Further to this morning’s blog (here), gamekeeper Racster Dingwall, 34, appeared at Skipton Magistrates’ Court this afternoon where he pleaded not guilty to two charges relating to an alleged conspiracy to kill a Hen Harrier on a grouse moor (Coniston & Grassington Estate) in the Yorkshire Dales National Park on 2nd October 2024.
This case relates to the covert footage filmed by the RSPB’s Investigations team last autumn and later shown on Channel 4 News (here).
As Dingwall has pleaded not guilty the case will now move towards a trial.
A pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for 9th September 2025 at York Magistrates’ Court for legal discussion about the admissibility of the video and audio footage.
Keep an eye on Channel 4 News this evening…
NB: Comments are closed until criminal proceedings have concluded.
UPDATE 4 May 2025: News coverage about first court appearance of Yorkshire Dales gamekeeper Racster Dingwall in relation to alleged conspiracy to shoot a Hen Harrier (here)
UPDATE 9 September 2025: Gamekeeper Racster Dingwall back in court today for case relating to Hen Harrier shooting on a grouse moor in Yorkshire Dales National Park (here)
UPDATE 9 September 2025: Judge rules RSPB covert video surveillance is admissible evidence in prosecution of gamekeeper Racster Dingwall (here)
UPDATE 25 September 2025: More detail on court ruling accepting admissibility of RSPB’s covert surveillance in prosecution of gamekeeper accused of conspiracy to kill a Hen Harrier (here)
Last month Natural England announced that it had made a (very sensible) decision not to issue a Hen Harrier brood meddling licence to the Moorland Association in 2025 (see here).
This announcement came a few weeks after Natural England’s announcement that the seven-year Hen Harrier brood meddling trial had now ended (see here).
For new blog readers, the Hen Harrier brood meddling trial was a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England between 2018 – 2024, in cahoots with the grouse shooting industry, the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involved the removal of Hen Harrier chicks from grouse moors, they were reared in captivity, then released back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where many were illegally killed. It was plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.
The RSPB has long objected to Hen Harrier brood meddling, and even took, along with Mark Avery, a legal challenge against the brood meddling trial in 2018 (here) but unfortunately this was unsuccessful.
The RSPB has now responded to Natural England’s decision not to issue a Hen Harrier brood meddling licence in 2025 and has expressed its ‘relief’ at the decision, given the ongoing illegal persecution of this species by gamekeepers on UK grouse moors. The RSPB remains concerned about the potential for a future brood meddling licence.
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, four female hen harriers (Dina, R3-F2-22, Bonnie, and Gill) who vanished at various locations between January and April 2025 (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). A further scientific paper published in 2023 by scientists at the RSPB, utilising even more recent data, echoed these results – 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 was 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 and for a critical evaluation of the trial after 5 years see this report by Wild Justice. In 2024 the brood meddling trial appeared to collapse for reasons which are not yet clear (see here) and the licence for the so-called ‘scientific trial’ expired. In March 2025 Natural England announced the end of the brood meddling trial (here) and in April 2025 announced that a licence application to continue brood meddling, submitted by the Moorland Association, had been refused (here).
Brood meddling was earlier 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 138 hen harriers gone since 2018, and 31 of those being brood meddled birds, there is no question that the grouse shooting industry was simply taking the piss. Meanwhile, Natural England pretended that ‘partnership working’ was the way to go and consecutive Tory DEFRA Ministers remained silent for all those years.
*n/a – no hen harriers were brood meddled in 2018. **Post mortem reports on a further seven hen harriers found dead in 2024/2025 are awaited. Those seven individuals are not included in this table.
‘Partnership working’ according to Natural England appeared 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 £75k ‘donation’ from representatives of the grouse shooting industry with a contract clause that prevented Natural England from criticising them or the sham brood meddling trial (see here). This was in addition to a further £10k ‘donation’ that Natural England accepted, under the same terms, in 2021 (here).
Thankfully, the Scottish Government finally decided to act by introducing a grouse moor licensing scheme under the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024. The intention behind this new legislation is that grouse shooting estates could have their licences suspended/revoked if, on the balance of probability, it is shown that any raptor persecution crimes (& some other associated offences) are linked with grouse moor management on that estate. There, are, however, ongoing issues with the licence as it’s been significantly watered-down after an intervention from the grouse shooting industry (see here). Work is underway to address this.
In England a new Hen Harrier Taskforce was established in 2024, led by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, to use innovative techniques to target hen harrier persecution hotspots (locations where hen harriers repeatedly ‘disappear’ or are found illegally killed). It’s too early to judge the Taskforce’s success/failure and it’s been met with considerable resistance from the Moorland Association, the grouse moor owners’ lobby group (e.g. see here). So far though, it’s quite clear that the the illegal killing continues.
So here’s the latest gruesome list of ‘missing’/illegally killed hen harriers since 2018. Note that the majority of these birds (but not all) were fitted with satellite tags. How many more [untagged] harriers have been killed? We now have evidence that gamekeepers are specifically targeting untagged hen harriers, precisely to avoid detection (see here for extraordinary footage/audio by the RSPB’s Investigations Team as featured on Channel 4 News in October 2024).
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).
28 January 2019: Hen harrier DeeCee ‘disappeared’ in Glen Esk, a grouse moor area of the Angus Glens (see 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).
November 2019: Hen harrier Artemis ‘disappeared’ near Long Formacus in south Scotland (RSPB pers comm).
14 December 2019: Hen harrier Oscar ‘disappeared’ in Eskdalemuir, south Scotland (here).
December 2019: Hen harrier Ingmar ‘disappeared’ in the Strathbraan grouse moor area of Perthshire (RSPB pers comm).
27 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).
2020: 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). We learned 18 months later that her wings had been ripped off so her tag could be fitted to a crow in an attempt to cover up her death (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). One year later it was revealed that the satellite tag/harness of this young male called ‘Anu’ had been deliberately cut off (see here).
12 April 2022: Hen harrier ‘Free’ (Tag ID 201121) ‘disappeared’ at a ‘confidential site’ in Cumbria (here). It later emerged he hadn’t disappeared, but his mutilated corpse was found on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. A post mortem revealed the cause of death was having his head twisted and pulled off. One leg had also been torn off whilst he was still alive (here).
April 2022: Hen harrier ‘Pegasus’ (tagged by the RSPB) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor at Birkdale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
May 2022: A male breeding hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from a National Trust-owned grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here).
May 2022: Another breeding male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from a National Trust-owned grouse moor in the Peak District National Park (here).
14 May 2022: Hen harrier ‘Harvey’ (Tag ID 213844) ‘disappeared’ from a ‘confidential site’ in the North Pennines (here).
20 June 2022: Hen harrier chick #1 stamped to death in nest on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
20 June 2022: Hen harrier chick #2 stamped to death in nest on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
20 June 2022: Hen harrier chick #3 stamped to death in nest on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
20 June 2022: Hen harrier chick #4 stamped to death in nest on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
17 August 2022: Hen harrier (brood meddled in 2022, #R1-M1-22) ‘disappeared’ on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
September 2022: Hen harrier ‘Sullis’ (tagged by the RSPB) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Cumbria (here).
5 October 2022: Hen harrier (brood meddled in 2022, #R3-M2-22) ‘disappeared’ on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
10 October 2022: Hen harrier ‘Sia’ ‘disappeared’ near Hamsterley Forest in the North Pennines (here).
October 2022: Hen harrier (brood meddled in 2021, #R1-F1-21) ‘disappeared’ in the North Sea off the North York Moors National Park (here).
1 December 2022: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2021, #R1-M1-21) ‘disappeared’ on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
7 December 2022: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2020, #R2-F2-20) ‘disappeared’ from winter roost (same as #R3-F1-22) on moorland in North Pennines AONB (here). Later found dead with 3 shotgun pellets in corpse.
14 December 2022: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2022, #R3-F1-22) ‘disappeared’ from winter roost (same as #R2-F2-20) on moorland in the North Pennines AONB (here). Later found dead with two shotgun pellets in corpse.
15 December 2022: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2022, #R2-F1-22) ‘disappeared’ on moorland in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
30 March 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2022, #R1-F3-22) ‘disappeared’ in Yorkshire (here). Notes from NE Sept 2023 spreadsheet update: “Final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request“.
1 April 2023: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2022, #R2-M1-22) ‘disappeared’ in Yorkshire (here). Notes from NE Sept 2023 spreadsheet update: “Final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request“.
April 2023: Hen harrier ‘Lagertha’ (tagged by RSPB) ‘disappeared’ in North Yorkshire (here).
April 2023: Hen harrier ‘Nicola’ (Tag ID 234078) ”disappeared’ in North Yorkshire (here).
April 2023: Untagged male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from an active nest on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve in Cumbria (here).
April 2023: Another untagged male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from an active nest on RSPB Geltsdale Reserve in Cumbria (here).
April 2023: Untagged male hen harrier ‘disappeared’ from an active nest in Durham (here).
4/5 May 2023: Satellite-tagged male hen harrier called ‘Rush’ ‘disappeared’ from a grouse moor in Bowland AONB in Lancashire (here).
9/10 May 2023: Hen harrier male called ‘Dagda’, tagged by the RSPB in Lancashire in June 2022 and who was breeding on the RSPB’s Geltsdale Reserve in 2023 until he ‘vanished’, only to be found dead on the neighbouring Knarsdale grouse moor in May 2023 – a post mortem revealed he had been shot (here).
17 May 2023: Satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Wayland’ ‘disappeared’ in the Clapham area of North Yorkshire, just north of the Bowland AONB (here).
31 May 2023: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2022, tag #213932, name: R2-M3-22) ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland (grid ref: NY765687) (here).
11 June 2023: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2021, tag #213922, name: R2-M1-21) ‘disappeared’ at a confidential site in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Notes from the NE spreadsheet: “Final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request“ (here).
12 June 2023: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2020, tag #203004, name: R1-M2-20) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Co. Durham (grid ref: NY976322) (here).
6 July 2023: Satellite-tagged female hen harrier named ‘Rubi’ (tag #201124a) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Co. Durham (grid ref: NY911151) (here).
23 July 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, tag #55154a, name: R1-F1-23) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in Co. Durham (close to where ‘Rubi’ vanished), grid ref: NY910126 (here).
29 July 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2020, tag #55144, name: R2-F2-20) ‘disappeared’ at a confidential site in the North Pennines. Notes from the NE spreadsheet: “Dead. Recovered – awaiting PM results. Final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request“ (here).
9 August 2023: Satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Martha’ ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor (Westburnhope Moor) near Hexham in the North Pennines (here).
11 August 2023: Satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Selena’ ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor (Mossdale Moor) in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
11 August 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, tag #201118a, name: R3-F1-23) ‘disappeared’ in Co. Durham (grid ref: NZ072136) (here).
15 August 2023: Satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Hepit’ ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor (Birkdale Common) near Kirkby Stephen in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
24 August 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, tag #55155a, name: R1-F2-23) ‘disappeared’ at a confidential site in Northumberland. Notes from the NE spreadsheet: “Final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request“ (here).
August-Sept 2023: Satellite-tagged hen harrier called ‘Harmonia’ ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (here).
September 2023: Hen harrier female ‘Saranyu’, tagged by the RSPB in Cumbria in June 2023, ‘disappeared’ in Durham in September 2023 (no further details available yet – just outline info provided in 2022 Birdcrime report) (here).
September 2023: Hen harrier female ‘Inger’, a female tagged by the RSPB in Perthshire in July 2022, ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Angus Glens in September 2023 (here).
15 September 2023: Hen harrier male called ‘Rhys’, tagged in Cumbria on 1st August 2023, ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Grid ref: SD798896 (here).
24 September 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, name: ‘R2-F2-23’) ‘disappeared’ in the North Pennines, grid ref: NY888062 (here).
25 September 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2022, name: ‘R1-F4-22’) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, grid ref: SE077699 (here).
26 September 2023: Hen harrier female called ‘Hope’, tagged in Cumbria on 21 July 2023, ‘disappeared’ next to a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, grid ref: SD801926 (here).
4 October 2023: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2020, name: ‘R1-M3-20’) ‘disappeared’ in Co Durham, grid ref: NY935192 (here).
4 October 2023: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, name: ‘R4-F1-23’) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, grid ref: SE003981 (here).
14 October 2023: Hen harrier male called ‘Cillian’, tagged in Cumbria on 1 August 2023, ‘disappeared’ in south west Scotland, grid ref: NY051946 (here).
15 November 2023: Hen harrier female called ‘Hazel’, tagged in Cumbria on 21 July 2023, ‘disappeared’ on the Isle of Man, grid ref: SC251803 (here).
27 November 2023: Hen harrier female called ‘Gill’, tagged in Northumberland on 10 July 2023, ‘disappeared’ at a confidential location in Teeside (here).
12 February 2024: Hen harrier female called ‘Susie’, Tag ID 201122, found dead at a confidential location in Northumberland and the subject of an ongoing police investigation (here).
15 February 2024: Hen harrier female called ‘Shalimar’, tagged on the National Trust for Scotland’s Mar Lodge estate in 2023, ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on a grouse moor in the notorious Angus Glens (here).
7 March 2024: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2023, name R2-M1-23) found dead in Devon. According to an FoI response from Natural England in June 2024 this death is the subject of an ongoing police investigation (here).
24 April 2024: Hen harrier male called ‘Ken’, Tag ID 213849a, ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances close to a grouse moor in Bowland, grid ref SD 684601 (here).
17 May 2024: Hen harrier male (brood meddled in 2023, name R2-M2-23) ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances next to Middlesmoor grouse moor in Nidderdale, grid ref SE043754 (here).
25 June 2024: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2023, name R2-F1-23) ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on a grouse moor in Yorkshire Dales National Park, grid ref NY985082 (here).
July 2024: Hen harrier female named ‘Helius’ satellite tagged by the RSPB ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances in Bowland (here).
October 2024: An un-tagged hen harrier was seemingly shot on a grouse moor by one of three gamekeepers being secretly filmed by the RSPB (here).
1 October 2024: Hen harrier female named ‘Dreich’, Tag ID: 254842, ‘disappeared’ in Lanarkshire. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown, site confidential – ongoing investigation‘ (here).
15 October 2024: Hen harrier male named ‘Baldur’, Tag ID: 240291, ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown, site confidential – ongoing investigation‘ (here).
19 October 2024: Hen harrier female named ‘Margaret’, Tag ID: 254844, ‘disappeared’ in Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown, site confidential – ongoing investigation‘ (here).
12 January 2025: Hen harrier female named ‘Dina’, Tag ID: 254837, ‘disappeared’ near a grouse moor in the Lammermuirs, south Scotland (grid ref: NT 681512). Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown’ (here).
15 January 2025: Hen harrier female named ‘Red’, hatched on the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve in 2024, ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in County Durham in the North Pennines, in the same area another tagged hen harrier (Sia) vanished in 2022 (here).
3 February 2025: Hen harrier female (brood meddled in 2022, name R3-F2-22) ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown’ (here).
4 April 2025: Hen harrier female named ‘Bonnie’, Tag ID: 254841, ‘disappeared’ in Scotland. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown. Site confidential – ongoing investigation’ (here).
10 April 2025: Hen harrier female named ‘Gill’, Tag ID: 240294, ‘disappeared’ in Scotland. Listed by NE as ‘Missing Fate Unknown. Site confidential – ongoing investigation’ (here).
To be continued…….
Of these 138 incidents, only one has resulted in an arrest and a subsequent prosecution (ongoing – gamekeeper due in court in May 2025, see here). 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 at least ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT hen harriers, and still Govt ministers remain silent on the illegal persecution issue. 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.
And let’s not forget the response from the (now former) Moorland Association Chair (and owner of Swinton Estate) Mark Cunliffe-Lister, who told BBC Radio 4 in August 2023 that, “Clearly any illegal [hen harrier] persecution is nothappening” (here), in the year when a record 33 hen harriers had been confirmed ‘missing’ and/or illegally killed.
Nor should we forget the response from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s (GWCT) Director of Policy Dr Alistair Leake who wrote a letter to the Guardian newspaper in November 2023 stating that the hen harrier brood management [meddling] scheme “is surely a shining example of human / wildlife conflict resolution that would be the envy of other countries trying to find similar solutions“ (I kid you not – here).
Wild Justice has launched another petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting. This latest petition is intended to gauge the view of the new Labour Government, as previous petitions were all lodged under the Conservative Government with its well-documented vested interests. Labour issued an appallingly pathetic interim response to the petition, via DEFRA, in January 2025 after the petition had reached 10,000 signatures, and indicated it had no intention of banning driven grouse shooting (see here).
The petition is live until 22 May 2025. It has already passed the 100,000 signature threshold required to qualify for a debate in Westminster Hall so now we wait to find out if the Government will call it and if/when it does, how on earth it’s going to defend the status quo.
Last Friday afternoon, Natural England quietly published its latest sporadic update on the status of its satellite-tagged hen harriers. This is essentially an excel spreadsheet that provides the public with little more than the bare minimum of data about tagged individuals.
The latest update was done without fanfare; indeed NE appears to have said absolutely nothing at all about it. I’m not surprised, given what the data show. NE was probably hoping that nobody would notice but that’s a gross underestimation of the level of public interest in this species, and the illegal persecution of it, on many driven grouse moors across the UK.
It won’t come as a surprise to any regular reader of this blog that Natural England’s April 2025 update reveals that four more satellite-tagged hen harriers have ‘vanished’ since the start of this year.
That’s four more in addition to the one we already knew about this year – a young female hen harrier called ‘Red’, named by local schoolchildren. Red had hatched on the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve at Langholm in 2024 and was being tracked by the RSPB until she ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances in Janaury 2025, on a grouse moor in Co Durham, from where another tagged hen harrier had also previously vanished a few years earlier in 2022 (see here).
Here are the details of the latest four to ‘disappear this year’:
Female hen harrier named ‘Dina’, Tag ID 254837. Date of last contact: 12 January 2025 at grid reference NT 681512, near a grouse moor in the Lammemuirs, south Scotland.
Female hen harrier, brood meddled in 2022 (R3-F2-22), Tag ID 213924. Date of last contact: 3 February 2025 at grid reference SE 759996, a grouse moor in the North York Moors National Park.
Female hen harrier named ‘Bonnie’, Tag ID 254841. Date of last contact: 4 April 2025 in Scotland. ‘Site confidential – ongoing investigation’.
Female hen harrier named ‘Gill’, Tag ID 240294. Date of last contact: 10 April 2025 in Scotland. ‘Site confidential – ongoing investigation’.
I haven’t seen any publicity about these four disappearances – no press releases, no appeals for information, just silence.
I’ll shortly be adding these four to my rolling list of dead/missing hen harriers.
In addition to these four ‘missing’ birds, a hen harrier has been found dead in the Yorkshire Dales National Park this spring and is listed as ‘awaiting post mortem’. This is another female, brood meddled in 2022 (R1-F4-22), Tag ID 232636. The date of last contact was 2 April 2025.
This death may or may not be suspicious/confirmed persecution – we’ll have to wait for the results of the post mortem. But don’t anyone hold your breath – there are six other hen harriers, found dead in 2024, and yet are still listed on Natural England’s spreadsheet as ‘awaiting post mortem’. One of them, ‘Susie’, was found over a year ago. Those six are:
Female hen harrier named ‘Susie’, Tag ID: 201122. Last known transmission 12 February 2024, Northumberland. Found dead. Site confidential. In NE’s April 2024 update, Susie was listed as, ‘recovered, awaiting post mortem‘. Now her listing says, ‘Ongoing police investigation, final transmission location temporarily withheld at police request‘. You might remember ‘Susie’ – she’s the hen harrier whose chicks were brutally stamped on and crushed to death in their nest on a grouse moor in Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in June 2022 (here).
Female hen harrier named ‘Edna’, Tag ID: 161143a. Last known transmission 7 June 2024, Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Recovered, awaiting post mortem‘.
Female hen harrier, Tag ID: 254843. Last known transmission 29 July 2024, Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Recovered, awaiting post mortem‘.
Male hen harrier, Tag ID: 254839. Last known transmission 5 August 2024, Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Recovered, awaiting post mortem‘.
Male hen harrier named ‘Chance’, Tag ID: 254840, last known transmission date 8 August 2024 in Cumbria. Listed by NE as ‘Recovered awaiting PM‘.
Female hen harrier named ‘Sofia’, Tag ID: 34346, last known transmission date 3 October 2024 in Northumberland. Listed by NE as ‘Recovered awaiting PM‘.
Again, I haven’t seen any publicity about any of these deaths – no press releases, no appeals for information. Why is that? How come the RSPB can put out timely press releases/appeals for information about the hen harriers they’re tracking but Natural England can’t/won’t?
Surely the post mortems on these birds would have been completed months ago? And if they showed the birds had died of natural causes then surely the NE spreadsheet would have been updated to indicate this by now? The fact they are all still showing as ‘recovered awaiting PM’, months and in once case, over a year later, suggests to me that either NE needs new admin staff or that those hen harriers were illegally killed and NE and/or the police are withholding this information. It would be understandable if this was for operational purposes and in the case of the dead hen harrier found earlier this month, then ‘awaiting post mortem’ is obviously reasonable. But I find it very hard to believe that investigations into wildlife crimes that happened between six and 14 months ago are going to be jeopardised by telling the public that an offence was committed and an investigation is underway.
There’ll (hopefully) be a debate in Westminster Hall later this year following Wild Justice’s petition passing the 100,000 signature threshold. It would be helpful if up to date persecution figures were available to inform that debate.
In October last year, Channel 4 News featured incredible footage secretly filmed by the RSPB’s investigations team of three gamekeepers plotting to kill, and then allegedly killing, a hen harrier on an unnamed grouse moor in the north of England (see here).
If you missed the piece on Channel 4 News you can watch it here:
The audio quality on the footage was remarkable, allowing viewers to listen to the three gamekeepers discussing what not to shoot (a hen harrier with a satellite tag) and what to shoot (an untagged hen harrier, whose death would not be revealed to the wider world, or so they thought).
They were also heard discussing what else they’d apparently casually shot that afternoon – a buzzard and a raven, both protected species.
According to one of my media sources, a gamekeeper has now been charged in relation to this incident for an alleged offence under the Serious Crime Act 2007.
At this stage I’m not publishing the name of the accused, or the name of the grouse moor where the footage was captured, although I understand this information is widely known within the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
The accused is due in court for a first appearance next month.
NB: As an individual has now been charged, comments are disabled on this blog until criminal proceedings have ended to avoid prejudicing the case.
Natural England / DEFRA have turned down a licence application for hen harrier brood meddling in the 2025 breeding season, following the recent closure of the seven-year hen harrier brood meddling ‘trial’.
For new blog readers, the hen harrier brood meddling trial was a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England between 2018 – 2024, in cahoots with the grouse shooting industry, the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involved the removal of hen harrier chicks from grouse moors, they were reared in captivity, then released back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where many were illegally killed. It was plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.
In autumn last year, the Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England) lodged a licence application with Natural England, seeking to continue hen harrier brood meddling in 2025 albeit with some significant changes from the ‘trial’ conditions.
Those proposed changes included removing the requirement to satellite tag brood meddled hen harriers, presumably because the data from current satellite-tagged hen harriers have been so very effective at revealing the devastating extent of ongoing hen harrier persecution (e.g. see here and here).
The other main change was that the Moorland Association wanted “a single release site” [for brood meddled hen harriers], “irrespective of the location from where they’d been removed from their nests”, presumably to get around the problem of there not being sufficient receptor sites willing to take the brood meddled harriers. I understand that the proposed single release site would have been of great interest to readers of this blog!
In March this year, Natural England announced the end of the hen harrier brood meddling trial but said it had not yet made a decision on whether to roll out brood meddling more widely (see here).
Today, Natural England has updated its hen harrier brood meddling blog with the following statement:
NE hasn’t provided any more detail about how it came to this very welcome decision but I have submitted an FoI and will publish NE’s response when it arrives.
Meanwhile, the Moorland Association has issued its own version of events about why its licence application was refused. I take everything the MA says with a dumper-truck-full of salt, given the reputation of its CEO for distorting and manipulating facts (e.g. see here and here).
According to this statement, the Moorland Association’s refusal to satellite tag brood meddled hen harriers was a factor in NE’s decision-making process. The Moorland Association says this:
“We proposed using high visibility leg tags because we have serious concerns about using satellite tags – particularly the added cost and complexity. We also have concerns about how satellite tracking data is [sic] being used to damage trust and increased [sic] tension“.
Er, nope. Satellite tag data are being used to demonstrate the ongoing and widespread criminal killing of hen harriers in and around many driven grouse moors. It’s the illegal killing (undertaken by gamekeepers on grouse moors) that’s damaging trust and increasing tension, not the use of satellite tag data!
At least 134 hen harriers ‘disappeared’/were illegally killed during the brood meddling trial, mostly on or close to grouse moors, and they’re just the ones we know about.
Incidentally, there’s news about a recent, very high profile case, coming shortly…
Meanwhile, I’m raising a glass to the end of hen harrier brood meddling (for this year, at least). It should never have started in the first place. Well done to all those who have campaigned so hard against it over the last seven years and shame on the individuals and organisations who facilitated this conservation sham.
Wild Justice’s petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting is nearing its 100,000-signature goal. It currently stands at 91,439. If you’d like to help it over the line, for the sake of future generations of hen harriers, please click here.
It’ll probably come as no surprise whatsoever to regular readers of this blog to learn that the Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England) has, in an article published by the Shooting Times this morning, made more false claims about the hen harrier brood meddling trial, this time relating to the findings of the BTO’s recent scientific study on hen harrier population trends.
For new blog readers, the hen harrier brood meddling trial was a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England between 2018 – 2024, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involved the removal of hen harrier chicks from grouse moors, they were reared in captivity, then released back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where many were illegally killed. It was plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.
You may remember last October the Moorland Association prematurely declared the brood meddling trial “a remarkable success story” and said it had decided to apply to Natural England for a licence to permit the continuation of brood meddling (see here). This happened before Natural England had undertaken a formal scientific review of the trial, which it said would take place by the end of 2024.
In March 2025, Natural England announced the closure of the hen harrier brood meddling trial and published the first of four scientific reports it had commissioned to evaluate the trial. Natural England stated that any decision on the future of brood meddling (e.g. issuing licences for brood meddling to continue) will be based on the findings of those reports. Natural England has not yet published the other three commissioned reports.
The first report it published last month was authored by scientists at the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and focused on recent hen harrier population trends. The study used a population modelling approach to try to determine the mechanism behind the sudden increase in the hen harrier population between 2018-2023 and whether that was attributable to the brood meddling trial or to other factors.
The authors used modelling techniques to look at changes in the rates of hen harrier productivity, survival and settlement but there were obvious constraints in the limited data available. They concluded that it was not possible to determine definitively whether the population increase was solely related to brood meddling or whether it was a response to wider environmental drivers (e.g. high prey availability).
As Mark Avery wrote in a recent blog about this study, “Brood meddling of Hen Harrier nests made little or no contribution to the recent rise and fall of the Hen Harrier breeding population. As was predicted in advance, brood meddling is a distraction and an irrelevance“.
The Moorland Association responded to the BTO’s study with a blog posted a few days after the report’s publication (here). It looks to me like an AI-generated appraisal of the study but nevertheless it demonstrates that the Moorland Association was at least aware of the report’s findings.
How on earth then, does the Moorland Association go from that to this, published in the Shooting Times this morning:
In this outrageous article, which is poor even by the Shooting Times‘ low standards, The Moorland Association’s CEO, Andrew Gilruth, claims:
“The seven-year [brood meddling] trial led to the English hen harrier population hitting a 200-year high. The British Trust for Ornithology has concluded that this could only have been achieved through the brood management scheme changing attitudes – a brilliant example of wildlife conflict resolution and co-existence“.
Er, the BTO’s study did not evaluate ‘changing attitudes’ [of grouse moor owners]; it used population modelling to assess hen harrier productivity, survival and settlement, none of which were conclusive to explain the changes in hen harrier population trends!
This looks to me like yet another example of Andrew Gilruth grossly misrepresenting scientific opinion on grouse moor management, for which he has a long-standing reputation (see here). Whether he does this deliberately or whether he’s just incapable of interpretating scientific output is open to question.
The article goes on to suggest that if Natural England doesn’t issue the Moorland Association with a brood meddling licence,
“I fear it will be down to the Moorland Association to ask a judge to decide if Defra’s plan to recover the hen harrier population in England should remain on track“.
If it does end up in a judicial review, which is what Gilruth appears to be threatening, I can think of at least one conservation organisation that would relish the opportunity to intervene in the case.
The IUCN guidelines on species’ translocations are quite clear that one of the fundamental principles in deciding when a translocation/reintroduction is an acceptable option is this:
‘There should generally be strong evidence that the threat(s) that caused any previous extinction have been correctly identified and removed or sufficiently reduced‘.
Given the scandalous continuation of illegal hen harrier persecution on driven grouse moors in the UK (at least 134 hen harriers killed or ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances since the brood meddling trial began), and that it is widely accepted that illegal persecution continues to be the main threat to hen harrier survival, limiting the species’ distribution and abundance in England, it is clear that the continuation of brood meddling, that isn’t being done solely under the guise of ‘research’ (which is how Natural England got away with the brood meddling trial) should be seen as unlawful if alternative actions (e.g. law enforcement) aren’t considered.
I can understand why Natural England is taking its time to publish all the reports evaluating the brood meddling sham. If it issues a brood meddling licence to the Moorland Association it will almost certainly face a threat of legal action by conservationists. If it doesn’t issue a brood meddling licence to the Moorland Association, it may well face a threat of legal action from the grouse shooting industry.
Further to this morning’s blog about Natural England’s farcical interim evaluation of whether, as a result of brood meddling, attitudes within the grouse shooting industry had changed towards a greater tolerance of hen harriers (see here – spoiler alert, no, they obviously haven’t!), Natural England has today made an announcement about the status of the hen harrier brood meddling sham trial.
For new blog readers, the hen harrier brood meddling trial was a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England between 2018 – 2024, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involved the removal of hen harrier chicks from grouse moors, they were reared in captivity, then released back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where many were illegally killed. It was plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.
Natural England’s announcement, attributed to John Holmes, NE Strategy Director, and published here, announces that the seven-year brood meddling sham trial has concluded and the ‘partnership’ has now closed.
The announcement also states that no decision has yet been taken about whether NE will issue licences for hen harrier brood meddling to be rolled-out on a wider, annual basis – we know that there is currently a live licence application outstanding from the Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England) for brood meddling, which apparently (see here and here) includes the following condition requests:
That there should be a single release site [for the brood meddled HHs] irrespective of the location from where they’d been removed from their nests; and
That the requirement for the brood meddled HHs to be satellite-tagged should be dropped.
Natural England states that it has commissioned four research reports about the brood meddling trial, covering population modelling, social science, and evaluation, and that any decision on the future of brood meddling licences will be based on an assessment of those reports. Only one report has been published so far (population modelling) and there is no indication about when the others will be published.
Natural England’s general review of the brood meddling trial has concluded that during the initial stages of the trial there was a significant increase in the number of hen harriers nesting in some grouse moor areas, mostly where brood meddling was being undertaken. However, towards the later stages of the trial this figure dropped substantially.
Natural England’s review has also concluded that illegal persecution has continued throughout the trial period in some grouse moor areas.
The NE-commissioned report on recent hen harrier population trends was undertaken by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and was published this morning (see below for report). The study used a population modelling approach to try to determine the mechanism behind the sudden increase in the hen harrier population and whether that was attributable to the brood meddling trial or to other factors.
The authors used modelling techniques to look at changes in the rates of hen harrier productivity, survival and settlement but there were obvious constraints in the limited data available. They concluded that it was not possible to determine definitively whether the population increase was solely related to brood meddling or whether it was a response to wider environmental drivers (e.g. high prey availability).
The study was unable to determine whether hen harrier survival had increased in England during the trial period, and if it had, to what extent.
In total, 15 hen harrier nests were brood meddled during the trial period and 58 chicks were released back into the uplands. We know that at least 30 of those brood meddled chicks were either brutally killed or ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances, mostly on or close to driven grouse moors. Some of them did manage to survive long enough to breed but many of them were killed within a few weeks/months of being released.
In addition to those 30 young birds, we know there were at least another 104 hen harriers that were killed or ‘disappeared’ during the brood meddling trial period (and actually this figure will definitely rise – we’re waiting for the police to publicise more cases).
*n/a – no hen harriers were brood meddled in 2018. **Post mortem reports on a further six hen harriers found dead in 2024 are awaited.
So what have we learnt? That despite over 70 years of supposed legal protection, and over £1 million (at least) of public money being wasted on years of facilitating pantomime ‘partnerships’ and a sham brood meddling trial, hen harriers are STILL being killed illegally by many within the grouse shooting industry.
I’m pleased that Natural England has finally seen sense and closed the brood meddling trial – it should never have even started – but we still need to see whether NE will issue further brood meddling licences to the very industry that’s responsible for bringing the hen harrier to its knees.
Natural England’s statement this morning included this:
‘It follows that a range of approaches may be required to reduce illegal killing on grouse moors and increase hen harrier numbers in future, potentially ranging from co-operative approaches to mitigate the impacts of hen harriers on grouse and support responsible grouse moor management, to monitoring and enforcement activities designed to tackle illegal killing and disturbance, depending on location and situation‘.
No, Natural England. Forget ‘co-operative approaches to mitigate the impacts of hen harriers on grouse‘. If these businesses are not sustainable because they cannot function without illegally killing protected species then the industry should be consigned to the dustbin. Enough, now. This charade of sustainability and respectability has gone on for far too long.
For those who want to see an end to driven grouse shooting, please sign this petition calling for a ban. It currently has 77,000 signatures – it needs 100,000 signatures before 22nd May 2025 to trigger a parliamentary debate in Westminster.
For those interested in reading the Natural England-commissioned report on recent hen harrier population trends in England, undertaken by the BTO, it’s available to read/download here:
This is a blog I’ve been meaning to write for some time but for various reasons it kept dropping down the list. However, given hen harrier brood meddling is back on the agenda (we’re awaiting the imminent publication by Natural England of its review of the hen harrier brood meddling trial and a decision about whether brood meddling will be allowed to continue now the 7-year trial has ended) it’s probably timely to write it now.
For new blog readers, the hen harrier brood meddling trial was a conservation sham sanctioned by DEFRA as part of its ludicrous ‘Hen Harrier Action Plan‘ and carried out by Natural England between 2018 – 2024, in cahoots with the very industry responsible for the species’ catastrophic decline in England. In general terms, the plan involved the removal of hen harrier chicks from grouse moors, they were reared in captivity, then released back into the uplands just in time for the start of the grouse-shooting season where many were illegally killed. It was plainly bonkers. For more background see here and here.
One of the objectives of running the brood meddling ‘trial’ was to test whether the availability of brood meddling would change the attitudes of grouse moor owners/managers towards hen harriers (i.e. would they have more tolerance of harriers), which could be judged by, for example, reduced levels of illegal persecution.
The brood meddling trial began in 2018 and three years in, Natural England conducted an ‘interim’ social science study in 2021, ‘to evaluate any changes in social attitudes by those involved in upland management‘.
This interim social science evaluation was completed in 2022 but I couldn’t find a copy in the public domain so I eventually received a (heavily redacted) copy via FoI in 2023. It’s this report that is the focus of this blog and the report is available to read/download at the bottom of this page.
I’ve read a lot of nonsense from Natural England over the years about hen harrier brood meddling but I’ve got to say, this report is right up there as being hilariously bad.
The evaluation was flawed right from the start. Given the tiny number of grouse moors directly involved in the brood meddling trial, it meant that there weren’t that many grouse moor owners and/or gamekeepers available to participate in Natural England’s evaluation interviews to measure if/how attitudes had changed.
There were so few relevant interviewees, in fact, that to make up the numbers for a semi-decent sample size it was decided to extend the list of participants to include seven Natural England staff (who were directly involved in the trial) as well as 12 non-Natural England participants who were directly involved in the brood meddling trial including a few grouse moor owners, gamekeepers and a bunch of people who weren’t from the grouse shooting industry at all but who had participated directly in the brood meddling trial, either by helping to apply for licences or those physically undertaking the brood meddling. The actual breakdown of who these people were and what their roles/affiliations were have been redacted from the report.
So, the opinions of 19 interviewees, seven of whom were Natural England staff and 12 others, some of whom were not directly associated with grouse moor management but were being paid what is believed to have been a large sum of money by the Moorland Association to undertake brood meddling, were used to assess whether attitudes had changed towards hen harriers within the grouse shooting industry as a result of brood meddling being available.
You couldn’t make it up!
Of course they’re going to say that brood meddling is a brilliant wheeze and is a positive course of action and how it’s promoted changed attitudes towards hen harriers; for some of them, their jobs/income relied upon brood meddling continuing!
To be fair to the authors of the interim evaluation report, some of the limitations were acknowledged:
“It is important to recognise a number of potential limitations of this study. First, although the [report’s social science] researchers are not part of the project delivery team, their affiliation with Natural England may have limited respondents’ willingness to be open and honest about their experiences of the trial. Second, in order to provide evidence for the process evaluation, the sample is limited only to those who are delivering or participating in the trial. There have only been a limited number of grouse moors where the density threshold for using brood management has been met as well as receptor sites assessed as suitable for harrier release within the same SPA. This has resulted in the comparatively small sample size of this research compared to the totalnumber of grouse moors and people involved in grouse shooting. As such, participants are likely to be among those members of the moorland management community who are most receptive to the idea of brood management and who recognise the need to change attitudes and behaviours. Caution must therefore be taken in extrapolating the potential effects of rolling the trial out more widely“.
To be honest, as soon as it was known that there were too few relevant participants available this social science ‘study’ should have been scrapped. How much public money was wasted on it?
I won’t go in to detail about the study’s findings – you can read them for yourselves in the report below – but there are some hilarious assertions made by the interviewees.
These include a suggestion that ‘within the last five years [up to 2021] there has been a wider change in attitude toward harriers among the grouse shooting community due to recognition that the future of grouse shooting is intrinsically linked with the future of hen harriers. Brood management was perceived to have tapped in to this change and helped harness it in a practical way‘
and
‘Brood management enabled moors to hold each other to account for any persecution through greater self-policing‘.
Of course, we all have the benefit of hindsight several years later and we know that attitudes by the majority of grouse moor owners/managers towards hen harriers has not changed one bit, as evidenced by the continued illegal killing throughout the duration of the brood meddling trial:
*n/a – no hen harriers were brood meddled in 2018. **Post mortem reports on a further six hen harriers found dead in 2024 are awaited.
I haven’t seen any evidence of ‘greater self-policing’ by grouse moor owners/managers, have you? How many cases have there been where someone from within the grouse shooting industry has reported another for illegal persecution?
What we’ve seen instead is at least 134 hen harriers confirmed illegally killed or ‘missing’ in suspicious circumstances on or close to grouse moors (here), complete denial by the then Chair of the Moorland Association, Mark Cunliffe-Lister, that persecution was even happening (here), the current CEO of the Moorland Association, Andrew Gilruth, being booted off the national priority delivery group (RPPDG) set up to tackle illegal raptor persecution and being accused by the police of “wasting time and distracting from the real work” of the police’s new Hen Harrier Taskforce (here), and a police investigation into alleged raptor persecution on a grouse moor that was directly involved in brood meddling (here). Oh, and what should have been a police investigation into the illegal poisoning of a red kite found dead on another grouse moor that was also directly involved in brood meddling (here).
Changed attitudes? Not by any stretch of imagination.
Although, thinking about it, it probably IS fair to say that attitudes have changed, but not in the way Natural England intended. They’ve changed in as much as more recently, gamekeepers are deliberately NOT targeting hen harriers that are carrying satellite tags because they know that will attract unwanted attention and instead they’re aiming their guns at untagged harriers, simply because those untagged victims are less likely to be detected by researchers or the authorities.
We saw and heard a vivid example of this change of tactics in the Channel 4 News programme that aired last October, which showed RSPB covertly-captured audio and video footage of three gamekeepers on a Yorkshire grouse moor discussing this very issue, deciding not to shoot a tagged hen harrier but then apparently shooting and killing an untagged one. If you haven’t seen this programme I strongly encourage you to watch it – it’s astounding:
I’ve no idea whether Natural England’s interim social science evaluation of the hen harrier brood meddling trial served any useful purpose in NE’s overall review of the trial, but hopefully we won’t need to wait for much longer before the final review is published and we learn whether the Moorland Association’s current licence application for brood meddling has been granted.
In the meantime, if you want a good laugh, here’s the interim report:
Just before Christmas 2024, Natural England published a blog that included information on the fates of two satellite-tagged brood-meddled hen harriers that had previously been listed as ‘Missing, Fate Unknown’.
These two young brood-meddled harriers (R3-F1-22 and R2-F2-20) had both ‘disappeared’ two years earlier, in December 2022, within days of each other, from the same winter roost site in the North Pennines.
Natural England’s December 2024 blog was the first time that NE had announced that the corpses of the two hen harriers had been found (one in April 2023 and the other in June 2023) and that both corpses contained shotgun pellets (three and two pellets, respectively).
In January 2025 Natural England updated its hen harrier satellite tracking database. Thanks to a sharp-eyed blog reader (you know who you are!), it was noticed that NE had finally, and quietly, published the grid references of where the dead hen harriers had been found (previously this detail had been withheld, apparently at the request of the police).
Natural England’s database now provides the following information about these two harriers:
Female, [Brood meddled]: R3-F1-22, Tag ID: 213921a, Date of last contact (i.e. date the satellite tag stopped functioning): 14th December 2022. Dead. Location: North Pennines NY708423. ‘Suspected illegally killed’. [Body found 10 April 2023].
Female, [Brood meddled]: R2-F2-20, Tag ID: 55144, Date of last contact: 7 December 2022. Dead. Location: North Pennines NY730372. ‘Suspected illegally killed’. [Body found 29 June 2023].
When I mapped these two grid references they were just under 5.5km of each other:
The dead hen harriers were both found on moorland managed for grouse shooting near Garrigill, in Cumbria:
Nobody has been charged with shooting these two harriers, presumably due to a lack of evidence – there’s no doubt they’d been shot at but where, and when, and by whom, remains unproven in a court of law.
The fact that the harriers disappeared from the same roost site within a week of each other, and their shotgun pellet-riddled corpses were found within 5.5km of one another on an area of grouse moor, is obviously just another one of those pesky coincidences that seem to happen so frequently unfairly in the world of driven grouse shooting (e.g. see here, here and here).
So keen is Natural England not to attribute the shooting of these birds to their deaths, the NE database states: ‘suspected illegally killed‘ [emphasis by me].
I was curious about this area of grouse moor and who owned it, so I looked up Guy Shrubsole’s earlier mapping work on his fantastic Who Owns England? website:
Guy’s map shows an area he calls ‘Townshends’ although he clarifies in his 2016 grouse moor database that this was the name of the owners, not the name of the estate. His database shows the owner as The Honourable Mrs Charlotte Anne Townshend and he reports that a CAP payment of £12, 178.33 was paid in 2014 registered under ‘The Honourable Mrs Townshend’.
The grid reference where the dead brood meddled hen harrier R2-F2-20 was found seems to be right in the middle of the estate area mapped by Guy, but the grid reference for the other dead hen harrier, R3-F1-22 appears to be outside of Guy’s mapped area, just to the north.
But it looks like Guy has only partially mapped this estate. The notes that accompany Guy’s map indicate that he mapped 4,200 acres but I think it extends further than this, and that the estate actually covers 9,500 acres of moorland and a further 2,000 acres of grassland.
Why do I think that? Well, it was actually revealed in written evidence submitted by another of the estate’s owners, a Mr James Townshend, to a Westminster parliamentary committee taking evidence on grouse shooting in 2016 prior to the debate of Mark Avery’s petition to ban driven grouse shooting.
Not only does Mr Townshend identify himself as one of the owners of Garrigill Estate, he writes quite specific details about the extent of the landholdings, hence why I think Guy’s map provides only partial coverage of this estate.
Ironically, Mr Townshend also writes about how he thinks “good grouse moor management…has a significant beneficial impact on…hen harriers“.
I think that the Garrigill Estate extends further north than Guy’s map (and if so would likely include the area where hen harrier R3-F1-22’s shot corpse was found).
Why do I think it extends to the north rather than in any other direction?
Well, because in March 2021 a sporting agency published this job advert for a trainee grouse moor gamekeeper on the ‘Garrigill & Rotherhope Estate“. Rotherhope lies to the north of Guy’s mapped area.
It’d be interesting to know whether the Garrigill [and Rotherhope] Estate is a member of the Moorland Association. It’d also be interesting to know whether this area has been classified as a hen harrier persecution hotspot by the Hen Harrier Taskforce. The criteria for classification include ‘repeat locations for suspected crimes involving hen harriers’. I’d say that finding two dead hen harriers within 5.5km of one another, both with shotgun injuries, would qualify as a hotspot.
Unfortunately the identities of these hotspots are being kept ‘secret’ by the police in order to “build trust” (see here). There’s clearly an armed criminal at large in the area – why wouldn’t you want to warn the public about that?
I can see why prominent landowners might not want a ‘persecution hot spot’ status made public but I’m pretty sure the Honourable Mrs Townshend would want the criminal caught if his actions were threatening the wildlife on Garrigill Estate. She was a former patron of Dorset Wildlife Trust until her resignation in 2013 and her spokesman was quoted in the Dorset Echo at the time, saying: “Mrs Townshend… will continue to ensure that her estates are managed to the highest standard for the benefit of wildlife and conservation“.
No doubt she was furious last month then when her Ilchester Estate in Dorset was fined nearly £28,000 by the Environment Agency for “deliberately flouting” the conditions of a licence to abstract water from an ecologically sensitive chalk stream, using ‘the equivalent of three Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water during a drought’ (see here).
Hang on a minute. The Ilchester Estate? That rings a bell. Ah yes, that’s the estate that made several donations to support West Dorset’s Conservative MP Chris Loder, he of “Dorset is not the place for eagles” fame.
Raptor Persecution UK 