A recent BTO report – click here – comes to the unsurprising conclusion that brood meddling of Hen Harrier nests made little or no contribution to the recent rise and fall of the Hen Harrier breeding population. As was predicted in advance, brood meddling is a distraction and an irrelevance.
The drivers of the steep increase in numbers must, the BTO authors agree, be due to changes in survival and/or settlement rates, as stated by Wild Justice’s 2023 report, Meddling on the Moors (not quoted by the BTO by the way). As Wild Justice set out in 2023 (Meddling on the Moors p12), the increase in productivity thanks to brood-meddled nests was tiny and followed rather than fuelled the population increase.
The BTO report states that “It is possible, but not likely, that survival change alone can explain the observed population growth. It is evident that some illegal killing has continued throughout the trial period; the question of whether it has reduced to some extent, and survival rates accordingly improved, cannot be addressed through a population modelling approach, but survival analysis for individuals tracked during the trial period may shed light on this.”.
Well, we have those observations! Hen Harriers continued to be killed in large numbers, as indicated by deaths of satellite-tagged birds, through the brood-meddling period (see Raptor Persecution UK’s litany of Hen Harrier deaths as evidence, no, actually proof, of that – eg click here) and two excellent scientific papers have demonstrated the importance of low survival in Hen Harrier population levels (see here for an explanation of the 2019 study and here for an account of the 2023 RSPB paper).
What we have seen during the brood meddling farce is almost certainly that a few pairs of Hen Harriers have been allowed to settle on a small number of grouse moors for a short period of time to generate publicity but that persecution of free-flying birds has not ceased, and there is precious little indication that it has even diminished. The birds have been allowed to settle and then been blasted out of the air as normal once fledged. As predicted, it has been a con.
We know that Hen Harriers try to settle on grouse moors every year partly through science and partly through intelligence about what gamekeepers are up to. In Inglorious I set out in Chapter 1 the experience of RSPB investigation staff and what they had been told by gamekeepers about persecution rates of Hen Harriers (take a look at p37-8). That provides evidence from gamekeepers admitting that it is part of the routine to bump off Hen Harriers attempting to settle on (or merely visiting) grouse moors each spring. It is a form of illegal spring cleaning on the grouse moors! But there is science too, from the studies (often neglected by young people) carried out in Scotland looking at raptor study group data and analysing sightings of wing-tagged Hen Harriers which show a high level of recruitment and turnover of individuals on grouse moors compared with moorland and forestry not managed for grouse shooting (see here). There is a supply of recruits to grouse moors from non-grouse moor-bred Hen Harriers and allowing a few pairs to settle and have some chicks is easily manipulated.
The BTO report has provided Natural England with an excuse to close the door on the shameful interlude of brood meddling but our statutory conservation agency should not have licensed it to start with.
I’m glad that I challenged the lawfulness of brood meddling back in 2018, and took it to appeal too, and sorry that the courts found against that challenge. Natural England argued that brood meddling was an experiment and despite there being plenty of evidence that this was eminently arguable on legal grounds we now come to realise (and it’s fair to say that many of us including me, Ruth Tingay, Chris Packham, many raptor workers and loads of ordinary birders said this all along – yes, we told you so) that brood meddling was a stunt with no chance of success because driven grouse shooting is steeped in wildlife crime.
It’s time that driven grouse shooting were banned – and you can add your voice to the Wild Justice petition calling for that to happen – click here.
Even with the report, I still wouldn’t be too surprised if there was some form of licensed scheme rolled out paid for by Landowners, or at least a ‘lite version’ of intervention undertaken – such diversionary feeding during breeding season – which keepers would no doubt carry out. I hope no more money is wasted and funding is instead channeled into proper government/police run undercover surveillance for once, of the type that produced the RSPB’s “biff it” video.