It’s late August and no announcement has been made as to how many Hen Harriers bred, and where, and with what nesting success in England this year. That’s a bit odd.
The much-trumpeted DEFRA/NE/shooting organisations ‘joint’ action plan for Hen Harriers published in 2016 has monitoring of Hen Harriers as its first, out of six, elements. And yet we have heard nothing except a premature and entirely partial statement by the now-reclusive Moorland Association back in mid-June.
COVID-19 may have affected monitoring but it seems that it did not hamper brood-meddling activities very much.
The vast majority of pre-fledging Hen Harriers that are satellite-tagged receive their tags in the period late June – late July and the latest, and exceptional, date I can recall from previous years was in mid-August in the Peak District in 2014.
Has Natural England forgotten that it is supposed to be interested in Hen Harrier numbers and their nesting success? I’d certainly like to hear how the DEFRA Hen Harrier Inaction Plan is going. I think we should be told.
If you want to give your elected politician a nudge to act for change then please send them a message through this e-action which is a joint campaign by the RSPB, Hen Harrier Action and Wild Justice. Click here to have a look please. You’ll be joining over 91,000 others. Thank you!
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Mark, are follow-up emails counted in the total sent, or just the initial communication?
Just the initial emails – that’s all we can measure. So, yes, there are a lot more that could be added as follow ups!
As we have said many times Defra along with Natural England, are simply not fit for purpose. What they do and say these days has little or no credibility as all the time they are working “hand in glove” with the shooters/killers for fun.
NE can find time to brood meddle hen harriers but they seem totally uninterested in the big increase in the killing of birds of prey this year during lock down and we continue to hear nothing about Hen Harrier welfare. NE have no credibility, they are hardly worth listening to and are simply a puppet of these arrogant “we know best” but shameful Tories.
One wonders what on earth is going on with this mad, mad scheme. however we the sane think of BM part of the plan is monitoring of the total population for the whole of England, that cannot be that difficult given that all the UU nests in Bowland are monitored by RSPB, those on the borders by a partnership including FC and RSPB, leaving NE et al with the wider grouse moors. I cannot be difficult to add up three sets of figures surely, although NE got the figures wrong for North Yorkshire last year!
Have they all been fitted with dodgy trackers again ?.
I bet Mr Polvsens havn’t , could be very interesting that, one way or another.
One waits to find out, NE and their pals in this MA are both being surprisingly quiet, one would expect a surfeit of bragging if it had been a good season.
What we do know is that two broods have been interfered with via BM one brood of four in North Yorkshire ( YDNP) which have been released elsewhere in YDNP. Another also from the YDNP on the Cumbria/ North Yorkshire boundary a brood of five of which one died, these have apparently been released in Cumbria. however we do not know the outcomes and brood sizes of nests in those areas that were “allowed” to rear their own young.
A question for NE, why are these birds NOT going back to where they came from for release, that was in the original plan?
Northumberland has been happy to report success – https://www.nwt.org.uk/news/northumberland-hen-harrier-protection-partnership-0
Elsewhere??
Indeed and one could say that the whole of this Scheme of NE/ DEFRA will only have any credibility if everything open and transparent. Otherwise it looks an even dodgier deal done in the smoke filled hunting lodges of the rich and influential than it actually is, with NE looking like complicit minions.