The poor season for hen harriers was covered in yesterday's Daily Telegraph and Guardian. The Guardian basically rehashes our press release (I'm not complaining!) whereas the Telegraph quibbles a bit about whether the lack of this grouse-eater is the fault of grouse-shooters. I found the last line in the Telegraph piece very witty - you don't often find jokes in the papers' news coverage. It says that '...gamekeepers and landowners insist that shooting estates are helping to protect the hen harrier by ensuring grouse moors are well managed and maintaining native moorland.'. That was meant to be a sardonic joke, surely?
I can't find any comment from Natural England on their web page on this sorry state of affairs - although we did offer them a quote in our press release. In the past Natural England has been commendably outspoken on the subject of raptor persecution. On 22 December 2008 Natural England were happy to say 'Persecution is prime cause of harrier disappearance.'. On 2 November 2009 Natural England were happy to say '... illegal persecution has led to today’s critically low breeding numbers and patchy distribution.'. So what has happened since then? The General Election was held on 6 May 2010.
Maybe in this new age, Defra is the place to look for comment on this subject? I cannot find any comment on the Defra website - certainly not under 'news'. Bu then this isn't news is it? It is the status quo.
The Raptor Politics website is naturally concerned about the plight of this fantastic bird. Farmers Guardian and Bird Guides also cover the story.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Mark,
I haven't studied the Langholm results in detail, but why were there so many harriers there? Was it because of all the grouse to eat (presumably also the case elsewhere), because other predators (foxes, crows etc.) were being controlled (as on other grouse moors), because the harriers were being provided with supplementary food (which is being put forward as a potential solution elsewhere) or simply because the harriers were protected from persecution? Essentially, if all harrier persecution stopped overnight, why wouldn't you expect the same to happen elsewhere?
I'm certainly not advocating that the illegal persecution of birds such as hen harriers should be allowed to continue, and I'd also challenge the view that 'habitat management' by grouse moor owners is helping to maintain 'native moorland' as expressed in the Telegraph. Clearly, if it needs to be managed by regular rotational burning then it's not a native habitat. Far too much of the uplands in this country exist in what is a degraded, treeless state kept open by burning & sheep grazing. Illegal persecution of predators is just part of the issue - much more important is to allow substantial areas to recover to a more natural state with a much more varied habitat mosaic over a large scale.