Tag: shooting

Following on from yesterday’s news about the discovery of a dead hen harrier (suspected shot) on a grouse moor within the Cairngorms National Park (see here), Grant Moir, CEO of the Cairngorms National Park Authority has issued a statement (see here).

We’ve reproduced it here:

“It appears likely from the post-mortem carried out by SRUC that a tagged hen harrier has been shot in the National Park. It is a disgrace that there are still people who think shooting a hen harrier is acceptable in the 21^st century.

Millions of people visit this incredible Park every year with 12 per cent of visitors coming here for wildlife watching earning millions for the local economy. 43 per cent of people in the Park are employed in tourism and every illegal raptor crime adversely affects this area and Scotland’s reputation. The National Park Authority will work with all our partners to try and ensure that raptor crime is a thing of the past and that populations and ranges recover in the Park.”

END

Good on the CNPA for issuing a statement (that’s more than the Environment Minister seems to have done), and this statement is marginally better than the one it issued nine days ago in response to questions about mountain hare massacres taking place on grouse moors within the National Park (see here), but once again it mostly just reads as empty rhetoric.

Pay attention to that last line: “The National Park Authority will work with all our partners to try and ensure that raptor crime is a thing of the past and that populations and ranges recover in the Park“. It’s all very well saying they’ll ‘work with partners’, but how, exactly, will that translate in to action?

The CNPA has talked a lot about partnership working and action, especially to address the issue of illegal raptor persecution on grouse moors within the Park, which it recognises as “threatening to undermine the reputation of the National Park as a high quality wildlife tourism destination” (see here).

For example, in 2013, a new, five-year ‘action plan’ was launched which aimed to ‘restore the full community of raptor species’ and one of the action points was for the SGA and SLE ‘to trial innovative techniques to increase raptor populations’ (see here). How’s that going? Anyone seen an increase in raptor populations? No, of course not. What we’ve actually seen is a long-term decrease of some raptors on grouse moors within the Park: the local hen harrier population has crashed (see here) as has the local peregrine population (see here) and there is no indication that these declines are about to be reversed.

Last year the CNPA hosted a high-level meeting with the Environment Minister and landowners, in which it was stated in a post-meeting CNPA press statement, “Among the topics discussed was raptor persecution and conservation, with a recognition of the progress made in recent years…” (see here).

What progress is that, then?

The last line of the CNPA’s latest statement in response to the death of hen harrier ‘Lad’ could translate as follows: ‘We’re not happy about this, it casts us in a bad light, we wish it would stop but we’re hopeless and helpless to bring about change’.

We’re not. Please sign the e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting HERE.

Photo of hen harrier ‘Lad’ by Dave Pullan

A young satellite tagged hen harrier named ‘Lad’ has been found dead on moorland in the Cairngorms National Park.

He fledged from a nest on an unnamed estate, also within the Park, in 2015, and was sat tagged as part of the RSPB’s Life+ Hen Harrier Project, where his movements were tracked until early September 2015, when he was found dead on moorland ‘near Newtonmore’. Full details can be read here.

The post-mortem results read as follows:

“The skin was split open on the left side of the neck parallel with the jugular groove. There was haemorrhage in the subcutaneous tissues in this area and a horizontal split in the trachea. There was damage to three feathers of the right wing consisting of a single groove mark perpendicular to the shaft of each feather.”

It goes on:

“Despite the failure to identify metallic fragments within the carcase the appearance of the damage to the wing feathers is consistent with damage caused by shooting. The injury to the neck could be explained by a shot gun pellet passing straight through the soft tissue of the neck. Both injuries could have brought the bird down and proved fatal.”

There’s lots of moorland ‘near Newtonmore’, and lots of it is intensively managed driven grouse moor, as can be seen in this photo taken in the area in July 2015 (photo by Andy Amphlett)

The name of the estate where Lad’s corpse was discovered has not been given, but if you look at Andy Wightman’s excellent website Who Owns Scotland you’ll see a number of moorland estates that could all be described as being ‘near Newtonmore’. These include:

Pitmain Estate

Glen Banchor & Stone Estate

Cluny Estate

Drumochter & Ralia Estate

Etteridge, Phones & Cuiach Estate

Lynaberack Estate

So, was Lad, a young hen harrier just weeks out of the nest, shot dead on a driven grouse moor within the Cairngorms National Park? The post mortem report suggests he was, although it isn’t wholly conclusive and no doubt, no doubt at all, the grouse-shooting industry will pounce on this as ‘inconclusive evidence’. And if this was the first time it had ever happened to a hen harrier on a grouse moor, we might just give them the benefit of the doubt.

The thing is, as you all know, this isn’t a one-off. This hen harrier is the latest in a long, long miserable history of hen harrier persecution on driven grouse moors. To add further insult to injury, it happened inside the Cairngorms National Park, that so-called ‘jewel’ of Scotland.

In response, you might want to do the following:

1. Sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting HERE
2. Email Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod and ask her how the Government intends to respond to this latest crime. She may not be in post after the May election but no matter, if she isn’t, the next Minister will still have to reply. Be in no doubt, your emails to the Minister do have an impact. Emails to: ministerforenvironment@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
3. Email Hamish Trench, Conservation Director of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, and ask him how the CNPA intends to act on this news. Emails to: hamishtrench@cairngorms.co.uk

UPDATE 23rd March 2016: Cairngorms National Park Authority responds here