed since 2018, most of them on or close to UK grouse moors

For anyone who still wants to pretend that the grouse shooting industry isn’t responsible for the systematic extermination of hen harriers on grouse moors across the UK, here’s the latest catalogue of crime that suggests otherwise.

[This male hen harrier died in 2019 after his leg was almost severed in an illegally set trap that had been placed next to his nest on a Scottish grouse moor (see here). Photo by Ruth Tingay]

This is the blog I now publish after every reported killing or suspicious disappearance.

“They disappear in the same way political dissidents in authoritarian dictatorships have disappeared” (Stephen Barlow, 22 January 2021).

Today the list has been updated to include the most recently reported victims, six young hen harriers whose satellite tags inexplicably stopped transmitting and whose corpses vanished into thin air between November 2021 and January 2022 (see here).

I’ve been compiling this list only since 2018 because that is the year that the grouse shooting industry ‘leaders’ would have us believe that the criminal persecution of hen harriers had stopped and that these birds were being welcomed back on to the UK’s grouse moors (see here).

This assertion was made shortly before the publication of a devastating new scientific paper that demonstrated that 72% of satellite-tagged hen harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses (see here).

2018 was also the year that Natural England issued a licence to begin a hen harrier brood meddling trial on grouse moors in northern England. 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 (NE), in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. For more background see here.

Brood meddling has been described as a sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ by commentator Stephen Welch:

“I don’t get it, I thought the idea of that scheme was some kind of trade off – a gentleman’s agreement that the birds would be left in peace if they were moved from grouse moors at a certain density. It seems that one party is not keeping their side of the bargain“.

With at least 67 hen harriers gone since 2018, I think it’s fair to say that the grouse shooting industry is simply taking the piss. Meanwhile, Natural England pretends that ‘partnership working’ is the way to go and DEFRA Ministers remain silent.

‘Partnership working’ according to Natural England appears to include authorising the removal of hen harrier chicks from a grouse moor already under investigation by the police for suspected raptor persecution (here) and accepting a £10K bung from representatives of the grouse shooting industry that prevents Natural England from criticising them or the sham brood meddling trial (see here).

[Cartoon by Gill Lewis]

So here’s the latest gruesome list. Note that the majority of these birds (but not all) were fitted with satellite tags. How many more [untagged] harriers have been killed?

February 2018: Hen harrier Saorsa ‘disappeared’ in the Angus Glens in Scotland (here). The Scottish Gamekeepers Association later published wholly inaccurate information claiming the bird had been re-sighted. The RSPB dismissed this as “completely false” (here).

5 February 2018: Hen harrier Marc ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Durham (here)

9 February 2018: Hen harrier Aalin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Blue ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Finn ‘disappeared’ near Moffat in Scotland (here)

18 April 2018: Hen harrier Lia ‘disappeared’ in Wales and her corpse was retrieved in a field in May 2018. Cause of death was unconfirmed but police treating death as suspicious (here)

8 August 2018: Hen harrier Hilma ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Northumberland (here).

16 August 2018: Hen harrier Athena ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

26 August 2018: Hen Harrier Octavia ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here)

29 August 2018: Hen harrier Margot ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

29 August 2018: Hen Harrier Heulwen ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

3 September 2018: Hen harrier Stelmaria ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

24 September 2018: Hen harrier Heather ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

2 October 2018: Hen harrier Mabel ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

3 October 2018: Hen Harrier Thor ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Bowland, Lanacashire (here)

23 October 2018: Hen harrier Tom ‘disappeared’ in South Wales (here)

26 October 2018: Hen harrier Arthur ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park (here)

1 November 2018: Hen harrier Barney ‘disappeared’ on Bodmin Moor (here)

10 November 2018: Hen harrier Rannoch ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here). Her corpse was found nearby in May 2019 – she’d been killed in an illegally-set spring trap (here).

14 November 2018: Hen harrier River ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (here). Her corpse was found nearby in April 2019 – she’d been illegally shot (here).

16 January 2019: Hen harrier Vulcan ‘disappeared’ in Wiltshire close to Natural England’s proposed reintroduction site (here)

7 February 2019: Hen harrier Skylar ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (here)

22 April 2019: Hen harrier Marci ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

26 April 2019: Hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Nairnshire (here)

11 May 2019: An untagged male hen harrier was caught in an illegally-set trap next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire. He didn’t survive (here)

7 June 2019: An untagged hen harrier was found dead on a grouse moor in Scotland. A post mortem stated the bird had died as a result of ‘penetrating trauma’ injuries and that this bird had previously been shot (here)

5 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 1 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor nr Dalnaspidal on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park (here)

11 September 2019: Hen harrier Romario ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

14 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183704) ‘disappeared’ in the North Pennines (here)

23 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #55149) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

24 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 2 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Invercauld in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

24 September 2019: Hen harrier Bronwyn ‘disappeared’ near a grouse moor in North Wales (here)

10 October 2019: Hen harrier Ada ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North Pennines AONB (here)

12 October 2019: Hen harrier Thistle ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Sutherland (here)

18 October 2019: Member of the public reports the witnessed shooting of an untagged male hen harrier on White Syke Hill in North Yorkshire (here)

November 2019: Hen harrier Mary found illegally poisoned on a pheasant shoot in Ireland (here)

January 2020: Members of the public report the witnessed shooting of a male hen harrier on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

23 March 2020: Hen harrier Rosie ‘disappeared’ at an undisclosed roost site in Northumberland (here)

1 April 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183703) ‘disappeared’ in unnamed location, tag intermittent (here)

5 April 2020: Hen harrier Hoolie ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

8 April 2020: Hen harrier Marlin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

19 May 2020: Hen harrier Fingal ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Lowther Hills, Scotland (here)

21 May 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183701) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria shortly after returning from wintering in France (here)

27 May 2020: Hen harrier Silver ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on Leadhills Estate, Scotland (here)

day/month unknown: Unnamed male hen harrier breeding on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria ‘disappeared’ while away hunting (here)

9 July 2020: Unnamed female hen harrier (#201118) ‘disappeared’ from an undisclosed site in Northumberland (here).

25 July 2020: Hen harrier Harriet ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

14 August 2020: Hen harrier Solo ‘disappeared’ in confidential nest area in Lancashire (here)

7 September 2020: Hen harrier Dryad ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

16 September 2020: Hen harrier Fortune ‘disappeared’ from an undisclosed roost site in Northumberland (here)

19 September 2020: Hen harrier Harold ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

20 September 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2020, #55152) ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in North Yorkshire (here)

24 February 2021: Hen harrier Tarras ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Northumberland (here)

12th April 2021: Hen harrier Yarrow ‘disappeared’ near Stockton, County Durham (here)

18 May 2021: Adult male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from its breeding attempt on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria whilst away hunting (here)

18 May 2021: Another adult male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from its breeding attempt on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria whilst away hunting (here)

24 July 2021: Hen harrier Asta ‘disappeared’ at a ‘confidential site’ in the North Pennines (here)

14th August 2021: Hen harrier Josephine ‘disappeared’ at a ‘confidential site’ in Northumberland (here)

17 September 2021: Hen harrier Reiver ‘disappeared’ in a grouse moor dominated region of Northumberland (here)

24 September 2021: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2021, R2-F-1-21) ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland (here)

15 November 2021: Hen harrier (brood meddled in 2020, #R2-F1-20) ‘disappeared’ at the edge of a grouse moor on Arkengarthdale Estate in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

19 November 2021: Hen harrier Val ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria (here)

19 November 2021: Hen harrier Percy ‘disappeared’ in Lothian, Scotland (here)

12 December 2021: Hen harrier Jasmine ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor (High Rigg Moor on the Middlesmoor Estate) in the Nidderdale AONB in North Yorkshire (here)

9 January 2022: Hen harrier Ethel ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland (here)

26 January 2022: Hen harrier Amelia ‘disappeared’ in Bowland (here)

10 February 2022: An unnamed satellite-tagged hen harrier ‘disappeared’ in a grouse moor dominated area of the Peak District National Park (here)

To be continued……..

Not one of these 67 incidents has resulted in an arrest, let alone a prosecution. I had thought that when we reached 30 dead/missing hen harriers then the authorities might pretend to be interested and at least say a few words about this national scandal. We’ve now reached SIXTY SEVEN hen harriers, and still Govt ministers remain silent. They appear not to give a monkey’s. And yes, there are other things going on in the world, as always. That is not reason enough to ignore this blatant, brazen and systematic destruction of a supposedly protected species being undertaken to satisfy the greed and bloodlust of a minority of society.

Please consider sending a copy of this list of dead/missing hen harriers to your elected representative. Ask them for their opinion, tell them your opinion, and demand action (politely please). We know where these crimes are happening and we know why they’re happening. The Government’s own data, published three years ago, have provided very clear evidence (see here). MPs need to know how many of us care about this issue and how we will not be fobbed off by disingenuous platitudes from DEFRA Ministers (e.g. see here, here and here for repeated recent examples of this).

Not sure who is your MP? Click here to find out.

Don’t be put off by thinking, ‘Well my MP is a grouse shooter, he/she won’t bother responding so why should I bother?’. Do not give these politicians an easy option out. As your elected representative they have a duty to listen to, and respond to, constituents’ concerns, whether they agree with them or not.

If you use social media, please share this post.

If you fancy scribbling a few sentences to your local newspaper or even a national one, please do.

Please talk to friends, family and colleagues about these 67 birds. They will be horrified about what’s being allowed to go on.

We MUST increase public awareness. It’s up to all of us.

Thank you

Six more satellite-tagged hen harriers ‘disappear’ in suspicious circumstances

Six more satellite-tagged hen harriers have gone missing in suspicious circumstances, according to the most recent data published by Natural England last Friday, 4th March.

Natural England’s previous hen harrier update, published in December 2021 (here), identified three other tagged harriers that had vanished in the summer/autumn of 2021.

Now there are six more. Three disappeared in November 2021, one in December 2021 and two in January 2022. Neither the police or Natural England have issued any media press releases or made any public appeals for information about any of them.

Here are the details of the latest six to vanish, in chronological order:

Brood meddled hen harrier R2-F1-20, female, hatched in 2020 at nest site BM R2 Cumbria, last known satellite tag fix on the edge of a grouse moor (believed to be on Arkengarthdale Estate) in the Yorkshire Dales National Park on 15th November 2021, grid ref: NY959039.

Hen harrier Val (Tag ID 213849), female, hatched in North Pennines in 2021, last known satellite tag fix in Cumbria, west of Coniston Water on 19th November 2021, grid ref: SD256921.

Hen harrier Percy (Tag ID 213847), male, hatched in Northumberland (nest site Northumberland 1) in 2021, last known satellite tag fix in the Scottish Borders nr Fala Moor on 19th November 2021, grid ref: NT410615.

Hen harrier Jasmine (Tag ID 213848), female, hatched in Cumbria in 2021, last known satellite tag fix on a grouse moor (High Rigg Moor, Middlesmoor Estate) in the Nidderdale AONB, North Yorkshire on 12th December 2021, grid ref: SE034733.

Hen harrier Ethel (Tag ID 213852), female, hatched in Northumberland (nest site Northumberland 2) in 2021, last known satellite tag fix in Hexham on 9th January 2022, grid ref: NY936632.

Hen harrier Amelia (Tag ID 213846), female, hatched Bowland in 2021, last known satellite tag fix in Bowland on 26th January 2022, no grid reference provided.

These suspicious disappearances are no longer shocking, not even when six of them are reported at the same time.

The complete lack of media appeals about any of them from Natural England and the various police forces is no longer shocking.

The lack of prominence in the recent update blog that Natural England has given these latest disappearances is no longer shocking.

The zero prospect of any so-called investigation progressing to a prosecution is no longer shocking.

The complete silence from the grouse-shooting industry about this continued organised crime is no longer shocking.

It’s all just so routine, isn’t it?

It doesn’t have to be. It’s up to you, as blog readers, to bring this scandal to the attention of your elected representative(s) and demand that they put pressure on the Government to take action.

I’ll update the ever-increasing list of hen harriers known to have been illegally killed in the UK or that have vanished in suspicious disappearances since 2018, most of them on or close to grouse moors, and will post it here shortly. It would be good if you could then send that list to your local MP so they can’t claim to be ignorant of what’s going on.

UPDATE 9th March 2022: 67 hen harriers confirmed ‘missing’ or illegally killed since 2018, most of them on or close to UK grouse moors (here)

Brood meddled hen harrier siblings in incestuous relationship

It seems Natural England has some (more) explaining to do.

In the latest NE update on satellite-tagged hen harriers published last Friday, buried amongst the spreadsheet notes and carefully not mentioned in NE’s accompanying blog, I found the following information:

Two sibling hen harriers, both hatched in the same nest in 2020 (nest site: BM R2 Cumbria) and both brood meddled as part of NE and DEFRA’s sham conservation project, apparently ‘bred successfully‘ in Co Durham in 2021 (see lines 43 & 46 in the March 2022 spreadsheet).

The two incestuous individuals are Male R2-M1-20 and Female R2-F3-20.

Isn’t that interesting? Two young hen harriers, removed from their nest (along with two other siblings), raised under artificial conditions in captivity, released back to the wild just after reaching fledging age, pair up the next breeding season and produce offspring.

I don’t know what Natural England means by ‘bred successfully‘. I wouldn’t call an incestuous breeding attempt ‘successful’ by any stretch of the imagination. I’d call it deeply concerning, at the very least.

I haven’t heard of incestuous hen harriers before. Quite a bit has been written by several authors on the intimate details of the hen harrier’s love life (which is why we know that polygyny can be common) but I haven’t been able to find any reference to incest.

I spoke about it this morning to my colleague Mark Avery, who said that incestuous relationships are probably very common in the uplands of England but I don’t think he was referring to hen harriers.

I wonder how Natural England will explain this behaviour? It’s clear they’re not that keen to explain anything, because otherwise they would have already drawn attention to this incestuous pair.

One for the brood meddling scientific committee to answer, perhaps.

Meanwhile, standby for more news of vanishing hen harriers; yet another indication that this brood meddling trial is utterly futile.

Natural England still silent, apparently on police orders, about hen harrier whose wings were torn off

Natural England is maintaining its silence about the gruesome fate of one of its satellite-tagged hen harriers whose wings were torn off in an act of inconceivable violence in March last year.

I first blogged about this criminal investigation in December 2021 (here), where I discussed how Natural England had remained silent about it for months and months and months, even when the grouse shooting industry was wheeling out its annual propaganda-fest claiming to be the hen harrier’s best friend. Natural England, knowing full well what had happened to this young harrier, said nothing to challenge the shooting industry’s claims.

On 20th December 2021 Natural England tweeted that the incident (crime) was the subject of a police investigation so refused to comment further at that stage. I argued that this was a cop-out by Natural England because this particular investigation had begun over 9 months ago but nobody had been interviewed, let alone arrested or charged, and the likelihood of a prosecution was precisely zero, just as in the 60 other police investigations relating to hen harrier persecution in the last three years alone (see here).

Nothing further was heard until Natural England published a hen harrier update blog last Friday (4th March 2022) which included the following statement about this crime:

I still think this is a cop out by Natural England, backed up by the police – commentary could easily be given that would not compromise the supposedly ‘ongoing investigation’.

At the end of this month it’ll be one year since this crime was committed. Unless there is a significant statement from the police that somebody has been charged (there won’t be, believe me), I intend to blog about some of the details of this case in early April because I believe it’s in the public interest to do so.

UPDATE 25th August 2022: Hen harrier’s ‘wings removed’ & its satellite tag fitted to a crow in sick ploy to disguise the crime (here)

Natural England publishes post-mortem summaries of two brood meddled hen harriers

Natural England has finally published the post-mortem results of two brood meddled hen harriers found dead in October 2021.

You’ll recall I’ve been chasing Natural England for these results for months (see here and here) and I last heard from them on 23 February 2022 telling me they couldn’t provide the results just yet because of the ‘complex nature’ of my request. It wasn’t ‘complex’ at all, it was a straightforward question.

On Friday 4th March 2022 Natural England posted these summary PM results:

There isn’t any reason to doubt the PM results in these two cases and accept NE’s presumption that both harriers died of natural causes.

In the same blog published on Friday, Natural England also discussed a number of other satellite-tagged hen harriers and I’ll be writing about those in separate blogs.

Standby….

61 hen harriers confirmed illegally killed or ‘missing’ since 2018, most of them on or close to UK grouse moors

For anyone who still wants to pretend that the grouse shooting industry isn’t responsible for the systematic extermination of hen harriers on grouse moors across the UK, here’s the latest catalogue of crime that suggests otherwise.

[This male hen harrier died in 2019 after his leg was almost severed in an illegally set trap that had been placed next to his nest on a Scottish grouse moor (see here). Photo by Ruth Tingay]

This is the blog I now publish after every reported killing or suspicious disappearance.

“They disappear in the same way political dissidents in authoritarian dictatorships have disappeared” (Stephen Barlow, 22 January 2021).

Today the list has been updated to include the most recently reported victim, a young hen harrier whose satellite tag inexplicably stopped transmitting and whose corpse vanished in to thin air a few weeks ago on 10th February 2022 (see here).

The disgraceful national catalogue of illegally killed and ‘missing’ hen harriers will continue to grow – I know of at least one more on-going police investigation which has yet to be publicised.

I’ve been compiling this list only since 2018 because that is the year that the grouse shooting industry ‘leaders’ would have us believe that the criminal persecution of hen harriers had stopped and that these birds were being welcomed back on to the UK’s grouse moors (see here).

This assertion was made shortly before the publication of a devastating new scientific paper that demonstrated that 72% of satellite-tagged hen harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses (see here).

2018 was also the year that Natural England issued itself with a licence to begin a hen harrier brood meddling trial on grouse moors in northern England. 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 (NE), in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. For more background see here.

Brood meddling has been described as a sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ by commentator Stephen Welch:

“I don’t get it, I thought the idea of that scheme was some kind of trade off – a gentleman’s agreement that the birds would be left in peace if they were moved from grouse moors at a certain density. It seems that one party is not keeping their side of the bargain“.

With at least 61 hen harriers gone since 2018, I think it’s fair to say that the grouse shooting industry is simply taking the piss. Meanwhile, Natural England pretends that ‘partnership working’ is the way to go and DEFRA Ministers remain silent.

‘Partnership working’ appears to include authorising the removal of hen harrier chicks from a grouse moor already under investigation by the police for suspected raptor persecution (here) and accepting a £10K bung from representatives of the grouse shooting industry that prevents Natural England from criticising them or the sham brood meddling trial (see here).

[Cartoon by Gill Lewis]

So here’s the latest gruesome list. Note that the majority of these birds (but not all) were fitted with satellite tags. How many more [untagged] harriers have been killed?

February 2018: Hen harrier Saorsa ‘disappeared’ in the Angus Glens in Scotland (here). The Scottish Gamekeepers Association later published wholly inaccurate information claiming the bird had been re-sighted. The RSPB dismissed this as “completely false” (here).

5 February 2018: Hen harrier Marc ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Durham (here)

9 February 2018: Hen harrier Aalin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Blue ‘disappeared’ in the Lake District National Park (here)

March 2018: Hen harrier Finn ‘disappeared’ near Moffat in Scotland (here)

18 April 2018: Hen harrier Lia ‘disappeared’ in Wales and her corpse was retrieved in a field in May 2018. Cause of death was unconfirmed but police treating death as suspicious (here)

8 August 2018: Hen harrier Hilma ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Northumberland (here).

16 August 2018: Hen harrier Athena ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

26 August 2018: Hen Harrier Octavia ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here)

29 August 2018: Hen harrier Margot ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

29 August 2018: Hen Harrier Heulwen ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Wales (here)

3 September 2018: Hen harrier Stelmaria ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

24 September 2018: Hen harrier Heather ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here)

2 October 2018: Hen harrier Mabel ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

3 October 2018: Hen Harrier Thor ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Bowland, Lanacashire (here)

23 October 2018: Hen harrier Tom ‘disappeared’ in South Wales (here)

26 October 2018: Hen harrier Arthur ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park (here)

1 November 2018: Hen harrier Barney ‘disappeared’ on Bodmin Moor (here)

10 November 2018: Hen harrier Rannoch ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Scotland (here). Her corpse was found nearby in May 2019 – she’d been killed in an illegally-set spring trap (here).

14 November 2018: Hen harrier River ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (here). Her corpse was found nearby in April 2019 – she’d been illegally shot (here).

16 January 2019: Hen harrier Vulcan ‘disappeared’ in Wiltshire close to Natural England’s proposed reintroduction site (here)

7 February 2019: Hen harrier Skylar ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (here)

22 April 2019: Hen harrier Marci ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

26 April 2019: Hen harrier Rain ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Nairnshire (here)

11 May 2019: An untagged male hen harrier was caught in an illegally-set trap next to his nest on a grouse moor in South Lanarkshire. He didn’t survive (here)

7 June 2019: An untagged hen harrier was found dead on a grouse moor in Scotland. A post mortem stated the bird had died as a result of ‘penetrating trauma’ injuries and that this bird had previously been shot (here)

5 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 1 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor nr Dalnaspidal on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park (here)

11 September 2019: Hen harrier Romario ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

14 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183704) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

23 September 2019: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #55149) ‘disappeared’ in North Pennines (here)

24 September 2019: Wildland Hen Harrier 2 ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Invercauld in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

24 September 2019: Hen harrier Bronwyn ‘disappeared’ near a grouse moor in North Wales (here)

10 October 2019: Hen harrier Ada ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North Pennines AONB (here)

12 October 2019: Hen harrier Thistle ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Sutherland (here)

18 October 2019: Member of the public reports the witnessed shooting of an untagged male hen harrier on White Syke Hill in North Yorkshire (here)

November 2019: Hen harrier Mary found illegally poisoned on a pheasant shoot in Ireland (here)

January 2020: Members of the public report the witnessed shooting of a male hen harrier on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

23 March 2020: Hen harrier Rosie ‘disappeared’ at an undisclosed roost site in Northumberland (here)

1 April 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183703) ‘disappeared’ in unnamed location, tag intermittent (here)

5 April 2020: Hen harrier Hoolie ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

8 April 2020: Hen harrier Marlin ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park (here)

19 May 2020: Hen harrier Fingal ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Lowther Hills, Scotland (here)

21 May 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2019, #183701) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria shortly after returning from wintering in France (here)

27 May 2020: Hen harrier Silver ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor on Leadhills Estate, Scotland (here)

day/month unknown: Unnamed male hen harrier breeding on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria ‘disappeared’ while away hunting (here)

9 July 2020: Unnamed female hen harrier (#201118) ‘disappeared’ from an undisclosed site in Northumberland (here).

25 July 2020: Hen harrier Harriet ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

14 August 2020: Hen harrier Solo ‘disappeared’ in confidential nest area in Lancashire (here)

7 September 2020: Hen harrier Dryad ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

16 September 2020: Hen harrier Fortune ‘disappeared’ from an undisclosed roost site in Northumberland (here)

19 September 2020: Hen harrier Harold ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)

20 September 2020: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2020, #55152) ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in North Yorkshire (here)

24 February 2021: Hen harrier Tarras ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in Northumberland (here)

12th April 2021: Hen harrier Yarrow ‘disappeared’ near Stockton, County Durham (here)

18 May 2021: Adult male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from its breeding attempt on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria whilst away hunting (here)

18 May 2021: Another adult male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from its breeding attempt on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve, Cumbria whilst away hunting (here)

24 July 2021: Hen harrier Asta ‘disappeared’ at a ‘confidential site’ in the North Pennines (here)

14th August 2021: Hen harrier Josephine ‘disappeared’ at a ‘confidential site’ in Northumberland (here)

17 September 2021: Hen harrier Reiver ‘disappeared’ in a grouse moor dominated region of Northumberland (here)

24 September 2021: Hen harrier (Brood meddled in 2021, R2-F-1-21) ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland (here)

10 February 2022: An unnamed satellite-tagged hen harrier ‘disappeared’ in a grouse moor dominated area of the Peak District National Park (here)

To be continued……..

Oh, and we’re still waiting for Natural England to tell us the cause of death of two brood meddled hen harriers whose corpses were found in October 2021 (see here). Will they, too, be added to this list?

Another satellite-tagged hen harrier ‘disappears’ in Peak District National Park

Here we go again.

YET ANOTHER satellite-tagged hen harrier has ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, this time in the Peak District National Park.

The unnamed harrier hatched in 2021 and was being tracked by the RSPB. It was reported missing on 10th February 2022.

South Yorkshire Police have issued the following appeal for information today:

Disappointingly, the last known location of the bird has not been given other than ‘in the Stocksbridge area of Sheffield’. However, it can be narrowed down somewhat by a tweet published by a member of the RSPB’s Investigations Team, who said the harrier had vanished ‘in the Peak District’.

If you look on Google maps, Stocksbridge [red marker] is just outside the boundary of the Peak District National Park. If you cross the park boundary into the National Park, surprise, surprise, you’ll find a massive area of land managed for driven grouse shooting. A scientific study published in 2019 showed that hen harriers are ten times more likely to disappear/be killed over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses.

This area of the National Park is no stranger to reports of raptor persecution (see here) and another satellite-tagged hen harrier, called Octavia, also ‘disappeared’ here in 2018 (see here).

It looks like it’s time to update that ever-increasing list of ‘missing’ and ‘confirmed dead’ hen harriers….

UPDATE 26th February 2022: 61 hen harriers confirmed illegally killed or ‘missing’ since 2018, most of them on or close to UK grouse moors (here)

UPDATE 17th March 2023: Hen harrier goes ‘missing’ from a Peak District grouse moor – police confirm his satellite tag had been deliberately cut off (here)

Why is Natural England sitting on post mortem results of 2 x brood meddled hen harriers?

On 28th October 2021, the corpses of two brood meddled hen harriers (hatched 2021) were found by Natural England staff, collected and submitted for post-mortems.

These are the two individuals:

Brood meddled male Hen Harrier R2-M2-21, tagged on 20th July 2021 from nest site ‘BM R2 Cumbria’. The date of last contact is given in NE’s data table as 27th October 2021 and the location is given as ‘Cumbria, site confidential, hen harrier roost site’. The notes section says, ‘Recovered dead 28th October 2021, awaiting PM results’.

Brood meddled male Hen Harrier R2-M3-21, tagged on 20th July 2021 from nest site ‘BM R2 Cumbria’. The date of last contact is given as 27th October 2021 and the location is given as ‘County Durham’. The notes section says, ‘Recovered dead 28th October 2021, awaiting PM results’.

We know about these two harriers because Natural England included a small paragraph about their deaths in a blog published on 15th December 2021. At the time, I commented how strange it was that the post-mortem results apparently weren’t available, even though the corpses had been collected some seven weeks earlier (see here).

So I submitted an FoI request to Natural England on 27 January 2022 and asked for the post-mortem results of those two young harriers.

[A young hen harrier. Photographer unknown]

The response was due tomorrow. However, today Natural England has sent me this:

It wasn’t a complex request at all. It was a simple, straightforward request. According to the pathologist’s report, how did these two young hen harriers die?

Now, why would Natural England want to delay the publication of these results?

And while we’re at it, Natural England, are you going to say anything about the dead hen harrier whose wings were undoubtedly pulled off, perhaps when the bird was still alive (see here and here)? Two months ago you said you couldn’t comment further as a police investigation was underway. How’s that going? It seems to have been underway for almost a year – it’s going nowhere, isn’t it? Nobody will be brought to justice, will they? Just like nobody has been brought to justice for the other 59 hen harriers that have been killed since 2018 (here).

UPDATE 7th March 2022: Natural England publishes post-mortem summaries of two brood meddled hen harriers (here)

NatureScot refuses to publish details of Leadhills Estate’s general licence restriction appeal

This is a long and sorry saga, and it’s not yet over.

As many blog readers will know, the notorious Leadhills Estate, a grouse-shooting estate in South Lanarkshire that has been at the centre of police wildlife crime investigations at least 70 times since the early 2000s, is currently serving an unprecedented TWO General Licence restrictions imposed by NatureScot after ‘clear evidence’ of wildlife crime was provided to the statutory regulator by Police Scotland (see here and here), including the illegal killing of short-eared owls, buzzards, hen harriers and the discovery of two stashes of banned poisons.

Incredibly, Leadhills Estate with its double General Licence restriction is STILL a member of the lobby group Scottish Land & Estates, which claims to have a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to raptor persecution. Convincing, eh?

[Grouse moor on the Leadhills Estate. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

The first three-year General Licence restriction was imposed on Leadhills Estate in November 2019 (here). The estate appealed this decision, with an hilarious letter of objection (here), but its appeal failed.

The second General Licence restriction was imposed on Leadhills Estate in September 2021 (here) after Police Scotland reported even more wildlife crime while the estate was still serving its first restriction.

Once again, Leadhills Estate appealed the decision with a written objection letter.

It is this letter of objection that I have been trying to get from NatureScot since September 2021. Five months on, it is still being withheld, for what I have argued are spurious reasons.

Here’s a short summary of what’s happened so far:

On 30th September 2021 I submitted an FoI to NatureScot to request copies of Leadhills Estate’s appeal.

On 3 November 2021 NatureScot responded as follows:

‘We have withheld a letter from an agent acting on behalf of Leadhills Estate, pending an appeal against NatureScot’s decision to restrict General Licence. This information is of a sensitive nature and disclosure into the public domain could prejudice the applicant’s right to a fair hearing’.

I didn’t see how public disclosure could possibly prejudice a hearing given that it’s all done in-house at NatureScot but fine, I could wait.

In December 2021 it was announced that Leadhills Estate had lost its appeal against the second General Licence restriction (here) so I wrote back to NatureScot on 3rd December as follows:

‘You told me in the letter dated 3 November 2021 that you were withholding a letter from an agent who was acting on behalf of Leadhills Estate, and the reason you gave for withholding it was that releasing it may prejudice the applicant’s right to a fair appeal. As the appeal process has now concluded and therefore the applicant’s right to a fair hearing cannot be affected, please can you send me the agent’s letter that was previously withheld‘.

On 5th January 2022 NatureScot responded as follows:

‘We have completed our information searches, and we have identified eight documents comprising 126 pages relevant to your request. We shared a redacted version of these documents with the solicitors acting on behalf of Leadhills Estate, who have provided additional legal arguments as to why certain information should be withheld. We will need additional time to assess these arguments and, potentially, take further legal advice.

Regulation 7 of the EIRs allows public authorities to extend the time for compliance with requests for up to an additional 20 working days. This means we must respond to your information request by 3 February 2022 at the latest‘.

Hmm. Why might Leadhills Estate not want the details of its appeal to be made public? And what legal arguments might it use to block the transparency of the decision-making process of a statutory agency?

On 7th February 2022, NatureScot sent this explanation:

That’s all very interesting. Obviously, I’ve appealed this decision and asked for a review. I don’t believe there are further proceedings to ‘prejudice’ as Leadhills Estate has now exhausted the appeals process for the General Licence restriction. I also don’t believe that correspondence between an agent and a public authority qualifies as ‘legal privilege’ and especially when it’s in the public interest to understand how the statutory agency has reached its decision with transparency and fairness.

Let’s see. Another 20 working days to wait, which will take us to six months since I made the original request.