RSPB press release:
Yet another hen harrier disappears in suspicious circumstances in North Yorkshire
This is the ninth tagged hen harrier in three months to vanish in similar circumstances in the UKHen harriers have declined by a quarter since 2004 and are on the brink of extinction in England
North Yorkshire is ‘worst county in the UK’ for bird of prey persecution, according to Birdcrime report
A rare hen harrier has suddenly disappeared in North Yorkshire, triggering an investigation by the police and the RSPB. This is the ninth bird to disappear in suspicious circumstances in the last 12 weeks.
The bird, named Arthur, hatched from a nest in the Peak District this summer. This was the first time hen harriers had successfully bred in the Peak District since 2015. Arthur, along with his sister Octavia, was fitted with a lightweight satellite tag by RSPB staff as part of the Hen Harrier LIFE project, which has enabled the RSPB to track his movements since leaving the nest in July.Transmissions from Arthur’s tag showed him fledging from his nest and remaining faithful to that area in the Peak District. He then moved to the Brecon Beacons, South Wales, in mid-October before flying back north to Nidderdale, North Yorkshire. On the morning of Friday 26 October he flew onto the North York Moors National Park. He registered his last position at 0955hrs when he was just north of Lowna Bridge, near Hutton-le-Hole.
RSPB Investigations staff searched the area of the bird’s last known location but found no sign of either a tag or a body – prompting concerns that the bird may have been deliberately killed and the tag destroyed. In August, his sister Octavia’s tag also suddenly cut out, with her last location coming from a driven grouse moor in the Peak District. No trace was found of her either. The police and the RSPB are appealing for information.
RSPB Assistant Investigations Officer Jack Ashton-Booth said, ‘Arthur’s last location showed he was in an upland area close to several driven grouse moors. When tagged hen harriers have died of natural causes in the past, the tags and bodies of the bird are usually recovered. To find no trace of Arthur or Octavia is extremely concerning. Arthur is the ninth hen harrier to suddenly disappear in suspicious circumstances since August. This is gravely concerning given that the species is on the brink of extinction as a breeding bird in England.’.
Hen harriers are one of the UK’s rarest and most persecuted birds of prey. They nest on the ground, often on moorland, and are known for their spectacular courtship display, the ‘skydance’. Like all wild birds, they are protected by law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 which makes it an offence to intentionally harm or disturb them. Anyone found to have done so faces an unlimited fine and/or up to six months in jail. But, despite full legal protection, studies show that the main factor limiting their population is illegal killing by humans.
Over 30 hen harriers were tagged during June and July 2018 in England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man as part of the RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE project. Of those, eight birds (Hilma, Octavia, Heulwen, Thor, Athena, Stelmaria, Margot and Arthur) have since disappeared in suspicious circumstances, along with another bird, Heather, who was tagged in 2017.
Calculations based on habitat and prey availability indicate that England should be able to support around 300 hen harrier pairs. But this year only 34 chicks fledged from nine English nests, according to a report by Natural England. In 2017 there were only 10 chicks in the whole of England.
The RSPB’s latest Birdcrime report showed that North Yorkshire is consistently the worst county in the UK for recorded bird of prey persecution, accumulating significantly more confirmed incidents in the last five years than anywhere else. Data showed that 15 of the 55 confirmed incidents in England in 2017 took place in North Yorkshire. Since these only represent known, confirmed incidents, the RSPB believes this is just a glimpse of the true scale of the problem, and that many more crimes will have gone unreported and unrecorded.
If you have any information relating to this incident, please call North Yorkshire Police on 101 quoting crime reference number.
If you find a wild bird which you suspect has been illegally killed, contact RSPB investigations on 01767 680551 or fill in the online form: https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/our-positions-and-campaigns/positions/wildbirdslaw/reportform.aspx
If you have information about people killing birds of prey in your area and would like to speak to someone in confidence, call the Raptor Crime Hotline on 0300 999 0101.ENDS
This is the ninth RSPB-tagged Hen Harrier to disappear in recent months but there is also at least one (who knows?) NE-tagged bird too.
This bird ceased transmitting in an area of driven grouse moors.
[registration_form]
Is it ‘wilful blindness’?
Is it conspiring to assist organised crime?
There are no other explanations for the actions, or inaction of NE, DEFRA, the media (most of tbem), the UK government,, and virtually all organisations with an interest in shooting.
If the light bulb has not lit up for them yet, I’m sure That they may regret it at some time if better evidence comes to light, and it will when those they have supported, and perhaps them are brought to heel.
To kill Hen Harriers with this level of efficiency, requires a massive amount of time and effort across most managed grouse moors. Remember the satellite tagged Hen Harriers being killed are just the tip of the iceberg i.e. most Hen Harriers are not satellite tagged, so their “disappearance” (read illegally killed) is never noted – so far more Hen Harriers are being killed than this. In other words, Hen Harriers are widely being killed across managed grouse moors on a huge scale. Many more than these tagged birds suggests.
A shotgun has an effective range of less than 50m (usually much closer, say 35m). I am asking most birders and naturalists to think when was the last time a Hen Harrier came sailing past you, 30m or so away, by chance?
The shooting industry and it’s apologists organizations would have you believe that this is a tiny minority of rotten apple gamekeepers, slyly killing Hen Harriers without any knowledge of the landowners, their land agents, managers etc. However, for this scenario to be even slightly plausible, all of these tagged Hen Harriers would have to fly close to one of this handful of rotten apple gamekeepers when they were going about other business. This is just so improbable as to be completely implausible.
To kill Hen Harriers with this efficiency and regularity must mean a lot of gamekeepers, putting a lot of time and effort into this activity, across a large proportion of grouse moors. I mean devoting so much effort to this task, that no one in this industry from the keepers, other estate workers, the land agents, the managers, and the owners cannot help but be aware of what is going on. Remember they are paying these people, so they couldn’t get away with spending so much time on unauthorized activities, without all being aware of it. I am very firmly saying that this organized persecution is far more widespread than thought, and a large proportion of the whole shooting industry is aware of this.
You see I’m a photographer. I know what a lot of planning is involved in bringing about an encounter that close with a raptor in a wide open space. It would take lots of monitoring and reconnaissance, then many hours of waiting in position. You don’t just head out onto the moors and these birds just sail close to you by chance. It just doesn’t work like that. You need to put in a huge amount of time and effort to make it happen. And if these employees of these shooting estates are doing it on this scale, then the whole industry knows about it, likely orders it, and is complicit in this wide scale orchestrated and organized wildlife crime.
To clarify my point. We know that shooting interests have always been slyly killing Hen Harriers, and hoping conservationists just wouldn’t notice. However, what has changed is the efficiency with which they are doing it. Go back in time, 15 years or more back. Go back even further to the 1970s and 1980s, and there were still appreciable numbers of not only Hen Harriers, but other raptors successfully breeding on grouse moors. Okay, the gamekeepers were likely still killing them, but not with the efficiency to totally eliminate them.
However, within the last 12 years or so, we’ve seen the situation, where successfully breeding raptors on grouse moors have more or less completely disappeared. Yet many of these raptors, say like Peregrines, are breeding well, beyond the boundaries of these grouse moors. So you’d expect them to recolonise grouse moors, even if the resident birds had been killed.
All of this suggests much greater effort and activity is being put into eliminating raptors from grouse moors than previously. To the point that there are no managed grouse moors where raptors are thriving. Suggesting that this illegal persecution is incredibly wide spread. This makes the shooting industry’s absolute denial of any knowledge of this particularly dishonest. In other words, when they deny any knowledge of this, they are knowingly lying. How else, can you explain it. How else can they possibly be ignorant of campaign of raptor persecution on this scale. They would have us believe that it is some unknown army of wildlife criminals, who spends huge amounts of time and effort killing raptors on their estates, without them having any knowledge of it.
Taking up SteB’s point from a different angle. Optical equipment has improved a lot in recent years. I took part in a guided night walk on our local nature reserve when we used an amazing piece of night-vision kit. We were told it cost several £1000s, so not the sort of thing a ‘rogue gamekeeper’ would buy out of his wages but a shooting estate might fund to search out hen harrier roosts for example.
Lyn – indeed. You make sure that bit of kit is only lent to legit people.
No Lyn the keepers don’t buy this sort of kit, but their employers buy it for them. I’m told and I’m sure my informant was right that on one well estate in the north west, which is a raptor black hole, that every keeper is thus equipped and I don’t suppose that is the only one.
This concerted organised crime and should be treated as such by the authorities. Long past time the gloves were off and this was stopped. If it takes keepers going to jail its fine by me. I also think its time the ministers and higher civil servants at DEFRA got a grip or were got a grip of so their wilful blindness was miraculously cured.
I’m told that keepers on that particular estate have about £10-12,000 of night vision equipment each. I don’t suppose estates even have justify this except possibly to the tax inspectorate and they probably claim it is a legitimate expense for fox control. I imagine that a number of estates have similar equipment. If we were ever lucky enough to prove that it is used for criminal purposes it could of course be confiscated.
I’ve been aware for some time that they might have been using this approach. I’ve not said anything just in case they weren’t aware of this potential.
These are educated criminals who know the habits of harriers, they know historic roost sites, they have a wealth of surveillance equipment that is freely available to buy, they have the funding ( Estates ? ) and they have the sick desire to wipe out this magnificent bird. The tags fitted to young harriers have not lasted 6 months, maybe tags with cameras increased trsndmisdion frequency (and a shortened life span ) would yield far better information than the current ones, given that these tags are probably destroyed with 75% battery life.
We need something like the banknote bundle dye the Americans use in false banknote bundles that explode with dye covering the thief, somehow configured with the tag. When a bird is killed, temperature fall or stopping of heart beat triggers the dye output after a short interval– UV only dye or something of that sort that will mark those who pick up the bird/tag to destroy them. A bit like smart water on valuable property. Bird goes down, the keeper in the area with the smart water dye shown up by UV light on him, is the culprit.
Anything to stop these professional wildlife criminals killing our protected harriers and eagles. Time we got some of the bastards in court and jail.
I see I’ve got a dislike for this idea. Rather strange, I would have thought that the law abiding elements of the shooting fraternity would have wanted the criminals that are dragging your pastime through the mire to be caught dealt with and gone.
Then again you might not be law abiding, or support criminality, is that it?
What are the chances of all those satelitte tags malfunctioning, as is sometimes claimed by the grouse industry? The tags are at least 94% reliable according to a study of Dutch Montagu’s Harriers fitted with the same type of tag. (Info from RPUK blog September 2016.) If 6 out of 100 tags fail then the chances of any given tag failing are 1 in 16.6667. If it was just one bird vanishing on a grouse moor it would possible to believe it was a malfunction. If 2 birds disappeared the odds of both tags malfunctioning would be 1 in 16.6667 times 16.6667, or 1 in 277.778, which is just about believable. However the chances of 9 tags all failing are 1 in 99,229,030,127. That’s 1 in 99 billion!!! To put it in perspective the odds of winning the jackpot on the national lottery are “only” 1 in 45 million. In other words you are aprox. 2,000 times more likely to win the lottery than have 9 tags fail.
Those odds only apply to birds that disappeared this year. If 50 tagged birds (a rough guess without looking up the figures) in total have disappeared the odds of all those tags failing is roughly 1 in 10 to the power of 61, (1 followed by 61 zero’s) or 1 in 10 million billion billion billion billion billion billion. I’d say thats rather unlikely!