Tag: hen harrier

Natural England has been fitting tags (radio and satellite) to hen harriers since 2002 as part of what was called the Hen Harrier Recovery Project.

That’s 15 years of tagging.

(Photo by Jenny Weston)

In all that time, they’ve managed to publish just two summary reports: A future for the hen harrier in England (2008) and then in 2014, ‘Initial findings of Natural England’s hen harrier tracking programme 2007 to 2014‘ which didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know (see here for our analysis).

Despite many years of asking (e.g. see Mark Avery’s 2015 FoI request here), Natural England has refused (e.g. see Natural England’s FoI response here) to release any detailed results to the public. This has been both disappointing and frustrating given that the public has funded this 15-year study and especially given the huge and legitimate public concern about the continued illegal persecution of this species.

Natural England’s explanation for not releasing detailed information has been twofold: firstly we were told that NE ‘intended to analyse and publish the results’ and secondly, NE was funding a staff member (Stephen Murphy) to undertake a part-time PhD on this subject and so the detailed results were expected to form part of that PhD thesis.

According to the NE website, the PhD began in 2006 and was due to be completed in 2014:

Eleven years after it began, we decided to ask NE about the status of this PhD. We were suspicious that it wasn’t going to be completed because most universities invoke rigid time limits for students to submit a doctoral thesis (typically 4 years for a full-time study and 8 years for a part-time study). Universities are often rigorously strict with these time restrictions because higher education institutes are regularly assessed on their research quality (which relates to the subsequent allocation of research funding) and are financially penalised for, amongst other things, late doctoral completion rates. Sometimes, in extenuating circumstances, students can be granted a short time extension, but in this particular case, we very much doubted that a lengthy extension of three years would have been granted.

So we recently submitted an FoI to Natural England, along the same lines as Mark Avery’s previous FoI, to find out what was going on and, most importantly, when we could expect to read the detailed results of this long running study. Here’s the response to that FoI:

As you can see, the PhD has been abandoned. The reason is not given and, to be frank, we’re not particularly interested. There can be any number of explanations, either academic or personal, and it’s not really any of our business. Whatever the reason, it in no way diminishes the widely-held respect for Stephen Murphy’s field expertise.

What is our business, is the huge amount of hen harrier tracking data amassed over the last 15 years. Those data belong in the public domain, and Natural England can now no longer hide behind the excuse of a pending PhD submission, allowing the data to be kept secret.

You’ll notice in the FoI response that NE says it is intending to collaborate with ‘highly respected academics with an expertise in raptor research’ to analyse the data and submit for peer-review in 2018. That’s fine, but depending on the choice of scientific journal, the quality of the research and the quality of the peer-review, this process can often take several years before a paper is finally published.

That’s not good enough.

At the very least, Natural England should be looking at an immediate short-term output detailing very basic information, such as (a) how many sat tags have been fitted?, (b) where and when were they fitted?, (c) in which counties were they fitted?, (d) what was the fate of each of those tagged birds?, (d) how many of those birds were confirmed illegally killed?, (e) where were the corpses found? (county name and habitat type will do if the exact site information is sensitive), (f) how many tagged birds died of natural causes?, (g) how many tags suddenly stopped functioning in suspicious circumstances with birds ‘disappearing’, where, and in what habitat type?, (h) how many of the tagged birds are still alive?

The release of this basic information should not affect the proposed publication of scientific papers (similar information has recently been released for sat tagged golden eagles, red kites and hen harriers in Scotland) but will allow the public the opportunity to use these publicly-funded results to apply political pressure where it is badly needed.

Keeping these results secret does not help hen harriers but does help shield the criminals within the grouse shooting industry who are responsible for bringing this species to its knees.

If any blog readers wish to contact Natural England to ask for the release of these data, here’s the email address: enquiries@naturalengland.org.uk

We’ll be very interested to hear of any responses.

Last month we blogged about the minutes of a Natural England Board meeting (held 22 March 2017) in relation to the proposed reintroduction of hen harriers to southern England. The published minutes stated:

‘The NE Board has considered the overall objective of the southern reintroduction [of hen harriers] and agreed this was to help relic upland populations in respect of the genetic diversity and the overall favourable conservation status of the species”. 

We were curious about the scientific evidence used by Natural England’s Board to assess the genetic diversity of the UK hen harrier population and determine that its genetic diversity is in need of “help”. We were also curious about whether potential donor hen harrier populations had been screened to assess their genetic suitability.

The reason we were so curious is because we were unaware of any genetic assessment ever having been undertaken for the UK hen harrier population, but, considering the scientific credentials of many NE Board members, we assumed they would have insisted on seeing such evidence before making such a claim. So we submitted an FoI to Natural England to ask for these details.

Natural England has responded as follows:

So basically, Natural England is unable to point to any scientific evidence to indicate that the genetic diversity of the UK hen harrier population is in need of ‘help’, and yet the NE Board has claimed that ‘helping’ the species’ genetic diversity is suitable justification for the southern reintroduction project to go ahead.

As Mark Avery said on his blog this morning, ‘Is NE fit for purpose? Quite honestly I don’t think it is. I no longer trust NE to do the right things for nature, and I no longer trust NE to tell the truth about what it is doing‘. We’re in full agreement with that, and based on this latest FoI response, we’d extend that to the NE Board.

The RSPB has just announced the results of the 2017 hen harrier breeding season in England. There was a pathetic total of three successful nests (England has the capacity for ~330 pairs).

The three successful nests (with ten fledglings) were on land managed by the Forestry Commission in Northumberland.

Read the full, sorry details on the RSPB’s Skydancer blog here.

Well done to the Northumberland Hen Harrier Protection Partnership (Northumberland National Park Authority, Forestry Commission, RSPB, Natural England, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, Ministry of Defence, Northumbria Police, and the Northern England Raptor Forum).

There’s an interesting quote from Andrew Miller of the National Park who says, “We will continue to monitor our birds throughout the year….” This implies that the young birds have been satellite tagged, but according to our sources, only one fledgling was fitted with a tag because Natural England left it too late this year. This seems hard to believe, given NE’s experience of sat tagging hen harriers, but no doubt we’ll hear more about this in due course.

The real story, and what should be our focus of attention, is that for a second year in a row, there wasn’t a single successful breeding attempt on any driven grouse moor in England. This is despite the grouse shooting industry supposedly being signed up to DEFRA’s Hen Harrier InAction Plan.

[Drawing by Gerard Hobley]

If this year’s shameful breeding results don’t inspire you to attend a Hen Harrier Day event this coming weekend, nothing will.

Well done to the RSPB for publishing the details of this year’s breeding season in good time (presumably Natural England is still fiddling with its super computer, trying to count up to three and ‘analysing’ the data).

Last week we wrote a series of blogs updating what we know about the proposed controversial ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England.

In one of those blogs (here) we included an email from Jeff Knott (RSPB) to Simon Lees (Hen Harrier Southern Reintroduction Project Manager, Natural England) that included the following muddled sentence:

“While we [RSPB] have said we don’t actively support the reintroduction project, nor are we opposed to it and of course we would want to see it be a success“.

We, and many others, didn’t have a clue what that meant. The RSPB has now published a clarification statement, posted on an RSPB community blog by Tony Whitehead, RSPB Public Affairs Manager, SW England region:

A consortium led by Natural England is currently looking at the feasibility of re-introducing hen harrier to southern England. The species is red listed, and has declined markedly over the past few decades with it’s continuing rarity due to ongoing illegal persecution on and around intensively managed grouse moors in northern England.

The current NE feasibility project aims to assess the opportunity of re-establishing a viable population away from the moors, and thus improve the bird’s prospects. Areas being looked at include Dartmoor, Exmoor and Wessex.

The RSPB has serious reservations about this approach to hen harrier conservation in England, and therefore is NOT supporting the project.

Firstly, the RSPB only advocates reintroduction in situations where natural re-colonisation is not possible through other measures. At present, we believe that this could be achieved if persecution in the uplands was stopped.

Secondly, the RSPB is concerned that if hen harriers were to be re-introduced to southern England, birds that disperse from their natal areas would be threatened by ongoing illegal persecution in the uplands. Therefore, again, persecution would need to stop entirely before any re-introduction would be viable.

However, the re-introduction project is still at the feasibility stage, and we have yet to see detailed proposals. Although we have serious doubts, to be fair, if the project can address these concerns, which we believe it would need to do in order to comply with IUCN re-introduction guidelines, then the RSPB would wish it every success.

Currently we don’t see how it can do this.

ENDS

This statement provides us with a much better understanding of the RSPB’s position (it DOESN’T support the project) but it’s not as unequivocal as it could/should be. The RSPB is suggesting that it is only ‘fair’ to wait and see a detailed proposal. Why? What possible detail could alleviate the legitimate concerns about ongoing illegal persecution? Why pretend that the grouse-shooting industry and Natural England might pull something out of the bag to change all our minds?

There’s a time for diplomacy, sure, but on the subject of the illegal killing of hen harriers, that time has long since passed. Drop the final paragraph, stop pandering to the criminals and stand up with the rest of us.

Some of you will be very familiar with the name of sporting agent Mark Osborne. He is feted within the grouse-shooting industry for his ability to turn a ‘poorly performing’ grouse moor in to “something beyond the moor owner’s wildest dreams” (e.g. see here).

Some of you may be more familiar with the names of some of the grouse-shooting estates where Mr Osborne was a shooting tenant (e.g. Leadhills [Hopetoun] Estate in South Lanarkshire), or whose management has been under the control of one of Mr Osborne’s sporting agencies, JM Osborne & Co and William Powell Sporting Ltd, (e.g. Glenogil Estate in the Angus Glens, Raeshaw Estate in the Scottish Borders, Snilesworth Estate in the North York Moors National Park, Park Hall & Hope Woodland in the Peak District National Park [the one where the National Trust pulled the shooting tenant’s lease after an armed man was filmed next to a decoy hen harrier]).

We always enjoy hearing raptor-loving Mark Osborne’s thoughts, especially about hen harriers. Here’s an excerpt from his July newsletter:

‘The big news in the Grouse world was the Parliamentary debate before Christmas following from Dr Mark Avery’s petition. This has woken many of us up and we now realise that we have got to get our act together if we are to see off the likes of Avery and Chris Packham who seem hell bent on curtailing or indeed banning driven Grouse shooting. I have absolutely no doubt that if they were at all successful in this, they would then turn their attentions to pheasant and partridge shooting. Guns who think otherwise are deluding themselves. We must all get behind this fight even if only a few of us are lucky enough to shoot Grouse. This leads onto the subject on Hen Harriers and it is good news indeed to see major efforts made in the Uplands to increase the number of breeding Hen Harriers on driven Grouse Moors. The Moorland Association who are leading this (alongside Natural England) are to be congratulated on this initiative and I am sure that over the next few years, there will be an increase in numbers, but I doubt that this will do much to satisfy the likes and Avery and Packham whose vitriolic hatred of Grouse Moors and Grouse shooting would seem to have much more to do with class, envy and little the real concern for the Hen Harriers themselves‘.

How perceptive is he, eh? How stupid of us to think that the award-winning careers of Mark Avery & Chris Packham, spanning approx 40 years, have been all about ‘class envy’ and absolutely nothing to do with wildlife conservation.

That argument is about as convincing as the grouse-shooting industry’s commitment to hen harrier conservation.

Mark Osborne can toast the Moorland Association and the other Action Plan stakeholders as much as he likes; for most of us, the reality looks a lot different (thanks to Gerard Hobley for the image):

Continuing on from recent blogs (here, here and here) about a series of updates on the proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England, here’s some more news gleaned from the latest FoI response from Natural England.

We know from previous FoI responses from Natural England that the Southern England Reintroduction Team has been scouting around looking for a donor population of hen harriers (see here). They’re not allowed to use any hen harrier eggs or chicks that might be ‘brood-meddled’ in northern England so they’ve been looking elsewhere in Europe. The Netherlands, Spain and Poland all said ‘no’ but France seemed to be a distinct possibility, which was a surprise given that the French hen harrier population is showing a long-term declining trend.

Earlier this year Adrian Jowitt (Natural England) wrote to researchers in France about a potential visit. This was to learn more about the captive rearing and release scheme (hen harrier & Montagu’s harrier) that the French have been undertaking for genuine conservation purposes, as the birds are threatened by industrial harvesting machinery before the young are able to fledge the nests in agricultural fields. The French team collects the birds, keeps them in captivity until the harvesting period is over, and then releases them back to the wild once the threat has ended.

Incidentally, the UK grouse-shooting industry often argues that this French conservation project is ‘proof’ that hen harrier brood meddling is a tried and tested conservation tool and they use it as justification for the UK brood meddling scheme. What they don’t seem to understand is that the two situations are incomparable. In France, the threat to the harriers is temporary (just during the crop harvest) and so the birds can be safely released back to the wild whereas in the UK, the threat to hen harriers is year-round, on the grouse moors and, increasingly, at winter roosts. There is no ‘safe’ time to release brood-meddled hen harriers in the UK.

Anyway, back to the France visit. Here’s a copy of Adrian’s email to the French researchers: Planning visit to France_May2017

It makes for quite an amusing read, as Adrian’s choice of words tries to minimise the scale of the problems the proposed project is facing in the UK – he mentions “small pockets of resistance” from some landowners (actually strong enough resistance that the Project Team is now suddenly keen to explore Dartmoor National Park as an alternative release site) but emphasises the ‘positives’ such as the Chair of Natural England declaring that he wants to see more hen harriers in England within the next three years. Yep, that’s what the grouse shooting industry claims too – talk is cheap.

In June this year some members of the Project Team did visit the French project and here’s Project Manager Simon Lee’s thank you email to the French researchers:

Simon says “Let’s not talk of the British politics again“. He probably didn’t mean this in a literal sense, rather it was likely just an acknowledgement that they’d spent a good deal of time talking about it during the visit. But talk of it he, and the rest of us, must, because whether the project is technically feasible or not isn’t the issue here; the ‘politics’ (i.e. legislation & ethics) is still the main issue to be addressed.

We’re not convinced that a reintroduction is legal. The IUCN guidelines are clear: ‘There should generally be strong evidence that the threat(s) that caused any previous extinction have been correctly identified and removed or sufficiently reduced‘. This criterion cannot possibly be met when the current hen harrier population is on its knees, showing no signs of recovery (see results from 2016 national survey), and the main cause of the decline (illegal persecution) has not been dealt with. We used the same argument against the planned re-stocking of golden eagles in southern Scotland, although in that scenario there is a counter argument that golden eagles in the Highlands (the proposed source birds) are just as likely to be killed in the north as they are in the south, whereas hen harriers in France would have much better survival prospects if they remained in France as opposed to being sent to persecution-rife England. (So, sorry, Simon, but your notion that this reintroduction could possibly “benefit European harrier conservation” is just ludicrous).

As for the ethics of reintroducing hen harriers to southern England, well we’ve talked about that over and over and over again. The proposed reintroduction is clearly a plan to move the focus away from the real problem (illegal persecution on grouse moors) – shove a load of hen harriers in the south, hope they survive, and then shout about how the species’ conservation status has improved, whilst ignoring the on-going illegal slaughter in the north. Job done.

And talking of ethics, here’s a rather confusing message from Jeff Knott (RSPB) to the new Southern Reintroduction Project Manager Simon Lees:

“While we have said we don’t actively support the reintroduction project, nor are we opposed to it and of course we would want to see it be a success“. Eh?

Photo of hen harrier nestlings by Andrew Sandeman.