Tag: hen harrier

Following on from yesterday’s blog on some of the details emerging about DEFRA’s hen harrier brood meddling scheme (see here), here are some more revelations that have come to light from a series of FoIs.

There’s a document written by Steve Redpath, Adam Smith (GWCT) and Martin Gillibrand (then secretary of the Moorland Association) dated August 2013. It’s titled ‘Improving the conservation status of hen harriers in the UK – establishing a research trial of a brood management scheme‘.

You can read it here: harrier-trial-brood-management-scheme-final-draft

It’s not clear for whom this document was written, but we’d take a guess that it was produced for DEFRA as an overview of /justification for, a hen harrier brood meddling scheme. Some of the brood meddling plans mentioned in this document may well have been developed further since August 2013. However, there are definitely parts of it still being cited (by Amanda Anderson), word for word, in discussions about the planned 2017 launch of brood meddling.

A few things jumped out at us. The first thing isn’t a revelation as such – the justification for using a brood meddling scheme based on the successful use of this management tool on Montagu’s harriers in western Europe. We’ve heard this a lot, especially from GWCT, and yes, at a superficial level, it does sound like a reasonable comparison. Montagu’s harrier nests in cereal fields are at high risk from mechanised harvesting equipment, and so broods have been removed from the danger areas, captive-reared, and then released back to the wild. And it has worked well.

But what the pro-brood meddlers never mention is the fact that the risk to those Montagu’s harriers is limited to a very short time period when harvesting takes place. Once the crops have been harvested, the risk is gone until harvest time the following year. That is not comparable with the hen harrier situation in the UK. The risk to hen harriers on UK driven grouse moors is year-round. They are killed at the beginning of the breeding season when they try to settle, they are killed during the breeding season, and they are killed during the autumn and winter, particularly at roost sites. Year-round harrier persecution is the name of the game in the UK so to argue that brood meddling will work for hen harriers on grouse moors in the UK just because it’s worked for Montagu’s harriers in agricultural fields abroad is totally absurd. The circumstances are nowhere near comparable.

One revelation that did jump out at us from this document is a sentence in the Introduction section:

“Should a trial brood management scheme be successful, the next phase would be to offer this as a management option across the whole of the UK“.

Jesus.

The other revelation we found was this, in the section describing how the trial might work:

“Once harriers start settling the trial will commence. As soon as a pair of harriers lays eggs within 10km of another pair, that will activate the brood management scheme. At least one pair must be settled on a grouse moor employing one or more full-time grouse keepers where a suppressed grouse population poses the greatest social, economic and conservation risk“.

Eh? A “suppressed” grouse population? There’s nothing “suppressed” about an artificially-high grouse population with 300-500 birds per sq km, crammed on to a driven grouse moor!

More revelations to follow….

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

In January 2016, DEFRA published its Hen Harrier (In)Action Plan (see here).

There are six ‘action’ points, including #6, a brood management (meddling) trial, where it is proposed to remove hen harrier eggs/chicks from driven grouse moors when breeding pairs have reached a certain density on that moor or on nearby moors, hatch and rear them in captivity, and then release them back to the uplands at fledging age.

At the time of publication, the actual details of this brood meddling scheme were very sketchy. Where would the trial take place? When would it start? Who would fund it? Who would be involved? Was it even legal, given the catastrophically low number of breeding hen harriers in England?

A working group was established to scope out the trial. Since then, very little information has reached the public domain. We learned from Amanda Anderson (Moorland Association) during the e-petition evidence session at Westminster that there were hopes brood meddling would begin during the 2017 breeding season, but that’s about all we’d heard.

Until now.

A series of FoIs have revealed what this working group has been up to.

The working group comprises various individuals and organisations: GWCT (Teresa Dent, Adam Smith), Hawk & Owl Trust (Philip Merricks, Phil Holms), Moorland Association (Amanda Anderson, Robert Benson), Natural England (Rob Cooke, Adrian Jowitt), Jemima Parry Jones (International Centre for Birds of Prey) and Steve Redpath (listed as an ‘independent academic’ although we note he has recently joined the Hawk & Owl Trust Board of Trustees).

The working group has met four times this year and has agreed on some details of the trial, and other details are still being assessed.

Here’s what we know so far:

• The brood meddling trial area has yet to be established. The Moorland Association wants all its members’ grouse moors to be included but the licence for the trial will have to comply with various legislative instruments concerning wildlife and habitat.
• Brood meddling will be triggered if the initial ‘ceiling density’ has been reached. For the purposes of this trial, the initial ceiling density is one pair of breeding hen harrier per 80 sq km or 20,000 acres, or a (straight line) distance between pairs of 10km or 6.3 miles.
• Brood meddling will begin without the need for the English hen harrier population to reach a pre-determined level. In other words, even if there are only two hen harrier breeding attempts in 2017, and at least one of those breeding attempts is on a driven grouse moor and is within 10km of the other nest (even if the other nest is on an RSPB reserve) then the eggs/chicks of that grouse moor nest will be removed. (Absurd, we know).
• Legal advice given to Natural England suggests there are no legal barriers to the brood meddling trial, despite the failed status of the hen harrier Special Protection Areas.
• Brood meddling can only take place with landowner permission, regardless of whether the site lies within the licensed trial area. In other words, hen harrier nests on, say, RSPB reserves, cannot be touched unless the RSPB says it can.
• The brood meddling trial is not dependent on the cessation of illegal persecution. So, even if the released captive bred birds (all satellite tagged) are found to have been bumped off post-release, the trial will continue for five years.
• The practical aspect of brood meddling will be undertaken by the International Centre for Birds of Prey. The Natural England licence will be in this organisation’s name.
• All hen harriers reared in captivity will be released back in to the uplands; they will not be used as the source birds for DEFRA’s proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England.
• Possible release sites (not on “prime grouse moor”) for these captive-reared birds have been suggested in Northumbria, West Pennine Moors and Wensleydale. However, the group has since realised that any proposed release sites must not only have a willing landowner, but they must also meet stringent ecological criteria. Natural England is currently assessing various potential sites.
• A social science study will run parallel with the practical brood meddling trial, to assess whether the attitudes of the grouse shooting lobby change towards hen harriers over the course of the trial. A proposal for this study has been submitted by Steve Redpath and Freya St John (Kent Uni).
• Funding options for both the practical trial and the social science study are still under discussion.

Here are the official ‘notes’ from the brood meddling working group’s four meetings this year:

draft-note-1st-bm-meeting-29-march-2016

note-of-2nd-bm-meeting-5-may-2016

note-of-3rd-bm-meeting-27-june-2016

note-of-4th-bm-meeting-29-sept-2016

Further documents from this working group provide much more detail about certain aspects of the trial, including the practicalities of brood meddling and release and its estimated costs, the proposed social science study and its estimated costs, the ecological requirements of proposed release sites, and some interesting information about the proposed ‘reintroduction’ of hen harriers to southern England. We’ll publish these in due course.

Photograph of hen harrier nest by Mark Hamblin

UPDATE 15 Nov 2016: More brood meddling revelations (here)

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

Question

When a satellite-tagged hen harrier dies of natural causes, what happens next?

Answer

The satellite tag continues to transmit, leading investigators to find the dead bird and determine the cause of death. The tag doesn’t suddenly stop transmitting and the bird’s corpse doesn’t suddenly vanish in to thin air, even several days after death.

– – – – – – –

One of this year’s young satellite-tagged hen harriers, Hermione, has been found dead on the Isle of Mull. She died of natural causes in late September and her body (and sat tag) has been retrieved, just a few kilometres from where she’d fledged in August. Full story on the RSPB Skydancer blog here.

No driven grouse moors on Mull. No mysterious disappearance of Hermione. No sudden cessation of signals from her satellite tag. No suspicious circumstances. Just a straightforward natural death and a straightforward recovery of her body, aided by the signals from her still-fully-functional satellite tag. Amazing, eh?

Photo of Hermione in July by Paul Haworth

Last week we blogged (here) about the results from this year’s Heads up for Hen Harriers project, a so-called ‘partnership-working’ initiative aimed at better understanding the threats faced by hen harriers in Scotland.

We were pretty scathing about this project. Everyone knows, thanks to years, in fact decades, of scientific evidence, that the main threat comes from illegal persecution on driven grouse moors so let’s not pretend this is still a big mystery needing to be solved. But we want to re-visit the project again just to drive home some salient points.

Have another look at the press release put out by SNH (here). We learned that this year the number of ‘participating’ estates had risen from five to 13.

Now, according to the SNH press release, “The thirteen estates participating in the project have cameras installed on their land to monitor hen harrier nests“.

This same claim was made in a press release from the Scottish Countryside Alliance (here). They said:

“Thirteen participating estates, many of them managed for grouse shooting, installed cameras to capture what exactly was happening on and around hen harrier nests to improve our understanding of why nests fail“.

So, from these two claims, you could be forgiven for thinking that all 13 ‘participating’ estates had hen harrier breeding attempts this year, and that each of the 13 estates had nest cameras installed. That’s what these propagandists would like you to believe, but it isn’t actually what happened.

The term ‘participating’ needs some clarification. Yes, 13 estates had agreed to ‘participate’ in the project –  that just means that 13 estates (8 of which were managed as driven grouse moors) had agreed to host a project nest camera should there be a hen harrier breeding attempt on that estate this year.

What it doesn’t mean is that those 13 estates (including those eight driven grouse moors) all had hen harrier breeding attempts and all had nest cameras installed. They didn’t. Hen harriers attempted to breed on three of the 13 estates, and guess what? None of those breeding attempts was on a driven grouse moor.

So what the SNH press release should have said is something like: ‘Three of the thirteen participating estates had hen harrier breeding attempts this year, and those three estates each hosted a nest camera. None of these three estates is managed as a driven grouse moor‘.

By putting out misleading information suggesting that all 13 estates had hen harrier breeding attempts and that each estate hosted a nest camera, SNH is able to repeat the myth that ‘landowners and conservationists are working together to help the hen harrier’, and this allows other organisations like Scottish Countryside Alliance and Scottish Land & Estates to repeat the same myth and present a wholly inaccurate picture of ‘partnership working’. This perpetual myth then allows the Scottish Government to also pretend that progress is being made and therefore further measures to stamp down on the raptor killers isn’t deemed to be necessary.

It’s a total sham, facilitated by SNH, the Government’s statutory conservation agency, no less.

We also wanted to revisit the BBC’s Landward programme that covered this year’s Heads up for Hen Harriers project. The programme is still available on iPlayer for a limited period but to avoid losing it, we’ve uploaded a clip to YouTube. (NB: the visual quality of the clip is quite poor, thanks to rural broadband, and isn’t a reflection on the BBC, but the sound quality is good, and it’s what was said on that programme that is of interest here).

First to be interviewed was Brian Etheridge of the RSPB who stated that the relationship between failing hen harrier nests and land managed as a driven grouse moor was ‘striking’.

Next came Tim (Kim) Baynes, speaking on behalf of Scottish Land & Estates. The first question he was asked by the presenter was: “How frustrating is it for you that you always seem to be painted as the bad guys?“.

Ah yes, the poor, victimised grouse moor owners, it must be soooooo frustrating for them to be portrayed in such bad light. Let’s just ignore all the wildlife crime statistics from grouse moors, all the poisoned baits that have been found, all the poisoned raptors, all the illegal traps, all the shot raptors, all the burnt out raptor nests, all the trampled chicks, all the disappearing satellite-tagged raptors, all the consistently vacant raptor breeding territories, all the gas guns, all the banger ropes, all the inflating screeching scarecrows….those poor, poor victimised grouse moor owners.

If only the presenter had asked why hen harriers had failed to breed on any driven grouse moor in the Angus Glens for the last ten years.

Tim (Kim) played the victim card with the usual aplomb, agreeing that it was “really, really frustrating‘ to be portrayed in such poor light, especially when “one estate has got 81 bird species, you know, including birds of prey“.

Ah yes, of course, the old 81 species claim again. We’ve blogged about this before (here) but it’s worth reiterating. This is the ‘study’ that was undertaken on Invermark Estate (Angus Glens) in 2015 that claimed there were 81 species of birds ‘either breeding or feeding‘ on the grouse moor. The findings of this ‘study’ were used at a parliamentary reception at Holyrood (see here) to celebrate the so-called conservation value of driven grouse moors. Unfortunately, the study report has never been made public, despite repeated requests to see it, which is a shame because we’d really like to know how a study undertaken at Invermark between June and August could possibly measure the breeding status of many bird species when the usual (proper scientific) survey technique is to conduct a study from March to June…you know, during the actual breeding season. Perhaps the surveyors saw some random birds flying overhead and decided to include them on the list of ‘breeding’ or ‘feeding’ species to boost the numbers. That would be a bit like Bristol claiming that the management of the Severn Bridge was so good it supports Bearded Vultures (here), or the ground keepers at Regent’s Park claiming that their management was so good that the Park supports Cory’s Shearwaters (here).

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how so-called ‘studies’ that apparently show driven grouse moors in a positive light are allowed to be kept secret so nobody can scrutinise the methods or results but can be celebrated by MSPs at a parliamentary reception, and yet studies that are commissioned to assess the illegal persecution of raptors on driven grouse moors are required to include a “robust statistical analysis of all the data to support any conclusion” (see here).

Last week we were treated to yet another ‘partnership-working’ charade, this time under the guise of PAW Scotland’s ‘Heads up for Hen Harriers’ project.

This project was established in 2013. It aims to ‘better understand the threats facing Scotland’s hen harriers –and ultimately promote recovery of the species – by working in partnership with land managers‘ (see here). The idea is that nobody knows why hen harrier nests are failing in certain areas (yes, really!) but by putting cameras on nests we might learn more about these ‘mystery issues’.

The whole project has been a farce right from the start (we blogged about it here), although, to be fair, it does seem that asking the public for hen harrier sightings has been fruitful in one or two cases. But the part of the project that relies on nest camera evidence is just absurd. It’s going to lead to a huge sampling bias because these cameras are only placed at nest sites with the landowner’s permission. Nobody in their right mind is going to illegally persecute those nesting hen harriers or their chicks with a camera pointing right at them, thus, any subsequent nesting failures documented by the project will be the result of natural causes, not illegal ones, allowing the grouse moor owners to proclaim that illegal persecution isn’t a problem.

Last year we criticised the project (here) because nest cameras were not deployed on any intensively driven grouse moors. Tim (Kim) Baynes, a spokesman for Scottish Land & Estates, disingenuously used those 2015 results (from non-driven grouse moors) to claim that nest failures ‘on grouse moors’ that year were due to the weather and fox predation. We argued that it was pointless, propaganda-fuelling bollocks to place cameras on nest sites in areas where persecution isn’t an issue (walked-up grouse moors) and then use those results to claim that persecution isn’t an issue on driven grouse moors.

Much the same has happened this year. In last week’s media releases (SNH press release here; Landward programme here [available for 27 days]; BBC news here [which is basically a shortened version of the Landward programme]), we were told that there was an increase in project uptake from estates this year (five estates in 2015, 13 this year) and this was seen as huge progress. However, only three estates had successful nests and none of those estates were intensively managed driven grouse moors. Well, one of them was Langholm and as they’re still not shooting grouse there and still not illegally killing hen harriers there, it can hardly be seen to be representative of driven grouse moors.

What was new this year was that some of those 13 signed-up estates ARE intensively managed driven grouse moors – notably some in the Angus Glens and further north in Aberdeenshire. But none of them had breeding hen harriers this year so they didn’t really actively ‘take part’ in the project, as is being claimed. It’s all very well signing up for the project and saying you’re part of it and how much you love hen harriers and want to understand what the issues are; it’s a lot like the grouse moor owners in northern England who claim to have signed up to DEFRA’s Hen Harrier Inaction Plan – it sounds great but has resulted in exactly zero breeding hen harriers on any driven grouse moors in England this year. It’s an easy PR stunt for these estates to pull but when hen harriers haven’t bred in these areas for ten years (Angus Glens – see here) or the hen harrier population has suffered a catastrophic population decline thanks to illegal persecution (Aberdeenshire  -see here), and when you’re still deploying gas guns, banger ropes, and inflatable screeching scarecrows at the critical breeding time for hen harriers, it’s probably a safe bet that you’re not going to have breeding hen harriers this year but hey, you can still say you’re engaged in ‘partnership-working’ and thus score some brownie points.

Of the nests that were successful this year, much has been made of the weather and of fox predation. Again, this is all just another opportunity to hide the known impact of illegal persecution. Yes, weather will affect productivity (as it can for most species) and yes, natural predation will occur (as it does in any ecosystem), but so what? We all know these natural causes of nest failure will occur in places, but we also know that illegal persecution has been identified as the main threat to hen harriers on driven grouse moors across the UK.

These estates, and SNH, need to stop pretending otherwise.

UPDATE 3 October 2016: Heads up for Hen Harriers: the ‘partnership-working’ sham (here)