Talk about the protection of Hen Harriers and Grouse Moors at my local indoor members group meeting

Interesting comments everyone, remember, this is a discussion thread, you may disagree with others opinions or comments, just remember to keep things respectful at all times.

Roy, to clarify in case you were implying such a meaning, the RSPB is certainly not being blatantly false and we are not misleading the public. The 300 pairs comment is taken from the JNCC hen harrier framework and should be considered a conservative estimate. It is an estimate that is true but there is sound methodology behind it which you can see for yourself in the report. Speaking hypothetically, even if what you state is true and the 300 figure is greatly inflated, we would still expect to have a viable population of breeding hen harriers in the UK, but we don't - what we do have is an understanding of the extent that illegal persecution occurs and we believe this is the likely cause of the resulting lack of hen harriers in England. 

We are working on ways to take hen harrier conservation forward in the UK, this species has a rightful home in England as it does in the other countries of the UK and we will not give up on this species.

My I have certainly started a discussion on the Hen Harrier after the talk and slideshow I attended my RSPB Local Members Group. It was by a young lady from Northern Ireland and she is involved with The RSPB Skydancer Project-Hen Harriers and she is financed if I am correct by money from the national lottery, although I may be wrong and the whole talk and slideshow lasted about 1hour 40 minutes by the time it finished and very interesting indeed. and it would take to long to go into all the details here. I'm finding the Local Groups indoor meetings very interesting indeed.

THOMO, you may be interested in following the Skydancer project on line,

Of course the excuse of keeping heather moorland for the benefit of certain species does not excuse persecution of all the raptors,it is not only Hen Harriers.Those areas of driven Grouse moors are barren of raptors,There are areas in the UK where sadly it is a waste of time hoping to see them.

Some heather areas would soon revert to forest as at Arne they have a public tree pulling day near xmas,one year they had 1,000 of the public turn up.    

Hazel C said:

Really interesting comments Roy. Have they ever bred anywhere else? Its weird that they seem to have concentrated on moorlands.

There are 19th century breeding records from most counties in south and south-east England, including breeding in the fenlands in Norfolk up until around 1860, although there are suggestions that at least some of these records may refer to Montagu's Harriers. In more recent years a pair fledged 3 young in Wiltshire in 2003, and a pair fledged one chick from a nest in a cereal field in southern England in 2009.

In areas where they are established in the UK they are not exclusively breeding on moorland, with many pairs now using recently planted forestry, mature forest areas (with a rotation of clearfell and re planting), and areas with scrub/grassland.

It's not that unusual for different populations of one species to use different habitats (eg. continental Cormorants which predominately nested in inland colonies in trees, and 'British' Cormorants which used to nest almost exclusively on rocky coasts - both now mix in inland colonies in south-east and central England).

lorraine r said:

Another thought I had was that for every bird of prey on the keepers land could the keeper not be subsidised for the loss of their grouse and then that would generate added income!  Might stop them killing and poisoning them if they see the cash coming in!  God knows how this could be monitored but in this day and age their should be a solution.  

Lolly,I think this has been proposed before several times but from what I understand it is not just the money but the loss of the "sport" of shooting a genuine wild bird unlike the semi tame Pheasants and Partridge that are bred in great numbers for the sole purpose of shooting,Red Grouse do not breed well in factory type conditions.By the way it would be the land/shoot owner requiring compensation,the keepers in most cases are simply obeying their ruling.

Ian H said:

Roy, to clarify in case you were implying such a meaning, the RSPB is certainly not being blatantly false and we are not misleading the public.

I am certainly not aware of any occasion where the RSPB has given obviously false information regarding Hen Harriers - I probably didn't word my earlier comment carefully enough, and I hope that I haven't misled anyone becuase of this! ;o) I am also certain that the RSPB has never deliberately misled the public.

However, sometimes things that are said with the best of intentions can be misleading.

For example, take the following quote from from an RSPB article titled 'Hen Harrier on the brink of Extinction in England'

"A Government scientific study – the Hen Harrier Framework – suggested there is capacity in the English uplands for over 300 pairs of hen harrier. This study cited illegal persecution through shooting, trapping and disturbance as the main reason for the hen harrier’s unfavourable conservation status in England."

If anyone reading this went away with the idea that there would be over 300 pairs of Hen Harriers in England if there was no illegal persecution, then they have potentially been misled. The implication is that we know there would be this many without persecution, while the reality is that we don't know how many there would be (they could potentially still be struggling).

At least without persecution we might be able to identify other factors if there are any.

Unknown said:

In areas where they are established in the UK they are not exclusively breeding on moorland, with many pairs now using recently planted forestry, mature forest areas (with a rotation of clearfell and re planting), and areas with scrub/grassland.

Presumably this is in Wales/Scotland so it's odd that they don't pick these areas in England. Perhaps these types of areas should be looked at too, so all the eggs aren't in one basket (so to speak). They have been doing quite  a lot of "wing tagging" in France to see whether chicks from a large colony go & breed elsewhere or return to their original place of birth. The tagging has now finished I think but there are still the adults out there to find. They have also recently started taking chicks (mainly Montagues) from an endangered nest & rearing them by hand & releasing them in the area they were born in. If they had a sufficient number of Hen harrier chicks, maybe the LPO could be persuaded to release them in "safe" areas of England. I don't normally agree with translocation but these chicks would be dead if they weren't removed. Sometimes than can put a fence around the nest & harvest the crop around them, but this carries a huge risk of predation (dogs,foxes etc). Sometimes the parents just abandon the nest after the fence is up. 

Typical wing bars on Montagues

Same bird with better view orange bar

They are tricky to read without photos!

I have never seen a "Monties" in the UK even when they have been in our area but it was quite a shock when visiting friends in Northern France to see both these and Hen Harriers nesting in crops around the village.Not in great numbers but enough to get my interest going.