hen harrier – Page 29 – Raptor Persecution UK

Fundraiser for hen harrier satellite tags

The Nidderdale Raptor Study Group, in conjunction with the Northern England Raptor Forum (NERF) is hosting a fundraiser to support the RSPB Investigations Team to buy satellite tags for hen harriers.

In recent years satellite tags have revealed the extent of hen harrier persecution across the UK. In 2019 a damning scientific research paper demonstrated that at least 72% of tagged hen harriers were presumed illegally killed on or close to driven grouse moors (see here).

And a tally of incidents kept by this blog demonstrates that over the last two years alone at least 45 hen harriers, many of them satellite-tagged, are either ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances or confirmed illegally killed, many on driven grouse moors (see here). It’s my understanding that this number has since risen but official notification is still pending. More on that shortly.

So, in essence, satellite-tagging has proven to be incredibly important in helping to detect a crime that is otherwise too easily hidden (and which explains the grouse shooting industry’s desperate attempts to undermine the science and the integrity of those who fit and monitor the tags).

Yorkshire-based artist Dan Evans has donated this A2-sized oil painting for an online auction to help support the purchase of more satellite tags:

If you’d like to bid on this artwork please visit the auction page here. The auction will close on 23 December 2020. There is also an opportunity to buy signed limited edition prints, with all profits being donated to the sat tag fund.

There is also a fundraising page for those who may not want to buy the artwork but who may still be interested in supporting the effort to buy more satellite tags – you can visit the fundraiser page here

Guns up for hen harriers – new report confirms what’s been known for decades

Scottish Natural Heritage (now re-branded as NatureScot) has published a new report today from it’s controversial ‘Heads up for Hen Harriers’ project.

It’s findings confirm what’s been known for decades – breeding hen harriers aren’t very successful on driven grouse moors but are more successful on moors where there’s little or no gamebird shooting. Gosh, who knew?

[This hen harrier was critically injured in an illegally-set trap next to a nest on Leadhills Estate in 2019. He was rescued by members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group, with an almost severed leg. A specialist vet at the SSPCA did all he could to save him but eventually the extent of his injuries were too much and he had to be euthanised. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

But before we get in to this latest report of the bleedin’ obvious, here’s some background for new readers.

The Heads up for Hen Harriers Project is a Scottish Government-funded initiative, led by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH, now NatureScot) in partnership with the grouse moor owners’ lobby group Scottish Land & Estates (SLE), RSPB Scotland and the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

The idea behind this project, which began in 2015, is that sporting estates agree to have cameras installed at hen harrier nests to identify the causes of nest failure. This is a flawed idea right from the off. We all know the main reason behind the declining hen harrier population – illegal persecution on intensively managed driven grouse moors – it has been documented time and time and time again, in scientific papers and government-funded reports. So, if you put an ‘official Project camera’ on a hen harrier nest situated on a driven grouse moor, the gamekeepers will know about it and won’t touch that nest (although they’re quite likely to try and bump off the young once they’ve left the nest but are hanging around the grouse drives, away from the nest camera). So if the nest then fails for natural reasons (e.g. poor weather, predation), the Project will only identify those issues as the cause of failure, and not the illegal persecution issue. The grouse-shooting industry will then use those (biased) results to shout about illegal persecution not being an issue. We’ve seen this many times already.

I’ve blogged about this project many times over the last five years and have been highly critical of its claims, particularly about the so-called ‘partnership working’. Basically it looks like a massive greenwashing exercise (e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Andy Wightman MSP also condemned the project in a Parliamentary debate in 2017. You can read the transcript here and watch the video here (and note the stony silence after Andy’s speech!).

The estates involved in this project have insisted on remaining anonymous, and this has allowed both SNH and SLE to publish some pretty outrageous claims without anybody else being able to scrutinise the taxpayer-funded data (e.g. see here and here). This is astonishing, and a preliminary look at the results presented in today’s report do not support some of the earlier claims made about ‘successful’ hen harrier nests on driven grouse moors. I’ll be looking at this more closely in due course.

So, back to today’s report. It’s a short-ish summary, presenting an analysis of a proportion of the camera images captured during the project. You can download it here:

snh-research-report-1209-heads-up-for-harriers-image-analysis-2015-2019 Download

The most important result is written on page 6, and there’s an accompanying table on page 7. It goes like this:

‘Fourteen (56%) of the 25 estates involved in the scheme had driven grouse moors employing full time keepers. Despite their involvement for 46 estate years only four nests were found. Just one was successful (25%) and produced four young‘.

If that isn’t damning evidence then I don’t know what is.

NatureScot has published a press release to accompany the publication of today’s report, as follows:

The success of one of Scotland’s rarest birds of prey, hen harriers, is closely linked to the age of the parent birds, prey availability and land use, concludes a report published by NatureScot today.

The report, based on five years of camera evidence on 28 estates participating in the Heads Up for Harriers partnership project, found the age of the adult male bird is a key factor in breeding. There was a 91% success rate when males were older than one year, irrespective of the age of the adult female bird.

Not surprisingly, the report also found that nesting attempts and fledging success were higher during warm, dry spring weather, with wetter weather having a negative impact on both the harriers and availability of prey.

The research also found that hen harriers prey were birds 89% of the time with mammals making up the final 10%. However, the report concludes that hen harriers rarely prey on grouse. Meadow pipits were by far the most abundant prey at 77% of birds, with red grouse accounting for only 5.6% of prey.

Over 2 million hen harrier nest camera images were meticulously studied to reveal harrier behaviour and factors impacting their survival. While the majority of estates have some game shooting interest, analysis indicated that harriers fare best on those estates with no shooting interests, with more breeding attempts, nesting success and higher productivity recorded on the majority of non-sporting estates.

Hen harriers have a low survival rate for young birds, and the project showed that where the reasons for failure could be determined, all the nest failures were due to natural factors or predation by foxes and other birds.

Chair of the Heads Up for Harriers Group, Professor Des Thompson of NatureScot, said:

“Hen harriers continue to struggle in Scotland and they remain a rare species, although Scotland holds by far the majority of the UK population with 505 territorial pairs. This report shows that almost half of breeding adult female birds are four years or older and 87% of male birds are older than one year, despite the females being capable of breeding much earlier. This indicates a high turnover of young birds, and while the report does not speculate as to the reasons, this is a worrying statistic.”

Report author, Brian Etheridge, said:

“Some fascinating patterns in hen harrier breeding habits have been identified, such as a tendency for nesting on westerly facing slopes, with an increasing preference for nests in higher areas, and the low occurrence of grouse within the sampled 500 prey items. This information should help land managers better cater for nesting harriers, while providing reassurance of the limited impact on game birds.”

Professor Thompson added: “The report is testimony to the work of the Heads Up for Harriers project group, particularly RSPB and Scottish Land & Estates, the project staff and those estates that have actively participated in the project.”

Information in the report was gleaned by analysing images from 52 hen harrier nests (37 of which had cameras installed), between them fledging 120 young birds.

Heads Up for Harriers is a Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime Scotland (PAW) Scotland project, led by NatureScot. From the project start in 2015, 52 hen harrier nests were located. 35 of these were successful in fledging a total of 120 young. Trail cameras were installed at 37 nests and over two million images recorded.

The Heads Up for Harriers Group are considering a shift in focus to concentrate on areas which can benefit most from intervention. The group will be discussing how best to achieve this with the PAW Scotland Raptor Group in the future.

ENDS

That penultimate sentence in the press release is telling. Reading between the lines, it looks like the plug is finally being pulled on this ridiculous scheme. ‘….Considering a shift in focus to concentrate on areas which can benefit most from intervention‘ – FFS, why not just say it? Why not just acknowledge, in full, that ongoing illegal persecution of hen harriers on many driven grouse moors is what’s causing the catastrophic population decline of the hen harrier?

Look – 45 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed illegally killed since 2018 (see here).

By the way, tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the Werritty Review on grouse moor management being submitted to the Scottish Government. We are still waiting for the Government’s response.

SNH grants licence to Leadhills Estate for out-of-season muirburn

Leadhills Estate, which has been at the centre of over 50 police wildlife crime investigations in the last two decades, has had two gamekeepers convicted for committing wildlife crime offences during that time, and is currently the subject of a three-year General Licence restriction, imposed after Police Scotland found ‘clear evidence’ of wildlife crimes having being committed by persons unknown in recent years, and is under further police investigation since more allegations have been made this year, was granted a licence by SNH to undertake out-of-season muirburn on estate grouse moors in September.

There have been some jaw-dropping revelations on this blog over the years but this one is right up there.

[Muirburn on Leadhills Estate, South Lanarkshire. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

A quick recap of the situation (for those who want more detail please see the links to previous blog posts below).

In April 2020 the Scottish Government temporarily banned all muirburn in Scotland under emergency Coronavirus legislation (see here).

Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, in July 2020 Mark Osborne, acting on behalf of Leadhills Estate, applied to Scottish Natural Heritage for an out-of-season licence to conduct muirburn on the estate in September after spraying some areas with glyphosate (see here).

Scottish Natural Heritage (now rebranded as NatureScot but that’s irrelevant) refused the licence application in August (here) and Osborne immediately appealed the decision (see here).

That’s where we left the saga last time. Here’s what happened next…..

SNH was obliged to consider Osborne’s appeal, although it wasn’t obliged to overturn it’s previous decision to refuse permission.

Here’s how SNH’s reconsideration went:

According to the Freedom of Information documents that have been released, that’s it. That’s the extent of the discussion at SNH about whether Leadhills Estate should be given permission to set fire to its grouse moors out of season and in the middle of a global pandemic.

A couple of days later SNH wrote to advise Osborne of its U-turn decision and sent him the licence, as follows:

There has been some discussion amongst RPUK colleagues and associates about whether SNH’s decision to issue this licence was a breach of the Government’s emergency Coronavirus legislation which had temporarily banned muirburn until the official season opened on 1 October 2020. I might return to that topic.

However, of greater interest, to me, is how SNH’s decision-making on whether to issue an out-of-season muirburn licence apparently failed to consider the wider picture of what’s been going on at Leadhills, and especially the current three-year General Licence restriction placed on the estate, by, er, SNH. Didn’t anybody think about that?

Ah, well somebody did, but unfortunately it seems this person’s expert input wasn’t invited as part of the decision-making process:

There’s quite a lot to take in about this case, and the details and circumstances of this particular licence. An FoI has been submitted to SNH to see the licence return which, as detailed in condition #9, should have now been submitted to SNH by Osborne.

And it turns out that this isn’t the first year that SNH has granted an out-of-season muirburn licence to Leadhills Estate. More on that shortly.

For some reason, the phrases ‘taking the piss’ and ‘impotent licensing authority’ are uppermost in my mind.

Natural England ‘unable to protect wildlife’ say beleaguered staff

Press release from Prospect, Natural England’s staff trade union (10th November 2020):

Prospect launches second State of Natural England Report

A decade of austerity with pay cuts, budget cuts, cuts to grants and a decline in staff numbers is putting England’s natural heritage at risk.

That is the finding of the second report by Prospect into the State of Natural England which shows that the agency does not have the resources it needs to continue to adequately fulfil its responsibilities. The first report was published in 2019.

Over the past two years Prospect, the main union for workers in Natural England, has spoken to its members about their experiences at work, analysed budgets and grants, and assessed programmes. What we have found is an agency getting beyond crisis point.

Natural England is the body responsible for maintaining and protecting England’s natural environment. It is responsible for: protected sites such as national parks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest; countryside stewardship, helping farmers and landowners enhance the biodiversity of their lands; planning and development policy; the marine environment; ramblers’ favourites like the England Coast Path, and many more things which make our natural heritage what it is.

Natural England is at risk because its funding has been slashed and its workforce reduced. Natural England’s government-funded Grant in Aid budget has declined by 49% in six years and almost two-thirds over a decade. Over that time the agency has gone from more than 2,500 staff in 2010 to, we estimate, around 1,900 staff now.

Workers in Natural England were subject to a 1% pay cap for eight years. This has improved this year but the increase comes nowhere close making up for the real-terms losses of the past decade. There is also an 8.4% gender pay gap which shows little sign of being reduced.

This is the reality of government austerity and its effect on agency staff – highly qualified workers facing financial hardship, increased workloads, loss of pension accrual, terrible morale and looking to move elsewhere for a better deal. Successive ministers have made things worse by undermining and attacking the independence of the work of agency experts.

Prospect is calling for:

Natural England’s wide and important remit for people, nature and the green recovery, to be properly recognised and funded.
It’s autonomy as a non-departmental public body to be meaningfully restored.
The damage caused by the pay cap to be reversed and pay progression and pay equality, to be restored.
To achieve pay parity with the rest of Defra, particularly for pay scale minima and maxima.
To no longer be covered by the civil service pay guidance and be subject to an independent pay review body.

Download the full report.

Mike Clancy, Prospect general secretary, said:

“There is a yawning gap between the government’s rhetoric on climate change, the environment and biodiversity and the reality of years of underfunding our environmental agencies.

“Protecting nature means investing in the people who do that work. Natural England is at the heart of this agenda but it can only be effective if it is properly funded and the importance of its staff properly recognised.

“The disproportionate cuts, out-dated and unfit pay framework, and significant pay inequality all need to be addressed. The UK has a world-class natural environment which is treasured by the public, but this natural heritage will suffer if the expert custodians of our natural heritage continue to be treated as second class public servants.”

ENDS

There’s also an article on this in today’s Guardian (here).

It might help a little bit if Natural England bosses stopped defending the pouring of money in to the insane Hen Harrier brood meddling trial, a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA and carried out by Natural England, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England.

Although the actual ‘meddling’ bit is apparently being funded in a secret financial arrangement between the Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group) and the National Birds of Prey Centre in Newent – the cost of this has not been made public, which you’d think would be quite crucial when it comes to assessing the viability of this ‘trial’ – there is still considerable cost in terms of NE project staff time.

And then there’s the equally ridiculous NE project to ‘reintroduce’ hen harriers to southern England, another conservation sham aimed at drawing attention away from the criminal onslaught in the uplands, and for which NE is forking out thousands of pounds to send staff over to Europe, along with satellite tags bought by British tax payers, to fit to harriers in Europe in what looks like a way of ‘persuading’ the European authorities to send young harriers to the UK for the ‘reintroduction’. More details on this shortly.

The question of Natural England’s ability to conduct effective monitoring and enforcement of the new General Licences was raised in a Zoom call between Wild Justice and DEFRA officials yesterday. Judging by today’s report from Prospect, there’s very little indication that NE will be up to the task.

Raptor persecution highlighted in House of Lords

Natalie Bennett is a long-time supporter of the campaign for grouse moor reform and particularly against the illegal killing of birds of prey – she’s been a familiar spokesperson at many Hen Harrier Day events over the last few years.

Now Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, she is using her position in the House of Lords to keep up the pressure.

Here’s a question she posed to DEFRA Minister The Rt Honourable Lord Zac Goldsmith on 16th September 2020 (text from Hansard):

Here is Zac’s response:

Zac said, “I would welcome access to the report that the noble Baroness mentions“.

Here you go, Zac, the report, documenting the 44 hen harriers that have either vanished in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed illegally killed, most of them on or close to driven grouse moors, since 1 January 2018, can be read here

But that report is now out of date. The running total now stands at 45 hen harriers that have either vanished in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed illegally killed, most of them on or close to driven grouse moors, since 1 January 2018 (see here for details).

For completeness, although as a DEFRA Minister you must surely already be aware of this, the peer-reviewed science, based on Natural England’s own data, that demonstrates that 72% of satellite-tagged hen harriers in England were ten times more likely to ‘disappear’ or be illegally killed on or close to British grouse moors, can be read here.

The question now is, what do you intend to do about it?

[An illegally killed hen harrier. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

Natural England denies cocking up police investigation at Whernside hen harrier site

Earlier this month the RSPB published a blog (here) detailing an incident that was witnessed by a Natural England fieldworker at a hen harrier nest site in Whernside, Cumbria during this year’s breeding season and Natural England’s subsequent refusal to publicise the details.

The alleged incident involved an armed man sitting near a tethered eagle owl that had been placed within the territory of a pair of breeding hen harriers in an area where controversial brood meddling was taking place.

Here’s what the RSPB wrote about the incident:

‘…..a Natural England fieldworker was monitoring a hen harrier nest on moorland near Whernside, Cumbria, when he saw a man wearing camouflage carrying a firearm and a live bird of prey, believed to be an eagle owl about 300m from the hen harrier nesting area. He tethered the bird and sat a short distance away with his gun. In the circumstances there seems little doubt the intention was to draw in raptors, presumably the hen harriers, to shoot them. The use of a tethered live bird as a decoy to kill or take a wild bird is in itself illegal, but a method that seems to be increasingly used for targeting raptors. This was no doubt a highly stressful situation, we understand the fieldworker took some video footage and made himself visible. This eventually had the desired effect, and the suspect, realising he was under observation, left. It was reported to the police but due to evidential issues around establishing the identity of the suspect, it was not possible to take the matter forward to court. The RSPB would like to place on record our thanks to Cumbria Constabulary and the CPS for their determined efforts to progress this investigation. We firmly consider that this incident and the video should now be put in the public domain’.

A few days later we published a blog about an allegation we’d heard from a number of sources, that the police investigation couldn’t progress because a Natural England staff member had contravened the Police & Criminal Evidence Act by phoning up the alleged gunman and asking whether he’d been present at the alleged crime scene (see here).

Two days later, Natural England published a blog (here), written by Dave Slater, Natural England’s Director for Wildlife Licensing and Enforcement Cases, in which he claimed to want to ‘clarify Natural England’s position on raptor persecution and recent media coverage’.

The Natural England blog (here) is well worth a read and when you’ve done that, have a look at Mark Avery’s dissection of it (here) in which Natural England’s contortions are laid bare.

The one part of the NE blog that Mark didn’t address was this bit, which looks like a response to the allegations made on RPUK that Natural England had cocked up the police investigation at that hen harrier site at Whernside:

The statement of interest here is the middle paragraph. Natural England reckons the failed police investigation ‘was not related to anything our field worker had done‘ but NE carefully avoided mentioning the allegation that an NE staff member had phoned up the suspect and had thus compromised the police investigation by breaching the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

Is Natural England denying that a staff member phoned up the suspect? If so, it would be useful for Natural England to put that in writing.

It would also be useful if the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and/or Cumbria Police released the legal advice that was given by the CPS to Cumbria Police on this particular case.

It would also be helpful if Natural England would publish the video evidence of an armed man, sitting with a tethered eagle owl, in the territory of a pair of breeding hen harriers at one of this year’s brood meddling locations. It’s not like there’s anything to hide, is there?

In related news, if you want further evidence of Natural England’s absolute ineptitude when it comes to the conservation of birds, have a read of this (here), published today by Mark Avery. It’s shocking.

UPDATE 20 January 2021: Confirmation that hen harrier brood meddling estate was under police investigation (here)

Nicola Sturgeon socially distancing from grouse shooting ‘exemption’

In recent years barely a week has gone by without grouse shooting being in the news for one reason or another.

More often than not it’ll be negative press, usually associated with the illegal killing or suspicious disappearance of yet another bird of prey. But the unfavourable coverage this industry has attracted this last week has been phenomenal, ever since it was announced that the Westminster and Scottish Governments were providing a special exemption for grouse shooting from the new ‘rule of six’ Covid restrictions.

The bad press was included in the mainstream media as well as on social media, and as Mark Avery pointed out,

‘It has captured the public imagination and it really hasn’t done the shooting industry any favours. It’s seen as another example of the Conservative government being completely out of touch with normal people, or worse, in the pockets of a small number of landed gentry (and nouveau riche non-gentry)‘.

Here are some examples of that coverage, which has included elements of ridicule and anger:

Cartoon by Ralph Underhill (@CartoonRalph) in The Canary:

Cartoon by Peter Brookes in The Times:

This issue prompted parliamentary questions in both Westminster and Holyrood and the responses from the respective Government leaders was quite telling.

In Westminster, Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner asked Prime Minister Boris Johnson whether grouse shooting was his ‘top priority’ (you can watch the video here). Boris Johnson avoided answering the question.

In Holyrood, Scottish Greens MSP Alison Johnstone asked First Minister Nicola Sturgeon whether it was fair that ‘shooting parties are permitted to load up their shotguns and head to the hills’ when others are having to make personal sacrifices to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.

The discussion went like this:

It’s interesting that Nicola Sturgeon focused more on semantics than anything else because in essence the exemption is still in place, whether it was considered ‘specific’ or not. But it’s also interesting that she didn’t offer any supportive comments about gamebird shooting either, but instead went on to talk about ongoing reviews about ‘which exemptions are or are not appropriate’.

Will there be a review of whether the grouse shooting exemption from Covid restrictions is appropriate? Don’t hold your breath….we’re still waiting, ten months on and counting, for the Scottish Government’s response to the Werritty Review, despite cross-party political pressure to get on with it (here) and the news that yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier has ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on yet another Scottish grouse moor (here) whilst the Scottish Government looks the other way.

45 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed illegally killed since 2018

Two days ago we blogged that at least 44 hen harriers were ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances or had been confirmed illegally killed since 2018 (see here).

Today the list is updated to 45 hen harriers, ‘missing’ or confirmed illegally killed since 2018.

Here’s the blog we’ll publish every time this list is updated:

It’s getting to that time of year when the grouse shooting industry pumps out its patently misleading propaganda relating to hen harrier conservation in the UK. The aim is to hoodwink the public in to believing that the industry loves hen harriers and is doing all it can to protect and nurture the tiny remnant breeding population (but conveniently forgetting to mention that the breeding population is only in such dire straits because the grouse shooting industry has been ruthless in its maniacal intolerance of this supposedly protected species).

And the industry’s pursuit of the hen harrier is not simply ‘historical’ or indicative of past behaviour, as some would have us believe. It is on-going, it is current, and it is relentless.

[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]

To illustrate this fact, we intend to keep a running tally of all the hen harriers that we know (because most of these victims had been fitted with a satellite tag) to have either ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or have been confirmed as being illegally killed since 2018.

Why only since 2018 when we know that hen harriers have been a persecution target for years and years and years? Well, 2018 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).

We only started compiling this list of dead / missing hen harriers in June 2020 when we learned that all five of last year’s brood meddled hen harrier chicks were ‘missing’, presumed dead (see here). It has since been updated a few times as we learned about more satellite-tagged hen harriers that had vanished during lockdown in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in the Cairnorms National Park (here), on a notorious grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (see here) and on a grouse moor believed to be involved with the brood meddling in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).

It’s now time to update the death list again, as we’ve learned of yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier that ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, this time a bird called Fingal who vanished from a grouse moor in the Lowther Hills in May 2020 (see here).

That brings the gruesome tally to 45 hen harriers. (We’re still waiting to hear whether three hen harriers, satellite-tagged by Natural England this year and have since vanished (here), are being treated as suspicious disappearances by the police and if so, they will be added to this list).

Four Five.

Forty five.

In the space of two years.

Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these cases. We have every expectation that this list will be updated again in the near future.

For now, here are the 45:

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)

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)

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)

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

To be continued……..

Anybody still wondering why the grouse shooting industry wants conservationists to stop fitting satellite tags?

Satellite-tagged hen harrier Fingal ‘disappears’ on Scottish grouse moor

Press release from RSPB Scotland (17 September 2020)

Another hen harrier disappears in suspicious circumstances

RSPB Scotland is calling on the Scottish Government to move quickly to introduce the licensing of grouse shooting, following the disappearance of another satellite-tagged hen harrier – the fourth to vanish on a Scottish grouse moor since the beginning of April.

Fingal, a young male hen harrier, hatched from a nest in the Scottish Borders in summer 2019, and was fitted with a lightweight satellite tag as part of the EU Hen Harrier LIFE project which has allowed scientists to track his movements.

[Hen harrier Fingal. Photo by RSPB Scotland]

He remained in this area for the first few months before spreading his wings and making a tour of northern England, stopping at sites in Lancashire, South Yorkshire and Cumbria. After returning to Scotland he settled in Dumfries and Galloway for the rest of the winter.

In mid-March 2020 Fingal moved a short distance into the southern Lowther Hills. The last location transmitted from his tag, which was funded by Lothian and Borders Raptor Study Group, came on 19 May 2020 from an area moorland managed for gamebird shooting to the east of Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway.

Police Scotland carried out a search of the area but found no trace of Fingal or his tag. It has not transmitted since. When a satellite tagged bird dies of natural causes the tag continues to transmit allowing the body to be recovered. Independent peer-reviewed studies have shown these tags to be highly reliable, so having four fail, in very similar circumstances, all on grouse moors, strongly suggests human interference.

Fingal is the 45th known hen harrier to have disappeared in suspicious circumstances or been confirmed to have been illegally killed in the UK since 2018.

Ian Thomson, RSPB Scotland’s Head of Investigations, said: “This has become a depressingly familiar story. Yet again a satellite-tagged bird of prey has disappeared suddenly and inexplicably on a grouse moor and is presumed killed. These birds will continue to disappear until grouse shooting estates are licensed. Self-regulation by the industry has demonstrably failed, and it’s long overdue that the Scottish Government addressed this by introducing robust regulation where a right to shoot is dependent on legal management of the land.”

ENDS

44 hen harriers ‘missing’ or confirmed killed since 2018

Last month we blogged that at least 43 hen harriers were ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances or had been confirmed killed since 2018 (see here).

Today the list is updated to 44 hen harriers, ‘missing’ or confirmed killed since 2018.

Here’s the blog we’ll publish every time this list is updated:

And the industry’s pursuit of the hen harrier is not simply ‘historical’ or indicative of past behaviour, as some would have us believe. It is on-going, it is current, and it is relentless.

[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]

We only started compiling this list of dead / missing hen harriers in June 2020 when we learned that all five of last year’s brood meddled hen harrier chicks were ‘missing’, presumed dead (see here). It has since been updated a few times as we learned about more satellite-tagged hen harriers that had vanished during lockdown in suspicious circumstances on grouse moors in the Cairnorms National Park (here) and on a notorious grouse moor in South Lanarkshire (see here).

It’s now time to update the death list again, as we’ve learned of yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier that ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, this time a bird called ‘Dryad’ who vanished from a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in September 2020 (see here).

That brings the gruesome tally to 44 hen harriers. (We’re still waiting to hear whether three hen harriers, satellite-tagged by Natural England this year and have since vanished (here), are being treated as suspicious disappearances by the police and if so, they will be added to this list).

Four Four.

Forty four.

In the space of two years.

Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these cases. We have every expectation that this list will be updated again in the near future.

For now, here are the 44: