River – a female Hen Harrier fledged in Bowland in 2018. Photo: RSPB
The loss of yet another Hen Harrier is another nail in driven grouse shooting’s coffin.
We don’t know much about River except she went to Yorkshire and disappeared on a driven grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB. She was tagged in Bowland last year and so it seems she has followed the journey of the famous Bowland Betty who was also fledged in Bowland but met her death on a driven grouse moor area in Nidderdale AONB.
We still await the publication of the paper analysing Natural England’s Hen Harrier satellite tagging data – we’ve been waiting for years. Several people have told me that it is absolute dynamite that should blow driven grouse shooting out of the hills – but I haven’t seen it and I’ll wait to make up my own mind. But the data points keep amassing. It will soon be time to update the analysis with the RSPB data and new NE data anyway!
How many nails do you need to shut a coffin?
ASdqo [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/11291324/Britain-would-be-big-enough-for-the-hen-harrier-and-the-grouse-if-it-werent-for-politics.html