Tag: hen harrier

[UPDATE 27th August 2018: The three maps below have now been updated to account for the inaccurate grid reference of one ‘missing, fate unknown’ hen harrier – now accurately shown to have ‘disappeared’ in North York Moors National Park, and not in Bowland AONB]

Well, well, well.

The Westminster Government’s statutory nature conservation agency, Natural England (NE), has chosen to publish its long-awaited hen harrier satellite tag data late on a Saturday evening of a Bank Holiday weekend. No announcement, no fanfare, just quietly uploaded to the DEFRA website, probably hoping that nobody would notice.

After having a preliminary look at these data, it’s no wonder NE doesn’t want to shout about them because they validate our long-held view that NE has been shielding the hen harrier-killing criminals within the driven grouse shooting industry for years, instead of dragging them before the courts and closing down their filthy ‘sport’.

Photo of a satellite-tagged hen harrier. A post-mortem revealed it had been shot.

NE has been satellite-tagging hen harriers since 2007 and a lot of them have ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances (e.g. here). As many regular blog readers will know, we, and others (notably Mark Avery) have been asking NE to publish these hen harrier satellite tag data for a long time. We came quite close to getting the information from this publicly-funded research about a year ago, when NE published part of its ten-year data set but crucially, it excluded all meaningful grid references and any information about the land use in the areas where these hen harriers had ‘disappeared’.

We accused NE of a cover up (see here and here) and pursued the data via many FoI requests but all to no avail. NE told us that as the 11-year NE-funded PhD study had finally been ditched (here), external experts would instead be analysing the data and we could expect the results to be submitted for peer-review publication in 2018.

The findings of that study by external experts were presented at an international ornithological conference in Vancouver yesterday morning, and NE, realising it could no longer justify withholding the data without facing another legal challenge, published the updated satellite tag data late last night.

The new hen harrier satellite tag data have been published on the DEFRA website here

The update is the same spreadsheet that NE published last September but now, importantly, also includes six figure grid references for the ‘last known fix’ from the satellite tags of most of the 59 hen harriers tagged by NE between 2007-2017.

We haven’t had time to look at these data very closely but for now we’ve produced some quick and dirty maps to show the distribution of ‘missing’ hen harriers and those that have been found dead, confirmed to have been killed illegally. Remember, these are the hen harriers that have been satellite-tagged by NE – the map does not include the data from RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE Project, so these maps will show an even bleaker picture once the RSPB has analysed the data from its tagged birds.

Here’s the overview map:

[Red star: HH found dead & confirmed illegally killed; Orange star: HH missing, fate unknown; Yellow star: Hen Harrier ‘John’, missing, fate unknown; Black star: hen harrier missing fate unknown but grid reference withheld]

The reason hen harrier John (yellow star) has been highlighted separately is because on NE’s updated spreadsheet, the data are only presented up to September 2017, and so John is shown as still being alive. However, we know that John ‘disappeared’ on Threshfield Moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in early October 2017 and so now joins the many others classified as ‘missing, fate unknown’.

The three black stars represent hen harriers that are listed in NE’s data set as ‘missing fate unknown’ but the grid references for these three harriers have been withheld, and the birds’ last known fix locations are given as ‘Bowland’, ‘Bowland’, and ‘Sheffield’. Presumably there is good reason to withhold these grid refs (perhaps they identify commonly-used roost sites?) so we’re not going to quibble about that. Consequently, the black stars are not placed accurately, just in the general area of ‘Bowland’ and ‘Sheffield’ (and presumably ‘Sheffield’ refers to a location close by, perhaps in the Peak District National Park).

You can see from this first overview map that there appears to be quite a bit of ‘clustering’ of last known fix locations in Yorkshire and Bowland, so let’s have a closer look at a regional scale:

Gosh, there does seem to be a lot of ‘missing’ hen harriers clusted in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – all highly designated protected landscapes.

Shall we look a bit closer?

And there you have it. A suspicious spatial clustering of ‘missing’ or confirmed persecuted hen harriers in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Nidderdale AONB and Bowland AONB – all areas where the landscape is dominated by intensively managed driven grouse moors.

Haven’t we seen this suspicious spatial clustering somewhere else? Ah yes, the map that shows the ‘missing’ satellite-tagged golden eagles in Scotland, where the spatial clustering appears in some areas that are intensively managed for driven grouse shooting.

Imagine that.

What’s that quote? “You can hide the bodies, you can hide the tags, but you can’t hide the pattern” (Dr Hugh Webster).

Looking at NE’s data spreadsheet, 47 of the 59 hen harriers satellite-tagged by NE between 2007-2017 are ‘missing, fate unknown’. That’s a whopping 79.6%!

Now obviously, these last known fix location data are of great interest to us and we await the publication of the full scientific analyses of all the tag data with great interest. But perhaps what is more interesting is what these data reveal about NE’s complicity in shielding the criminals within the grouse shooting industry.

Knowing full well what its own satellite tag research was showing, why has NE suppressed these results for so many years whilst working in so-called ‘partnership’ with the grouse shooting industry and sat back in silence whilst those same grouse shooting industry representatives have consistently denied, even in Parliament, the extent of their industry’s role in the systematic killing of hen harriers?

More blogs on this to come.

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

Here is a photo of a hen harrier nest, captured by one of the project’s nest cameras:

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.

We’ve blogged about this project many times over the last few years and have been highly critical of its claims (e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Andy Wightman MSP also condemned the project in a Parliamentary debate last year as “a greenwashing exercise“. You can read the transcript here and watch the video here (and note the stony silence after Andy’s speech!).

One of the controversial claims made by this project emerged in the run up to that Parliamentary debate. Scottish Land & Estates issued a Parliamentary briefing note about the Heads Up for Harriers Project which was sent to MSPs.

You can read that briefing note here.

In this briefing note, SLE claimed:

“Up to two thirds of the estates where cameras have been installed [seven of 11 nests over 3 yr period] have been driven grouse moors, indicating a strong take-up where the issue of hen harrier decline is most relevant“.

We wanted to scrutinise this claim and submitted several FoIs to SNH asking for the names of the estates to be released (for some reason, estates names had been kept top secret even though this is a publicly-funded project). Here’s SNH’s response:

FoI request to SNH: In each year, how many estates had successful nests and of those, how many estates were managed for driven grouse shooting?

SNH response: 2015 – 2 estates with successful nests, 2 of which were driven grouse moor. 1 additional successful nest 100m off the estate boundary of a driven grouse moor.

2016 – 3 estates with successful nests, 2 of which were driven grouse moor.

2017 – 6 estates with successful nests, 3 of which were driven grouse moor.

FoI request to SNH: Please provide the name of each estate, in each year, that signed up to participate.

SNH response: We have considered this part of your request very carefully, and we are unable to provide the estate names. Estates enter into the Heads Up For Harriers project voluntarily. The estate name information in this case was provided voluntarily, there are no other circumstances that entitle SNH to disclose it, and the estates have not consented to disclosure. Making the information publicly available would be likely to prejudice the interests of the estates, for example via negative publicity in the event of harriers not nesting on the estate or in the event of nest/s failing on the estate. We are therefore withholding the estate name details under EIRs Regulation 10(5)(f) (Interests of the individual providing the information).

The Heads Up for Harriers project members’ position is that estate wishes must be respected. Further, members agree the most important aspect of the project is to encourage cooperation and a positive working relationship ‘on the ground’ between estates, Project Officers and other project members to promote survival of hen harriers and enable monitoring if and when hen harriers return to breed. We have therefore concluded that, in this case, the public interest is best served by not releasing the estate names.

So SNH was also claiming that seven of the successful nests were located on driven grouse moors. Without being told the names of these grouse moor estates, it was impossible for this claim to be properly scrutinised, but we were suspicious enough to try anyway. We also considered carefully SNH’s explanation for not releasing the names (that it would ‘prejudice’ the interests of the estates involved via negative publicity) but we dismissed this as nonsense. The hen harrier-loving general public isn’t going to be upset at an estate that has made genuine efforts to host breeding hen harriers. Why would it?

It has taken us many months of painstaking research but we now think we know the names of those estates. To be absolutely clear, we aren’t 100% certain that our information is accurate and without being told ‘officially’ by the project partners, we won’t know, but we’re as sure as we can be given the thick veil of secrecy that surrounds this project.

In 2015 three estates had nest cameras placed at hen harrier nests. We believe these were on Ballandalloch Estate, Muckrach Estate, and Novar Estate:

Not one of these estates is on our radar as being involved with illegal raptor persecution and we applaud them for hosting breeding hen harriers. How many were driven grouse moors? Well according to SNH, two of them were. Which of these three estates was being run as a driven grouse moor in 2015? None of them, as far as we’ve been able to find out. There may have been some low-ground shooting (pheasants/partridge) and perhaps some walked-up grouse shooting, and Ballindalloch does have driven grouse shooting on one of its three landholdings but apparently not on the moor where the Heads up for Hen Harrier nest was located.

In 2016, three estates had nest cameras placed at hen harrier nests. We believe these were on Langholm Moor, Muckrach Estate and Novar Estate:

Again, not one of these estates is on our radar as being involved with illegal raptor persecution and we applaud them for hosting breeding hen harriers. How many were driven grouse moors? Well according to SNH, two of them were. Which of these three estates was being run as a driven grouse moor in 2016? None of them, as far as we’ve been able to find out. Muckrach and Novar were being run as they were in 2015, which leaves Langholm Moor, which was being run as a Demonstration Project so definitely not your average driven grouse moor (and they weren’t shooting grouse there either).

In 2017, six estates had nest cameras placed at hen harrier nests. We believe these were Langholm, Wildlands Ltd (1); Wildlands Ltd (2), Airlie Estate, Midfearn Estate and Balnagown Estate:

Again, not one of these estates is on our radar as being involved with illegal raptor persecution and we applaud them for hosting breeding hen harriers. How many were driven grouse moors? Well according to SNH, three of them were. Which of these six estates was being run as a driven grouse moor in 2017? The only one we have a question mark over is Airlie Estate (in the Angus Glens), which may or may not have been managed for driven grouse shooting in 2017. Our local informants suggest it wasn’t, but the nest (which failed – but not under suspicious circumstances) was close to the boundary of another estate that is managed for driven grouse shooting. The other estates are either rewilding projects, low ground, or have no gamebird shooting whatsoever.

So, if our analysis is correct (and it might not be – again, it’s important to reiterate that we’re not able to verify our findings because the estate names are being kept secret by SNH), only one of these eleven estates might have been managed for driven grouse shooting at the time the nest cameras were placed. Not seven, as SNH claims, and not two-thirds, as SLE claims, but one, possibly, maybe.

We are able to have some confidence in our findings after listening to a Hen Harrier Day presentation given by Brian Etheridge a couple of weeks ago in the Highlands. Brian, an acknowledged expert on hen harriers having studied them for well over 40 years, works as a Heads up for Hen Harriers Project Officer. He told the audience that in 2018, of seven successful nests, two were on driven grouse moors. He said of these hen harriers successfully fledging on the two driven grouse moors, “It’s the first time I’ve recorded that since way back in the 1990s“.

It sounds like there’s a bit of good news from this year’s project then, although we’re awaiting the results to be announced formally, not that we’ll believe them if they’re announced by either SLE or SNH.

However, this apparent good news this year does not, and should not, detract from the apparently misleading statements made by both SLE and SNH about the project’s previous so-called success on driven grouse moors. We’d expect nothing else from SLE but for SNH, a statutory Government agency, to be making what appear to be inaccurate statements, well that’s a very serious matter.

We’ll be writing to SNH to invite a response to our findings and to tell us we’ve got this completely wrong and to provide evidence to demonstrate why we’ve got it wrong.

Or is it the case, as Andy Wightman MSP put to the Scottish Parliament last December, that the project is being used as a greenwashing exercise to hide the criminal activities that are undertaken by some in the driven grouse shooting industry and to promote the misleading impression that it is voluntarily cooperating to clean up its act?

We’ll keep you posted.

This poem was delivered at the Hen Harrier Day event at the RSPB’s superb Rainham Marshes reserve yesterday and a number of people have suggested it should be posted on this blog.

[Photo by Alan Shearman from his blog about Rainham Hen Harrier Day 2018]

HEN HARRIER DAY

by Ruth Tingay

2014 is when it all began

Amidst Hurricane Bertha at the Derwent Dam

There was a bloke called Avery and a bloke called Packham

And the Sodden 570, united in passion.

 

We arrived as strangers but left as friends

Determined to bring the killing to end

To protect our skydancer from the guns and the traps

And the murderous intent of the men in tweed caps

 

There were only four nests in England that year

The grouse shooters toasting success with a sneer

But to underestimate us was their biggest mistake

We are defiant and strong and we’ll do what it takes

 

These rallies and banners are just the beginning

There’s a long way to go but we know about winning

They can hurl their abuse and call us all liars

We don’t give a damn ‘cos our bellies have fire

 

We’ve come a long way since that very first rally

Westminster, the papers, all over the telly

We’ve changed the narrative and people are listening

Grouse shooting no longer all shiny and glistening

 

We’re exposing their fiction, their greed and their crimes

Their friends in high places all wilfully blind

Nine nests this year and we’re supposed to be pleased

Our hen harrier population, brought to its knees

 

You can keep your fake partnerships and your grouse-shooting peers

Your Gilruths, Amandas and your crocodile tears

Stuff your brood meddling right up your arse

We know what you’re up to and we know it’s a farce

 

There’s progress in Scotland and the grousers are fearful

That’s reason enough for us to be cheerful

So raise up your banners, keep singing our song

By standing together we won’t go wrong

 

END

The event was superbly organised by Lisa Mobley and her team of volunteers. Other speakers included Mark Avery, Natalie Bennett, Martin Harper, Chris Packham and Barry Gardiner MP. The presentations were filmed by PJS Films and can be viewed HERE.

Other Hen Harrier Day events took place on Saturday and there are more being held today, the Inglorious 12th. Find the one closest to you HERE.

[Photo from Hen Harrier Day 2018 at RSPB Rainham Marshes by @RSPBUrban]

Well done to BBC Look North for an honest and accurate report on the hen harrier breeding season in Northumberland.

“Not what you’d call a bumper harvest“, says the presenter in his introduction, and then from the reporter, “The hen harrier is illegally persecuted by gamekeepers on driven grouse moors who believe the birds cause too much damage to the shooting business“.

What, no lame-brained tra-la-la-ing from Amanda Anderson (Moorland Association) about the number of hen harriers that have popped in through her kitchen window for a coffee and a chat? And no Andrew Gilruth, the GWCT’s very own Stepford Wife, droning on about whatever it is he’s been told to repeat that day?

No, not a word from any of the great pretenders.

There are good contributions from Dr Cathleen Thomas (RSPB Skydancer Project) and Tom Dearnley (Forestry Commission), although Tom was probably a bit optimistic when he said “The birds that fledged this year will go in to the breeding population….”. We doubt that very much; they’ll be lucky to be still alive by Xmas.

Anyway, have a watch of this refreshingly uncontaminated report but you’ll need to be quick as the programme expires at 1.45hrs today (Weds 8th).

You’ll find it on BBC iPlayer (here), starts at 2.32min and runs until 4.22 min.

According to an article in The Times today, the English hen harrier population has been ‘saved’ following a ‘record number’ of successfully fledged birds.

Good grief!

Nine successful nests in a country that has the habitat to support over 300 pairs is NOT, in any way, shape or form, evidence of a species being ‘saved’. What it actually is is a clear indication that the English hen harrier breeding population is still being suppressed as a result of illegal persecution. We blogged a bit about this last week (here) when the 2018 HH breeding results were published and we pointed out that, yet again, there wasn’t one single successful nest on a privately-owned grouse moor.

Here’s the article from today’s Times in full:

We could spend some time dissecting this article but we don’t have time. It is worth highlighting the quote from Philip Merricks though, who says,

“Wildlife will only thrive if conservationists work with those who manage the land“.

No, Philip, wildlife (in this case, hen harriers) will only thrive if gamekeepers on grouse moors stop bloody killing them, and if so-called conservationists (Hawk & Owl Trust) stop enabling them to keep getting away with it.

It’s worth looking at the 2018 hen harrier breeding season in context with previous years, just to put things in perspective. Successful hen harrier nests haven’t reached double figures for ten years, and yet we’re expected to believe this is a ‘success’?

We’ve been here many times before – a handful of successful hen harrier nests and along come the persecution apologists to claim it’s a ‘turning point’ and everything’s going to be alright. Here’s something we wrote in 2015 after the so-called ‘good news’ that six nests had been successful. The results from the next two years suggest it was anything but a ‘turning point’.

It’s just pitiful, both the continued poor breeding results and the ridiculous cries of ‘success’ from the grouse shooting industry.

For an alternative view of this year’s hen harrier breeding results, have a read of this article from the Northern England Raptor Forum (NERF). It’s much more honest than anything you’ll see from the persecution deniers.

If you’re as sick to the back teeth as we are of the continued pretence that hen harriers are being ‘saved’ by grouse moor gamekeepers, then come along to a Hen Harrier Day event this weekend and ensure your voice is heard. You’ll find details here.

RSPB press release (3 August 2018):

RECORD NUMBER OF HEN HARRIER CHICKS TAGGED THIS YEAR

Over 30 chicks tagged by RSPB Project

An unprecedented number of hen harrier chicks have been fitted with satellite tags this year by the RSPB as part of its EU funded Hen Harrier LIFE project to secure the future of these threatened birds.

So far more than 30 of the young birds have been tagged, the majority of them in Scotland. This is the fourth year in a row that the project has fitted satellite tags on hen harrier chicks. A number of those tagged this year are the offspring of birds tagged in previous years by the project including DeeCee who hatched in Perthshire in 2016.

Hen harriers are one of the UK’s rarest birds and the satellite tags allow the project to follow their movements as they leave the nest, gaining invaluable information on where the birds spend their time. The odds are stacked against hen harrier chicks from the start with survival rates of around 22 per cent in their first two years of life. The tags can reveal information about the cause of death for many of these young birds.

Of the birds tagged in 2017 almost 40 per cent are known to have died from natural causes, in line with these low survival rates. As the tags continue to transmit after a bird has died the remains of many of them were able to be recovered allowing post mortems to be carried out. These showed some to have been predated, while others died of starvation. One bird, Eric who was tagged in Orkney in July 2017, apparently drowned in January.

However, the tags also reveal that over a quarter of last year’s chicks have disappeared in suspicious circumstances. In these cases, transmissions from tags that have been functioning perfectly suddenly stop. The tag of one bird, Calluna, ended transmissions abruptly over a grouse moor a few miles north of Ballater on 12^th August last year. Manu and Marc, from the same Borders nest, both disappeared over grouse moors in northern England.

The latest national survey of hen harriers, carried out in 2016, shows that the UK population has declined by 24 per cent since 2004. In Scotland there has been a 57 per cent decline on grouse moors since 2010. The continued illegal persecution of these birds is having a huge detrimental impact on their numbers.

RSPB Scotland is currently awaiting the recommendations of an independent enquiry panel commissioned by the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham MSP in May 2017, to look into how grouse moors can be managed within the law and explore options for its regulation. The panel was created following the review of satellite tagged golden eagles in Scotland and is expected to report back in Spring 2019.

Dr Cathleen Thomas, Project Manager for the RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE project said: “Satellite tagging technology has taught us so much about the movements of hen harriers. We can follow individual stories; from the birds that make huge journeys crossing over seas to those that stay closer to home and only move short distances from where they were hatched. We’ve discovered new nesting places and winter roosting sites, which help us protect the birds when they are at their most vulnerable.

“The tags also allow us to investigate where and in what circumstances these hen harrier chicks are lost so we can better understand how to protect them and advocate for licensing of driven grouse shooting. This species is only just holding on in the UK; it’s both heart-breaking and infuriating that year after year many of these chicks disappear in suspicious circumstances. The loss of birds in this way is both needless and senseless and cannot go on. We hope that the recommendations of the enquiry panel here in Scotland will give hen harriers, and other birds of prey, a fair and fighting chance at survival and help stamp out these outdated illegal persecution practices.”

The project is grateful for the fantastic support given from members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group and to the many landowners and their staff for their interest and help in assisting to tag so many birds.

From September a selection of this year’s tagged birds will be added to the project website where their travels can be followed along with some of the surviving birds from previous years: www.rspb.org.uk/henharrierlife

ENDS

Natural England has today published a press release announcing a pathetic total of nine successful hen harrier nests in England this year, an increase from three nests last year and heralded by NE Chairman Andrew Sells as “truly remarkable” (see here).

No, what’s truly remarkable Andrew is that there are still a conservatively estimated 290 breeding pairs of hen harriers still missing from England, and many more still missing in Scotland!

[Photo from a nest camera, part of the Heads Up for Harriers Project in Scotland]

According to the convoluted NE press statement, which appears to have been written by someone determined to protect the reputation of the hen harrier-killing criminals, four of the successful nests were on National Nature Reserves (i.e. not grouse moors), and five were on grouse moors, although it then says that one of these five wasn’t actually on a grouse moor at all, but was on farmland next door, so that makes four successful nests on grouse moors.

The farmland nest is quite interesting – this is the one that the gamekeeper’s group Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group recently declared as being on a grouse moor, as did the National Gamekeepers Organisation. Not quite accurate, eh chaps? And isn’t the next-door grouse moor at the centre of a prosecution case just now, with a gamekeeper charged with the alleged shooting of raptors on that grouse moor? Ah yes, so it is.

When you look more closely at those four successful nests that were actually located on grouse moors, three of them were on United Utilities-owned land in Bowland, and the other one was on National Trust-owned land in the Peak District (the estate where the previous tenant was recently booted off after a gamekeeper was filmed there poised with his gun next to a hen harrier decoy). New tenants moved in earlier this year and hey presto! A pair of hen harriers is allowed to settle.

So, not a single successful hen harrier nest on a single privately owned grouse moor anywhere in northern England, again.

And yet, incredibly, in a joint press statement today The Moorland Association and the GWCT (the ‘scientists’ behind the ‘completely inadequate’ and ‘seriously flawed’ raven cull ‘study’) are ‘celebrating’ these results and claiming that this ‘success’ is largely down to DEFRA’s ‘revolutionary’ brood meddling licence ‘beginning to work’ (see here).

Eh? Beginning to work? It hasn’t even started as, for yet another year, there haven’t been enough (any!) successfully breeding hen harriers on privately owned grouse moors so no chicks have been available to be brood meddled.

With any luck, there won’t be any brood meddling next year either, as Mark Avery and the RSPB have both been given permission to proceed with their legal challenges in the High Court against brood meddling via a judicial review. Interestingly, Moorland Association Chair Amanda Anderson refers to these legal challenges in the joint press statement as “wasting court time and tax payers money“.

We wonder if she felt the same way about the judicial review brought by the game shooting industry a couple of years ago, challenging Natural England’s decision not to issue buzzard-killing licences to gamekeepers to protect pheasant stocks?

Anyway, we’ll remind her of this quote the next time a prosecution is brought to a thundering halt after a handsomely paid QC has wasted court time arguing about minor legal technicalities to ensure the case collapses against the latest gamekeeper accused of illegal raptor persecution on a grouse moor. We predict we won’t have long to wait….

Meanwhile, many of this year’s hen harrier chicks have been satellite-tagged. A handful by Natural England (so we’ll only have another 15 years to wait for find out their fates) but most of the tagging has been completed by the RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE project, so as we approach the start of the grouse-shooting season and head in to September, we can expect a steady stream of reports of the suspicious disappearance of many of this year’s cohort, predominantly on privately owned driven grouse moors.