Tag: hen harrier

Threshfield Moor named as missing hen harrier John’s last known location

Further to blogs about ‘missing’ satellite-tagged hen harrier ‘John’, who disappeared on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in early October (see here and here), North Yorkshire Police has just issued the following appeal for information:

North Yorkshire Police is appealing for information following the loss of a hen harrier on Threshfield Moor.

John, a sub-adult hen harrier, fledged in Northumberland in 2016. He was fitted with a satellite tag in July 2016 by a hen harrier expert from Natural England. This was John’s second outward migration – he wintered in the same approximate area of Yorkshire in 2016/17, returned to Scotland and the Borders in spring/summer 2017, then back to Yorkshire in September 2017. His tag stopped transmitting on 1 October 2017 in the Threshfield Moor area of North Yorkshire. A search of the area has been carried out but no trace of the bird or equipment has been found.

Natural England reported John’s disappearance to North Yorkshire Police and is working closely with wildlife crime officers, local landowners, and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

The loss of another juvenile hen harrier brings the total to six within fourteen months across northern England – and is a serious blow to the small English hen harrier population. Interference with hen harriers is a criminal offence.

[Photo by RPUK]

Sergeant Stuart Grainger, of North Yorkshire Police’s Rural Taskforce, said : “Those responsible for bird of prey persecution, either directly or indirectly, should be ashamed – these birds belong to everyone and are part of our natural heritage. It is a disgrace that these beautiful birds appear to be relentlessly destroyed. The fate of this particular hen harrier remains unsolved at this time, but we are appealing for any information to assist the investigation.”

Rob Cooke, a Director at Natural England, said: “The sudden disappearance of the hen harrier, John, is a matter of grave concern. We urge anyone with information to get in touch with North Yorkshire Police.”

David Butterworth, Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, said: “It is highly likely that a crime has taken place on Threshfield Moor. The spotlight is once again on the Yorkshire Dales as a black hole for raptors. This does no one any good. With colleagues in the Ranger service, I am doing all I can to support North Yorkshire Police. Any leads which the police might have had in the six weeks since this hen harrier disappeared have come to nothing, but we should not give up – someone must know something. I urge that person to contact the police.”

Anyone with any information which could help police with their enquiries should contact North Yorkshire Police on 101 – or you can ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 to discuss this incident or to discuss any other information regarding alleged persecution of birds of prey. Please quote reference number 12170208338 when passing information.

ENDS

Here’s a map we’ve created showing the location of Threshfield Moor, south west of Grassington within the Yorkshire Dales National Park:

Threshfield grouse moor is believed to be owned by Mark Hancock, who is married to Heather Hancock, former Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and currently Chair of the Food Standards Agency (see Mark Avery’s blog here for some background). Mr Hancock has reportedly been undertaking “a huge amount of work” to improve this moor’s habitat and environment, especially for birds (see here).

Top marks to North Yorkshire Police for providing such a detailed appeal for information and full credit to Police Sgt Stuart Grainger and Chief Exec David Butterworth (Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority) for their strongly-worded statements.

Let’s see how many organisations from the grouse-shooting industry also issue strongly-worded statements in response to this Police appeal.

Hen Harrier John was one of the class of 2016. Here’s what’s happened to the rest of his cohort:

Hen harrier Elwood – ‘disappeared’ in the Monadhliaths just a few weeks after fledging, presumed dead (Aug ’16).

Hen harrier Brian – ‘disappeared’ in the Cairngorms National Park just a few weeks after fledging, presumed dead (Aug ’16).

Hen harrier Donald – missing in northern France, presumed dead (Autumn ’16).

Hen harrier Hermione – found dead on Mull, believed to have died from natural causes (Sep ’16).

Hen harrier Rowan – found dead in Yorkshire Dales National Park. He’d been shot (Oct ’16).

Hen harrier Tarras – ‘disappeared’ in the Peak District National Park, presumed dead (Oct ’16).

Hen harrier Beater – missing in Scottish Borders, presumed dead (Nov ’16).

Hen harrier Bonny – ‘disappeared’ in the North Pennines, presumed dead (Dec ’16)

Hen harrier Mick – ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, presumed dead (Dec ’16).

Hen harrier Carroll – found dead in Northumberland, PM revealed a parasitic disease & two shotgun pellets (Jan ’17).

Hen harrier John – ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, presumed dead (Oct ’17)

Eleven down, six to go (Aalin, DeeCee, Finn, Harriet, Wendy, Sorrel).

DEFRA’s response to Ban Driven Grouse Shooting petition

Late last week DEFRA provided its response to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting, after the petition reached 10,000 signatures.

DEFRA’s response was entirely predictable and we have no intention of spending time on a detailed analysis of its complacency and denial; Mark Avery has already covered this well (see here, here, here).

Instead we wanted to pick up on just a couple of things that were mentioned, to set the groundwork for two forthcoming blogs.

First of all the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG). This cumbersomely-named group is basically the English/Welsh version of the PAW Scotland Raptor Group – just another charade of partnership-working, dominated by pro-gameshooting organisations such as the Moorland Association, National Gamekeepers Organisation, Countryside Alliance, BASC but also involves others such as the RSPB, Natural England, DEFRA. The DEFRA response to Gavin’s e-petition gives a nod to the RPPDG and claims the group is “working on developing tools to help tackle raptor persecution crimes“.

Part of the RPPDG’s remit is to provide publicity about raptor persecution ‘in order to build trust and transparency’. However, as far as we’re aware, at least in recent years, this group hasn’t provided ANY publicity for ANY raptor persecution crime.

Back in 2013 the group did publish a raptor poisoning map covering the period 2007-2011 (see here). Since then, this ‘delivery group’ has delivered bugger all. Although according to DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Action Plan, “the RPPDG have been publishing information on raptor poisoning since Feb 2013 and this is updated annually“. That was a lie – the group hasn’t published any information since that 2007-2011 poisoning map.

We’ll be returning to the subject of the RPPDG in another blog very soon, as we’ve got hold of some minutes from various RPPDG meetings that demonstrate how little it has achieved since 2013. We’ll be publishing those minutes for your entertainment.

The second thing we want to pick up on from DEFRA’s response to the e-petition is this paragraph:

‘The [Hen Harrier] Action Plan was developed with senior representatives from organisations including Natural England, the Moorland Association, the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, National Parks England and formerly the RSPB. These organisations, led by Natural England, will monitor activities and report annually on progress to the Defra Uplands Stakeholder Forum and the UK Tasking and Co-ordinating group for Wildlife Crime‘.

Wouldn’t it be useful to see a copy of the latest annual report on the progress being made on the 2016 Hen Harrier Action Plan? Remember, Natural England recently told blog reader Mike Whitehouse that “work on the six actions set out in the Joint Hen harrier Action Plan is progressing as expected“. What does “progressing as expected” actually mean?

Well, fortunately, we’ve managed to get hold of a copy of the most recent progress report (summer 2017), as submitted to the DEFRA Uplands Stakeholder Group, and it demonstrates very little progress indeed. Perhaps that’s what Natural England “expected“.

We’ll be publishing that report shortly.

Hen harrier ‘missing’ on grouse moor in Yorkshire Dales National Park is ‘John’

Last month we blogged about yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier that had suspiciously ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (see here). We only knew about it because North Yorkshire Police mentioned it on Twitter and posted a few photographs from the search scene:

We made a general enquiry to Natural England and asked for further details (which hen harrier it was, where and when it was satellite-tagged, on which grouse moor it had ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park). Natural England refused to provide any detail, other than that ‘key stakeholders’ (i.e. the landowner!) had been notified. The landowner had probably been more than ‘notified’ – if Natural England was following the ridiculous ‘satellite tag protocol’, the landowner’s ‘permission’ would have been sought to conduct the police search! Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Anyway, back to the hen harrier. We weren’t happy that Natural England was withholding information on what was probably a publicly-funded satellite tag so we submitted a formal FoI to request this information. We managed to find out some details:

Why Natural England didn’t release this information when we first asked for it is anybody’s guess – just following its normal practice of putting obstacles in the way, hoping that we’d shuffle off and forget about it, probably.

Anyway, we now know that this missing hen harrier is ‘John’, who was tagged on 8 July 2016 in Northumberland. We blogged about John in February 2017 (see here) – he was the mystery hen harrier about which little was known. We still don’t know very much about him because Natural England has chosen to remain silent on his movements over the last 14 months [but see UPDATE below], although from the updated spreadsheet that Natural England published in September, we know that his tag was transmitting in September 2017 in Northumberland. See: hen-harrier-tracking-data-2002-onwards

We also know that Natural England realised John’s tag was no longer transmitting on 5 October 2017 and that North Yorkshire Police conducted a search for him ten days later (15 Oct 2017) on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. What we still don’t know is the name of this grouse moor and whether North Yorks Police found any evidence such as a tag or a corpse.

We’ll be submitting an FoI to North Yorkshire Police to ask about this – it’ll be very interesting to see the response. North Yorkshire Police appear to have upped their game recently in terms of investigating suspected raptor persecution crimes – a very welcome and much-needed change of pace in England’s leading raptor-killing county. Let’s see how open they’ll be about this latest investigation.

Meanwhile, it’s time to update the list of what hapened to the satellite-tagged hen harrier class of 2016, which includes harriers tagged by Natural England and the RSPB:

Hen harrier Elwood – ‘disappeared’ in the Monadhliaths just a few weeks after fledging, presumed dead (Aug ’16).

Hen harrier Brian – ‘disappeared’ in the Cairngorms National Park just a few weeks after fledging, presumed dead (Aug ’16).

Hen harrier Donald – missing in northern France, presumed dead (Autumn ’16).

Hen harrier Hermione – found dead on Mull, believed to have died from natural causes (Sep ’16).

Hen harrier Rowan – found dead in Yorkshire Dales National Park. He’d been shot (Oct ’16).

Hen harrier Tarras – ‘disappeared’ in the Peak District National Park, presumed dead (Oct ’16).

Hen harrier Beater – missing in Scottish Borders, presumed dead (Nov ’16).

Hen harrier Bonny – ‘disappeared’ in the North Pennines, presumed dead (Dec ’16)

Hen harrier Mick – ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, presumed dead (Dec ’16).

Hen harrier Carroll – found dead in Northumberland, PM revealed a parasitic disease & two shotgun pellets (Jan ’17).

Hen harrier John – ‘disappeared’ in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, presumed dead (Oct ’17)

Eleven down, six to go (Aalin, DeeCee, Finn, Harriet, Wendy, Sorrel).

UPDATE 20 November 2017: Thanks to the blog reader who pointed out that John had been recorded at Langholm in the summer of 2017, as mentioned in the hen harrier update on the Langholm Demonstration Project website on 28 June 2017 – here.

UPDATE 22 November 2017: Threshfield Moor named as missing hen harrier John’s last known location (here)

Interesting bedfellows: 4

Every now and then we blog about who’s (figuratively) getting in to bed with whom within the grouse-shooting industry. Previous installments in this revealing series have included this, this and this.

Today’s fascinating bedfellows are the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) and Mark Osborne, joint owner of William Powell and grouse moor management ‘guru’, who, according to our research, has links to at least 70 grouse and pheasant shooting estates across the UK, including some very familiar names to this blog such as Leadhills, Glenogil, Raeshaw, Glenlochy, Snilesworth, Abbeystead.

Last year in one of it’s never-ending fundraising drives, the GWCT held a raffle, with a pair of shotguns, a day’s driven grouse shooting and 500 cartridges on offer, all worth an estimated £25,000 and all donated to the GWCT raffle by William Powell. That was extraordinarily generous.

A few days ago a blog apeared on the GWCT website (here) describing the winner’s ‘fantastic day’ on a grouse moor in Derbyshire called Ashop Moor.

Here’s a map showing Ashop Moor, which is part of the Park Hall & Hope Woodlands Estate inside the Peak District National Park:

And here’s a photo of Ashop Moor (photo by RPUK):

It looks lovely, doesn’t it? Just the sort of landscape where you might expect to see a pair of breeding hen harriers. But there aren’t any breeding hen harriers there.

The name of the estate and the name of the moor may not be familiar with blog readers, but you’re more likely to know it for what was filmed there on 24th February 2016 at around 11am:

A few months after we published this video, the National Trust announced it had pulled the shooting lease on this estate four years prematurely and the shooting tenant, believed to be Mark Osborne, was given notice to leave by April 2018.

Very interesting bedfellows indeed.

Chair of Nidderdale AONB condemns illegal raptor persecution

Don’t ever underestimate the power of public pressure.

You know that big solid wall of silence we’re all so used to looking at every time a raptor crime is discovered and reported? It looks like it’s finally beginning to crumble.

The latest to speak out, spontaneously (i.e. without prompting), about the continued illegal killing of birds of prey is the Chair of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’s Joint Advisory Committee, Councillor Nigel Simms:

He’s obviously taken a lead from the spontaneous statement made by the neighbouring Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority yesterday.

The publication of this statement from the Nidderdale AONB is really, really welcome. The Nidderdale AONB in North Yorkshire is notorious as a raptor persecution hotspot and has been for many years. We’ve lost count of the number of red kites that never make it out of this particular hell hole, although the RSPB has been keeping track – 22 poisoned or shot in the last ten years, and that’s only the ones that were found.

Nidderdale red kite persecution incidents 2007-2017, map by RSPB:

Illegally-killed red kite (photo Marc Ruddock):

We also know that hen harriers rarely get out of Nidderdale alive – unfortunately we can’t show you a detailed map because Natural England wants to keep the details a secret. Natural England is supposed to protect hen harriers but it’s clearly more interested in protecting the reputations of criminal landowners and gamekeepers. Anyway, here’s a photo of an illegally-killed satellite-tagged hen harrier – something you might see if you visit Nidderdale AONB, assuming you get to it before the gamekeeper who shot it:

It’s interesting to see that these crimes are “starting to have a damaging effect on tourism businesses“, according to Cllr Simms. Good, not for the businesses affected, obviously, but good that it will drive increased local pressure to bring these crimes to an end.

Cllr Simms’ comment that illegal raptor persecution “undermines the work of law-abiding landowners and gamekeepers who are actively working alongside us to improve prospects for all forms of wildlife in the AONB” is slightly odd. Which law-abiding landowners and gamekeepers are those? Presumably not anyone involved with any of the aforementioned red kite killings or hen harrier disappearances, nor, presumably, anybody involved with the attempted shooting of a nesting marsh harrier and the removal of its eggs, as filmed on a Nidderdale AONB grouse moor by the RSPB earlier this year?

There’s much work to do in this AONB but this very public condemnation of illegal raptor persecution from the Chair of the AONB Advisory Committee is encouraging. Well done, Cllr Nigel Simms.

Now, who’s next to speak out and bring that wall of silence crashing down?

“I couldn’t let those words go to waste” – Finn Wilde

“I couldn’t let those words go to waste“, writes 15 year old Findlay Wilde.

If you want to know what he’s talking about, and how you can get involved, have a read of Finn’s blog HERE

Hen harrier brood meddling: Natural England delays release of information

Two days ago we blogged about how Natural England has delayed the release of information about the proposed reintroduction of hen harriers to southern England (see here).

Today, we’re blogging about how Natural England has delayed the release of information about the proposed hen harrier brood meddling scheme.

Anyone seeing a pattern emerging here?

So, hen harrier brood meddling. As with the proposed southern reintroduction, brood meddling is one of six ‘action’ points of DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan, launched in January 2016.

As with everything-hen-harrier, Natural England has been reluctant to provide any information about the brood meddling scheme unless it’s been forced to do so under a series of FoI requests. Here’s what we’ve managed to drag out of them so far:

14 November 2016: Hen harrier brood management working group: what they’ve got planned (here)

15 November 2016: More brood meddling revelations (here)

16 November 2016: Brood meddling: the role of the International Centre for Birds of Prey (here)

22 November 2016: Brood meddling: the proposed social science study (here)

That information was released almost a year ago. Since then, despite repeated requests for information, Natural England has gone all secret squirrel and refused to tell us anything more about this highly controversial project.

In February 2017 we submitted another FoI asking for an update on brood meddling. NE responded in March 2017 telling us that the  information was being withheld “as it would prejudice the process of determining the licence application and potentially the quality of that licence”. They also told us, “The discussions are confidential up until the point the licence application has been determined. Once this has happened then details of the licence are available to the public”. 

We knew, from reading the minutes of an NE Board Meeting, that the brood meddling licence application (from Natural England to, er, Natural England!) had been submitted by March 2017. We didn’t understand how releasing more updates about the brood meddling scheme would “prejudice” the internal licensing process but nevertheless we gave NE the benefit of the doubt and didn’t submit another FoI for a few months.

At the end of May 2017 we submitted another FoI asking for an update on the brood meddling scheme. NE refused to provide any information because the brood meddling licence application was still being considered. NE said:

“‘The application you refer to is still being determined. I’m afraid that we do not have an estimate of when it will be”.

In early July 2017 we submitted another FoI asking for an update on the brood meddling scheme. NE refused to provide any information because the brood meddling licence application was still being considered. NE said:

“I can confirm that the licence application is still being determined and we do not have an estimate of when it will be“.

In early October 2017 we submitted another FoI asking for an update on the brood meddling scheme. NE has just responded with this:

Ah, right. Natural England is now saying it needs extra time to prepare its response “because of the complexity/voluminous nature of the request“. Are they taking the piss?! It’s only “voluminous” because NE has refused to release any information for almost a year!!

Mind you, NE’s interpretation of “voluminous” is probably very different to ours. Remember, this is the organisation that told us it couldn’t release information about the number of successful hen harrier breeding attempts in England in 2017 (n = 3) because apparently it needed a super computer to “quality assure and analyse” the data!

It’s fine. We’ve waited all year so what’s another month between friends? We can wait until the end of November and who knows, by then NE might have also responded to our requested Internal Review of its refusal to release hen harrier satellite tag data, and it might also have managed to tell us something (anything) about the latest ‘missing’ sat-tagged hen harrier that recently vanished on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

“We have more Spoonbills breeding in Yorkshire than we do Hen Harriers”

Two months ago we learned that Natural England could no longer use the long-held excuse of an impending PhD submission as reason to withhold hen harrier satellite tag data (see here) so we started to ask for the release of these 15-year-old data.

Many blog readers also took the time to contact Natural England about this (well done) and the following correspondence has been sent to us by blog reader Mike Whitehouse, detailing his exchange of views with Natural England. It’s well worth a read as an example of Natural England’s obstructive tactics and the subsequent exasperation felt by many of us.

The start point of this correspondence is shortly after Natural England released some (very) limited information, which told us how many sat tagged hen harriers were ‘missing, fate unknown’ (43 of 59 hen harriers sat tagged between 2007-2017) but, crucially, no details about the habitat types in which they’d disappeared or whether there was any suspicious geographical clustering of final tag signals.

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

Mike’s email to Natural England, dated 21 Sept 2017:

Good evening Natural England,

At last a smidgeon of data – limited but nonetheless welcome. Amazing what a bit of pressure can achieve isn’t it?

In your notes you say that “Hen Harriers currently breed on heather moorland in the uplands across the UK. Your patch is England and as you know full well there are no breeding Hen Harriers at all on the heather moorland in England that is reserved for grouse shooting.

There are hardly any breeding pairs anywhere in the rest of England. It is time for you to get a move on if you do not want to be reporting on exactly the same number of Hen Harriers in England as there are Dodos. Not a good advertisement for NE and all of its efforts and funding. This issue is becoming high profile and fence sitting is not going to be comfortable for you.

As you are aware there is pressure on you to give details showing the locations of the missing Hen Harriers so it is clear whether or not they disappeared in suspicious clusters in or around shooting moorland.

Just for the record, I have just spent the last 3 days in the northern Yorkshire Dales (Swaledale, Wensleydale and Arkengarthdale), I have traversed exactly the upper Heather Moorland that you refer to and I failed to see any raptors whatsoever in 3 days but several hundred Red Grouse mainly waiting on or around the roads and tracks.

How is the Hen Harrier Action Plan going and do you have any targets to see high numbers of Hen Harriers that you can report on?

I would apreciate a reply.

Mike

Natural England’s reply to Mike, dated 29 Sept 2017:

Mike’s reply to Natural England, dated 30 Sept 2017:

Thank you for your timely but disappointing response.

We are both aware that NE is just playing with words and that since NE started to tag Hen Harriers in 2002 they have been in terminal decline with just 3 successful nests in 2017. We have more spoonbills breeding in Yorkshire than we do Hen Harriers and that is despite the vast ranges of heather moorland available for Hen Harriers in our National Parks.

My last email to you was not intended as an FOI request although it was interpreted as such. Fine by me.

I would like to make a formal request for information on this occasion however.

Would you please let me know from your overall collected database since 2002 how many tags (both radio and satellite technology) stopped transmitting whilst:-

  1. Within the current boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
  2. Within the boundaries of the Peak District National Park.
  3. Within the boundaries of the North York Moors National Park.

I look forward to hearing from you in a similarly timely fashion.

Regards, Mike

Natural England’s response to Mike, dated 20 Oct 2017:

[NB: We’ve cut NE’s response short to save space and because the rest of it is virtually identical to previous generic responses sent out by NE that we’ve already blogged about here].

Mike’s response to Natural England, dated 20 Oct 2017:

Dear Natural England,

Your response is absolutely bonkers and you know it is.

I have read your letter which by now, I assume, is a standard reply for anyone having the temerity to seek information from a public body such as yours. Some of us want to use the requested information constructively to help protect the Hen Harrier population in England. I wanted the information so that I could effectively lobby the 3 National Parks to get consolidated action to halt criminality on grouse moors. A laudable, if slightly ambitious aim.

You will of course be aware of the recent news from the Yorkshire Dales National Park regarding the missing/shot, but tagged, hen harrier. Time is not on their side. You are fiddling (quite literally), whilst Rome burns.

Let me challenge some of the nonsense in your reply:-

  1. “Disclosure is in effect a disclosure to the world”. Yes of course it is. What a good idea to get more people onside in an effort to stop people with guns breaking the law.
  2. “We are withholding this information as we consider its release endangers Hen Harriers”. There were 3 breeding pairs this year none of which were in the 3 National Parks referenced. It is guns, traps and poisons that endanger the remaining Hen Harriers that have the temerity to fly into our National Parks. I would argue that lack of information endangers them more.
  3. “Natural England believes in openness and transparency”. You patently do not!
  4. “More detailed information is being withheld….having said this and following a number of further enquiries we are reviewing our approach”. We are not going away. 100,000 signed the penultimate petition to Parliament and the new petition will need a response from the Minister soon. You are getting yourselves on the wrong side – time to be brave.
  5. “The academics need a ‘safe space'”. I assume you were trying to resort to irony here. It is Hen Harriers that need a safe space. The heather moorland of England should be that safe space.
  6. “We feel there is little public interest in releasing this information”. You could not be more wrong. See 1,2,3,4 and 5 above. Your current and future post bag will clearly show that this issue is not going away.

There are very many complex arguments. I think it is simple. If people with guns stopped shooting, poisoning and trapping Hen Harriers there would be more of them – there could hardly be less. I have been lucky to see Hen Harriers in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I believe my family, their children and all visitors should have the chance or the right to this privilege. We, the general public, have rights too.

Mike

ENDS

It’s fascinating that Natural England is refusing to even release the fairly non-detailed info Mike requested about how many tagged hen harriers went ‘missing’ within the boundaries of those three National Parks. How does withholding that information ‘endanger hen harriers’? Answer – it doesn’t.

And actually, in its haste to just issue a blanket refusal, Natural England hasn’t realised that this information is already available in the limited info NE released earlier in October.

We’re not bothering to look at radio-tagged hen harriers because, as previously discussed, the technology was too poor to draw any reasonable conclusions. Instead, we’re just looking at satellite-tagged hen harriers (2007-2017).

With this in mind, here are the answers to Mike’s questions:

  1. How many satellite-tagged hen harriers stopped transmitting whilst within the current boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales National Park? Answer – 11 (actually it’s now 12 if we include the latest victim that NE is refusing to discuss).
  2. How many satellite-tagged hen harriers stopped transmitting whilst within boundary of the Peak District National Park? Answer – 1.
  3. How many satellite-tagged hen harriers stopped transmitting whilst within the boundary of the North York Moors National Park? Answer – 1.

This doesn’t include information on the number of hen harriers that have been found dead (confirmed as illegally persecuted) within these three National Parks and neither does it include information about ‘missing’ hen harriers that were satellite-tagged by the RSPB.

Still, not to worry. Natural England reports that work on the Hen Harrier Inaction Plan is “progressing as expected“.

Yep, isn’t it just.

Cartoon by Gerard Hobley

Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Natural England delays release of information

One of the six action points in DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan is to ‘reintroduce’ hen harriers to southern England:

As regular blog readers will know, finding out information about this ‘let’s divert attention from illegal persecution on driven grouse moors’ scheme has been as difficult as finding breeding hen harriers on driven grouse moors. Natural England has been reluctant to share its plans with the general public and all the information we’ve gleaned so far has come from 11 months of submitting FoI requests.

Here’s what we know to date:

28 Nov 2016: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: an update (here)

3 Jan 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: the feasibility/scoping report (here)

8 Jan 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: the project group and their timeline (here)

9 Jan 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: who’s funding it? (here)

9 Jan 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: a bonkers proposal for Exmoor National Park (here)

12 Jan 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Wiltshire (here)

14 Feb 2017: Leaked email reveals Natural England’s views on Hen Harrier Action Plan (here)

23 Feb 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: donor countries (here)

19 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: new project manager appointed (here)

20 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: Dartmoor as potential new release site (here)

20 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: revised costs (here)

21 July 2017: Hen harrier reintroduction to southern England: project team visits France (here)

15 Aug 2017: Natural England Board making up justification for hen harrier southern reintroduction (here)

You’ll notice a four month gap in the above list (March/April/May/June 2017). This was because Natural England suddenly refused to release any further information, claiming it would “prejudice” the licensing process for the proposed brood meddling scheme. We challenged this, as the southern reintroduction project has nothing to do with the brood meddling scheme further north and so project details should be available for public scrutiny. Natural England had to agree and did release more information in July.

Photo of a hen harrier by Robin Newlin

In early October 2017, we submitted yet another FoI to ask for another update on the southern reintroduction project. Natural England has just replied, but instead of just sending through the relevant documents, we got this:

“We regret that we must extend the time limit for responding by a further 20 working days to 27 November 2017, because of the complexity/voluminous nature of the request“.

Blimey! The southern reintroduction team must have been very very very busy between July and Oct if Natural England views this request as ‘complex and voluminous’! If we were cynics, we might not believe Natural England and we might think that Natural England is just being deliberately obstructive because it doesn’t like the criticism it’s receiving from us, and from others, on its mishandling of all-things-hen-harrier.

Guess we’ll find out at the end of November whether our cynicism is justified or not, when the ‘complex and voluminous’ paperwork is released.

‘No further comment’ from Natural England on latest missing hen harrier

Last week we blogged about a North Yorkshire Police search for a satellite-tagged hen harrier that had ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (see here).

We asked Natural England, on Twitter, when they would be making a statement about this. They didn’t respond.

So we emailed them. Here’s the response:

“All we can tell you at this stage is that this situation is the subject of a police investigation. We are assisting North Yorkshire Police and cannot comment further“.

Bizarrely, Natural England then sent another response a short time later:

“We have notified the police and other key stakeholders about a Hen Harrier that has stopped transmitting as we always do. We do not release proactive press statements unless we have evidence of a persecution [sic] and this is currently still an on-going investigation. Due to the transmission cycle of the tag we cannot be sure that the location of the last fix was where the tag actually stopped working. The tags only transmit for 10 hours in 58“.

Marvellous. So, no information about which hen harrier this is, where and when it was satellite-tagged, whether public funds had been used to pay for the tag, the date of the tag’s last transmission, and the name of the grouse moor where it ‘disappeared’.

It’s not clear why this information is being withheld. Understandably, if there was an impending police search, the information should not be made public so as not to jeopardise that search. But in this case, the police search had already taken place, which incidentally would have been a complete waste of time had the harrier been illegally killed on that grouse moor because, as per the NE protocol, Natural England had already sought the landowner’s permission for a police search to take place!

Photo of a police search on an unnamed grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Posted by North Yorks Police on Twitter, 15 Oct 2017.

Is there any other area of crime where the permission of a potential suspect is sought prior to a police search? “Oh, hi John, it’s the Police here. We have reason to believe your property is being used as a dealer’s crack den, mind if we pop round later this afternoon for a look? Would 2pm be convenient? Give you time to clear up and remove any potentially incriminating evidence before we get there”.

And what’s this about Natural England not releasing press statements “unless there’s evidence of a persecution” [sic]? That’s simply not true. Earlier this year Natural England issued a press statement about hen harrier Mick, another satellite-tagged hen harrier that ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (see here). There was no direct evidence of persecution in that case either, as Natural England lists Mick as ‘Missing, fate unknown’ in the long list of ‘missing’ sat-tagged hen harriers (44 of 59 now listed as ‘Missing, fate unknown’: that’s a massive 74.5%). It looks like Natural England is just making up its media protocol as it goes along.

Now, compare and contrast Natural England’s current attitude to releasing information about ‘missing’ hen harriers with the RSPB’s approach. Here’s what the RSPB published when one of its satellite-tagged hen harriers, Calluna, ‘disappeared’ on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park on 12th August this year.

Why isn’t Natural England being this transparent? Who is Natural England shielding? How is Natural England’s silence helping hen harrier conservation?

UPDATE:

16 November 2017: Hen harrier ‘missing’ on grouse moor in Yorkshire Dales National Park is ‘John’ – see here