Hepit and Selena were two female Hen Harriers from the 2023 cohort, that were reared and protected by RSPB staff and volunteers (including NERF members), on the United Utilities Estate in the Forest of Bowland.
United Utilities kindly funded the satellite tags which were fitted to both birds, that were named by children from local schools. Children of country folk, attending a country school in the heart of rural Lancashire. Children so excited to choose the birds names, excited to be designing projects to follow the birds as they made their way in the world away from Bowland, and excited whilst waiting for them to return to Bowland to have a family of their own. All their excitement and hope for the future of these two young Hen Harriers stolen from them.
In three weeks, the schools will reopen, and someone is going to have to stand in front of those children and tell them that these two birds, their birds Hepit and Selena, are missing, and in all probability dead, killed on a grouse moor over the border in North Yorkshire.
Perhaps the ‘someone’ who has to tell the children about the fate of Hepit and Selena, should be a gamekeeper from the Forest of Bowland Moorland Group as the finale to their ‘Let’s Learn Moor’ project. The Group proudly publicised their two-day event, educating over 370 school children about the moorland and the work that goes on there via their Facebook page. Now would be a good time to educate them about the darker side of what happens on grouse moors.
Hepit was tagged by RSPB staff on the 5th of June and spent the first month or so learning to fly, learning to hunt and learning how to survive before leaving her natal area for the wider world.
According to the RSPB on the 15th of August, the last contact between her and the tracking satellite showed that she was on a grouse moor on Birkdale Common near Kirkby Stephen. Unbeknown to her as she drifted through the landscape, flying over this moor would be a mistake and would in all probability prove fatal.
Since September 2020, 9 other satellite-tagged Hen Harriers have either joined the ‘disappeared’ or have been found with injuries consistent with persecution on Birkdale Common. Unfortunately, it is inconceivable that these 10 satellite-tagged Hen Harriers are the only raptors to have suffered this fate in this area.
The question is How many untagged Hen Harriers and other raptors have been killed there?
Selena was also tagged by RSPB staff on the United Utilities Estate, 15 days later on the 20th of June. She spent her first few weeks airborne with her parents and two sisters learning the life skills that would help her to prosper as she developed her independence to make her own way in the world. Any hope of a full and productive life was cut short on the 11th of August, the day before the grouse shooting season opened. When she too joined the long and growing list of the ‘disappeared’.
The RSPB satellite tag data revealed that her last position was on Mossdale Moor, a grouse moor near Hawes inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Mossdale Moor is no stranger to controversy when it comes to raptor persecution. On the 6th of May 2016, a member of the public reported finding three spring traps on top of large poles, each trap was held in place by a tether, on the Widdale Fell part of the Mossdale Estate. The use of pole traps was made unlawful in 1904, they are designed to trap any bird landing on the post by their legs, after which they dangle on the tether until they succumb to their injuries or are killed by the trap operator. Worryingly, the witness had seen a Hen Harrier in the same location earlier that day. Members of the RSPB Investigations Team visited the location the same day and disabled the traps before installing covert cameras to monitor two of the traps. Later examination of the videos revealed that a gamekeeper had visited the pole traps and reset them.
A full account of the incident can be found here.
Martha, the third juvenile Hen Harrier to join the ‘disappeared’ was a first-year female that had fledged from Mar Lodge, a National Trust Estate in Aberdeenshire Scotland. Satellite tracking data showed that she entered Northumberland at the beginning of August. She only lasted one week before her satellite tag inexplicably stopped working on Westburnhope Moor, near Hexham, Northumberland. What does Westburnhope Moor have in common with Birkdale Moor and Mossdale Moor? It too is a grouse shooting estate.
The 12th of August, the start of the grouse shooting season, is hailed as the Glorious 12th by the shooting industry. There is nothing glorious about three Hen Harriers joining the ‘disappeared’ on three different grouse shooting estates in the North of England. These three incidents, which occurred in the space of six days, graphically demonstrate how widely spread the problem is. What was the Moorland Association’s response when challenged about Hen Harrier persecution? This is what Mark Cunliffe-Lister, Chairman of the MA, had to say on the subject on Radio 4’s Farming Today program on 18 August 2023:
“………..so we’re seeing birds every day flying around grouse moors, with keepers, we’re seeing them on, by tag data, we’re seeing them in the air so clearly any illegal killing is not happening.……………..you can see that for your own eyes that it isn’t happening”.
We are used to the Moorland Association (members of the Police led Raptor Persecution Priory Delivery Group0 making outrageous statements in support of shooting. Denying that Hen Harriers are killed on grouse shooting estates in the face of all of the published evidence is ridiculous.
Natural England’s own data revealed that 72% of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers were confirmed or considered likely to have been illegally killed, and that this was ten times more likely to occur over areas of land managed for grouse shooting relative to other land uses.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09044-w
A further scientific paper recently published by RSPB scientists in 2023, using the most recent data available, confirmed that illegal killing associated with gamebird management, accounts for up to three-quarters of annual mortality in Hen Harriers.
What is the Moorland Associations response to this overwhelming evidence from highly respected scientists? They ignore it.
The Government’s ludicrous Hen Harrier Brood Management scheme introduced in 2018 was supposed to have put an end to Hen Harrier killing on grouse moors. So far since the scheme started, a minimum of 101 Hen Harriers have been killed or gone missing on or adjacent to grouse moors. We know from the press release issued by the RSPB that there are multiple reports of missing or dead birds that are not yet in the public domain.
Natural England hasn’t released the 2023 breeding data yet, however that doesn’t stop them and the Moorland Association from quoting selective sections. Both agree that 24 chicks were Brood Managed in 2023; but the Moorland Association appeared to get confused after that. Initially, an article on their website dated the 17th of August claimed that the total number of chicks that had been Brood Managed since the start of the scheme was 82 from 36 broods. If that is correct that would be a productivity of 2.28 per nest. The number of 82 was later amended to 58; but the number of broods has been deleted. If it is 58 chicks from 36 broods then the productivity is 1.61 per nest. In contrast, 32 chicks fledged from 7 nests on the United Utilities Bowland estate in 2023, a productivity of 4.57 chicks per nest. Remember the Brood Managed birds had been selected and reared in captivity with all the food, shelter and care required to ensure that they were as fit and strong as possible when released. That is a far cry from the conditions that wild birds have to endure.
According to Natural England, the Brood Management scheme aims to increase the number of young birds fledging, thereby increasing the number of birds in the population. Whilst the increase in the number of young fledging in 2023 is to be welcomed, it cannot be attributed to the Brood Management scheme. Some or all of the birds that entered the scheme would have fledged anyway if they had been left in the wild. Since the scheme started a minimum of 101 Hen Harriers have been killed or disappeared on or near grouse moors. Either 82 or 58 Brood Managed chicks have been released. That equates to a deficit of either 19 or 43 respectively.
In the same Radio 4 Farming Today program, John Holmes, Natural England Strategy Director, stated that the £800,000 budget spent so far on Brood Management was good value for money.
Whichever way you cut the numbers; taking into account the number of birds in the scheme and the number that would have fledged without intervention the cost per bird cannot be called anything like value for money, to then go on and suggest that if Natural England didn’t spend that amount, the bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds to protect a single nest would be picked up by the Police year on year, this is a very strange, unrealistic claim.
The full transcript of the interview can be found here on 18th August:
With the Brood Management scheme squandering a fortune from the public purse, whilst simultaneously failing to deliver its aim to prevent Hen Harriers from being killed on grouse moors. It is long passed the time that the partnership with the shooting industry was dissolved.
If the Government is serious in its stated aim of ending bird of prey persecution (one of its national wildlife crime priorities) they need to accept what conservationists have known for years; talking to the lobby groups that represent the shooting industry will achieve nothing until meaningful sanctions are introduced. Stop prevaricating, introduce licensing for driven grouse shooting and change the legislation to allow Natural England staff to enter land to monitor and protect endangered species (including Hen Harriers) without landowner permission. Make those changes. and the public will be more likely to see value for money than at present. If you don’t take that route we will be stuck with the status quo and the killing will continue unabated.
NERF
20 August 2023
Northern England Raptor Forum 