This article in the 4 December Guardian, by highly respected wildlife journalist Patrick Barkham, raised a few eyebrows at the time and prompted an anonymous but clearly well-informed guest blog here, Natural England and the Hen Harriers 30 December, which raised a number of points including questioning how Natural England’s Stephen Murphy could possibly know that the Hen Harrier named Bowland Betty had been shot away from the grouse moor on which she was found dead.
If you revisit that article today you’ll find the following at its foot:
This article was amended on 12 January 2022 to clarify remarks made by Murphy in relation to the injuries he found when he and Taylor recovered the hen harrier named Betty in 2012.
…and the text has been changed to;
Murphy said Betty’s injuries were not immediately fatal and she could have been shot away from the estate before flying on to it.
Well, that’s good. Clearly, unless you were there at the time, it would be very difficult to know how far a lethally wounded bird can flap before it falls dead in the heather of a particular grouse moor. End of story.
But no, wait! My attention was brought to the change in wording by a reader of this blog who wrote to their MP, Darren Henry, on 18 December, querying the accuracy of the original article. That constiuent recently received a response from Mr Henry as follows:
Good morning
Further to your email of 18th December 2021 we contacted Natural England
We have received the following response from Natural England with regards to the shooting of the hen harrier named “Betty”.
“Dear Mr Henry,
Thank for your enquiry and for sharing the email of your constituent, **********, who had raised the issue of the recent shooting of a hen harrier named ‘Betty’ and the subsequent reports carried in The Guardian.
Our colleague, Stephen Murphy, confirms that the article was misreported and should have read that the bird could have been shot away from the grouse moor (due to the nature of the injuries). Natural England have contacted The Guardian to explain this and they have received confirmation that the article has been corrected (Hen harriers’ friend: gamekeeping turns conservation in Yorkshire | Conservation | The Guardian) on 12 January 2022 to clarify remarks made by Mr Murphy in relation to the injuries he found when he and Mr Taylor recovered the hen harrier named Betty in 2012. Therefore the statement that was being questioned is no longer part of the article.
I hope this addresses **********’s concern”
The phrase ‘the article was misreported’ is a peculiar one – don’t you think?
Now, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter very much, but it remains a mystery as to whether Natural England’s Stephen Murphy said what was originally quoted (that Betty must have been shot elesewhere), thought the better of it, and asked the Guardian to change it, or whether somehow Patrick Barkham misunderstood what Murphy had said and misquoted him. The Guardian footnote is pretty neutrally worded but Natural England’s response to an MP, shared with his constituent and now shared with you leans slightly towards ‘the paper got it wrong’ version without actually saying so.
Where we are left is where many involved in Hen Harrier conservation were all along and before this article was published. The injured Hen Harrier Betty, shot by person or persons unknown, flew an unknown distance before dying on the Swinton Estate so she might or might not have been shot there too.
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Although I have the utmost respect of Murphy in terms of his knowledge of the Hen Harrier, I have none for his employer and their current policy of appeasement towards the grouse industry the very people who are responsible for the Hen Harrier’s current predicament and its continuing persecution.
I have said it before and I will say it again there are very good reasons for assuming Betty was killed on Swinton Estate and because of things said in a pub in Masham several folk have good reason to think they know who killed her. I strongly suspect NE ( and Murphy) know this too.
Currently I have no time or respect for NE because they are cosy with DGS operatives rather than those of us with a long history of interest in Hen Harrier conservation whom they quite deliberately ignore and refuse to co-operate with.
Remember in Jaws where the coroner says shark attack, but then says he got it wrong and could be boat accident instead after talking to the mayor? Yeah, me too.
What a strange, strange business. Despite Boris, lying to an MP is still clearly out of bounds. Normally, a retraction like this passes without comment on an obscure corner of a back page – but unfortunately too many people are following this story assiduously, assisted by Mark and Raptor Persecution. Whether Patrick believed he was carrying out genuine reportage is hard to fathom – but even before the current goings on it came across as propaganda. Sadly, he has taken a serious reputational hit and the Guardian, too, will be applying a little more editorial rigour. And well done Darren Henry for taking it on.
Well said Paul. I fully support your view that Natural England should basically be viewed with contempt. What matters is why NE is so pathetic in their lack of support for nature, especially when it comes to the illegalities and cruelties that are part of the great majority of Driven Grouse Shooting. Of course the root cause if NE ineffectiveness is the unwavering support given by this Government in Westminster to those who like to shoot and kill our wildlife for fun and don’t care a toss about the very adverse environmental impacts that Driven Grouse Shooting perpetrates.
I don’t know where Barry Cryer stood on raptor persecution but one of his jokes that has been quoted since he died on the 25th January definitely captures the far-fetched explanations the shooting fraternity expect us to swallow whenever birds of prey experience fatal encounters with lead shot:
“You know the guy who shot a golden eagle? Preserved species. And he was in court in front of a magistrate. And the magistrate said: ‘This is a dreadful scene’. He said: ‘I never intended to. I was shooting pheasants, it flew into my line of fire. Complete accident’. So the magistrate said: ‘As a matter of interest, what did you do with it?’ He said: ‘I ate it.’ The magistrate said: ‘What did it taste like?’ and he said: ‘Rather like a swan’.”
The punchline in the version I tell.
” a bit tougher than red kite but not as fishy tasting as osprey”
All very odd, I doubt Patrick Barkham misquoted Murphy, although it is always possible. All I know about this is legally “hearsay” but very informed and Murphy knows those sources too, very odd indeed. That information suggests strongly Betty did not travel far before succumbing, I suppose it depends in part how bad the damage to the main leg blood vessel was, and remember bird blood pressure is much higher than ours. As I say there is good evidence to suggest she was a resident in that area at the time. We should also bear in mind that she wasn’t the first (by a long chalk) and nor the last harrier to die on that particular ” harrier friendly estate by the hand of a manor men with a gun(s).
Great to see the usual suspects blathering on about wildlife crime. Meanwhile, “domestic”cats are routinely killing wildlife on my property (and that of millions of others who do not want this annihilation) including red and amber-listed species, and breeding species of all kinds, all of which is wildlife crime, but somehow not called such by those who make the rules.
On Channel 4 news (27/1/22) recently I watched a piece about the killing of buzzards, in which Krishnan Guru-Murthy stated that “hunting is of course a multi-million pound industry”. How would you people describe the RSPB if not as “a multi-million pound industry”? It is exactly that, and for it to posture as some kind of honest broker is laughable. It is institutionally corrupt, and only gets away with it because of relentless deceit and misleading, and “journalistic” collusion. If NE should be viewed with contempt, then what is it possible to say about the RSPB and it’s allies? The person who releases the cat to kill is equally culpable as the person who pulls the trigger. There is no moral difference, none whatsoever.