Good news double on health of hen harrier
TWO amazing bits of news about the uber-rare hen harrier, firstly in the face of U.K. wide persecution, five pairs of these beautiful birds of prey, ‘skydancers’, managed to produce young in Lancashire this year, a County that should host much larger numbers.
I mean to say, the Trough of Bowland’s choice of emblem is the hen harrier and there are signs depicting them as you enter the area, and last seasons there were only five pairs.
So why so few? I’ll come back to that, and believe me this is much better than recent years, but first the other news is that one tagged harrier winged its way all the way to the Algarve of Portugal.
Named Apollo, the male hen harrier was one of 22 chicks who successfully fledged from five nests being monitored by the RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE project team and partners on the United Utilities Bowland estate in the summer of 2019.
Hen harriers are one of the most persecuted birds of prey in the UK, and the RSPB’s Hen Harrier LIFE project team have been fitting satellite tags to young birds to learn more about where the birds travel.
Dr. Cathleen Thomas, senior project manager for Hen Harrier LIFE said: “This is a spectacular piece of flying for a bird that was only a few months old on his first major outing. The joy of working on a project like this is that we’re learning all the time about the capabilities of these amazing birds.
“It also helps us to implement better measures to protect them and shows that we need crossborder collaboration across the UK and beyond to protect this species and preserve its habitat across its entire range before we lose it for good.
“Independent scientific studies have shown that the main cause of the hen harrier population decline is illegal killing associated with management of moorlands for driven grouse shooting.
“It vital that we work together to protect these birds, by licencing of grouse moors across the UK. A licencing framework would set a new direction for the legal and sustainable management of large areas of our upland landscapes, as well as providing a meaningful deterrent to wildlife crime.
“We welcome the Scottish Government’s review of grouse moor management and their recommendation of licencing of driven grouse shooting and would like to see this rolled out across the whole of the UK.”
The tags have revealed the birds travel widely across the UK and beyond into Europe.
The project team will use the data from the journeys of Apollo and other tagged hen harriers to assist with the future planning of suitable conservation management for hen harriers. The use of satellite tagging technology to track the individuals also provides powerful information to better understand species and their ecology.
In 2019 a peer-reviewed paper showing that 72% of the satellite tagged hen harriers in the study were killed or very likely to have been killed on British grouse moors, and that hen harriers were 10 times more likely to die or disappear over areas of grouse moor relative to other land uses.
Any readers interested in the future of this wonderful bird, please watch out for this year’s Hen Harrier Days.
These are days of action, and an opportunity to gather together to press for change, to stop wildlife crime and the wider abuse of our uplands. Most Hen Harrier Days will take place across the weekend of August 8-9 2020, just before the start of the grouse shooting season on the ‘Inglorious’ 12.
Hen Harrier Days are organised locally by local people - this website is a free resource www.henharrierday.uk
Sadly, the illegal killing of hen harriers is not the only wildlife crime on grouse moors - many birds and other animals are also targeted, and illegal and inhumane traps and snares are everywhere catching intended and unintended prey alike.
Worse, intensive management for grouse still means widespread heather burning, veterinary medicines left on the open moor and the killing of innocent creatures such as mountain hares on the flimsiest of pretexts. These practices have turned our uplands into barren deserts, with dangerous levels of carbon release and exacerbating flooding downstream. And all to kill gamebirds for ‘sport’.
The hen harrier is a symbol, it represents our wider concerns about wildlife crime, the pointless killing of millions of other animals, habitat destruction and all the other ills of bad management of our uplands.
To conclude, and obviously for research purposes only, I just had to try the Hen Harrier Pale Ale from http://www.bowlandbrewery.com the perfect tipple to welcome our harriers back home this spring.