I expect Sigrid Rausing to get a letter from the Countryside Alliance in Scotland, and a write-up in the Shooting Times, for suggesting that the lack of eagles in some parts of Scotland, and on her estate in the Monadhliath, is due to the fact that sporting estates bump them off.
But it is what I believe too.
Sorry this is a bit of a late comment, busy times at the moment. Excellent news the the Government is treating the killiing of Hen Harriers as a priority for prosecution and that they are maintaining funding of the National Wildlife Crime Unit. Hats of to Minister Benyon for this. It would have been an easy option to cut that funding. However I do think the killing of birds of prey needs a new initiative. It is not going to be productive to argue too much as to how many birds of prey are being killed, the fact on the matter is that they are and the killing must be stopped or virtually stopped. How is this to be achieved?- that's the difficult question. I do think that if the Government were to facilitate discussions between relevant land owners and the RSPB that might lead to ideas as how to solve this problem. In a way, because the RSPB does such a great job in the "Protection of Birds" they may be seen as a biased party by the landowners on occasions, (althought of course they are not), and straight discussions just between the two parties may not be very fruitful, so a third party may help considerably.