Doing a deal with the devil? Hawk & Owl Trust return to the Hen Harrier fray

It was once the case that the grouse shooting fraternity just wanted Hen Harriers gone – but some of today’s moorland owners want a legal solution to their problem with the species and will accept a limited amount of the protected birds of prey on their land.

That’s the opinion of Lin Murray, head of information at the Hawk & Owl Trust, who believes that the grouse shooters are prepared to meet conservationists “halfway” to bring an end to the increasingly acrimonious dispute over the Hen Harrier’s virtual absence from England – where only six pairs bred successfully this year.

Murray said: “It makes business sense for the landowners to play ball.  They do not want another ‘Right to Roam’ situation on their hands, where they end up getting legislated over.”

Attempts to agree a Hen Harrier recovery plan in England are stalled because moorland owners insist on the up-front inclusion of ‘brood management‘, while the RSPB feel that less extreme methods such as diversionary feeding should be trialled first – and have also called for moors managed for driven grouse shooting to be subjected to a licensing system.

But Murray is highly critical of the RSPB’s position, believing that any attempt to recover Hen Harrier numbers in England will fail unless the shooting fraternity are on board – and that even calling for stronger legislation, let alone for an outright ban on driven grouse shooting, is simply naive.

“We can wave banners and protest for another 20 years, but grouse shooting isn’t going away.  It just isn’t”, insisted Murray.  “The situation will not be resolved if we don’t work with the landowners.

“People talk about vicarious liability, but it isn’t leading to prosecutions [in Scotland].  It isn’t working and it isn’t going to work.”

According to Raptor Persecution Scotland, there has been one successful conviction under vicarious liability law since its introduction in January 2012, with criminal proceedings involving another landowner, whose gamekeeper killed a Buzzard, currently under way.

While Murray insists she respects the RSPB – and also the conservationist Mark Avery, who is campaigning for driven grouse shooting to be outlawed – HOT are pursuing a much more conciliatory approach.  This is despite Murray’s acknowledgement that the killing of birds of prey remains a huge problem.

“I don’t think you’ll ever completely eliminate [raptor persecution], but even if 90 per cent of gamekeepers weren’t involved, it would make a significant difference”, said Murray, who believes that the male Hen Harriers that disappeared from the Forest of Bowland this year were “deliberately targeted by somebody who wanted to prove a point.”

Asked to confirm that she was suggesting that the harriers, whose nests were being protected around the clock by the RSPB, might have been killed in a revenge attack against that organisation, Murray said: “At least some of them were, in my opinion.  And if you think that’s bad, if [driven] grouse shooting was banned, we would see a lot worse.”

HOT’s stance has changed hugely in the two years since the charity walked out of the Environment Council’s Hen Harrier Dialogue process, citing a ‘lack of any progress or willingness of the grouse moor owners… to recognise the existence of raptor persecution in any meaningful way.’

Today, Murray says, preparations for a five-year BM trial scheme are very far advanced.

“We’ve had more than ten landowners saying that they want to be involved.  Test sites have been identified and expert teams are in place.  Ministers are listening – in fact, we had a meeting with Rory [Stewart] just the other day.”

The comment is revealing, given that HOT are not a member of Defra’s Hen Harrier Sub-group, which it was understood contained all of the official stakeholders tasked with agreeing the recovery plan.

Martin Harper, conservation director of the RSPB, has said: “I have a huge amount of respect for the Hawk and Owl Trust and a lot of the work they’ve done over the years.  While we all make bad judgements from time to time, in this case the consequences could be extremely serious.

“It is unedifying that Defra have left it to another conservation organisation to try to justify a brood management scheme.  This is not the way to instill confidence from those sceptical that the brood management scheme is anything other than a sop to those running the most intensive driven grouse moors.”

Murray confirmed that any trial would be paid for by Defra – but expressed anger at the suggestion that HOT stands to profit from collaborating with the shooting fraternity by delivering the scheme on their behalf.

“If anything, the trial would cost us money”, she argues.  “We would be investing in research.”

But Murray also says that HOT recently received a new promise of funding from an unnamed Scottish landowner, who pledged to underwrite the roll-out of a series of wildlife crime workshops hosted by Craig Fellowes.

“This person said, ‘whatever you need’.  So I’ll happily take that money and it will go directly into wildlife crime detection”, said Murray.

Murray added that BM is just one of a suite of measures that need to be undertaken to increase Hen Harrier numbers, including habitat improvement and manipulation, plus a reintroduction scheme using foreign harriers.  She believes this is necessary because the DNA of the tiny remnant English population may be compromised.

HOT also hope that young birds could in future be ‘imprinted’ on suitable lowland sites like Salisbury Plain and Exmoor – and would then return to breed there, rather than settling on northern grouse moors.

“Hen Harriers have retreated to the uplands and raptor workers believe they have become imprinted on heather moorland, but there’s actually no reason why they shouldn’t be breeding in southern England too”, said Murray.

It is very easy to see why at least a handful of England’s 147 grouse moor owners have expressed an interest in working with HOT.  Although Murray insists that they will not give landowners an “easy ride”, their proposed solution to the English Hen Harrier crisis is a million times more palatable to the shooting fraternity than the alternatives.  While Avery and the ex-HOT president Chris Packham – who resigned from the charity over this very issue – call for driven grouse shooting to be consigned to history and the RSPB speak out about the wider environmental issues associated with the practice, HOT offer them their understanding and willing support.

And in championing a lowland reintroduction, they are also presenting grouse moor owners with the potential future ‘out’ of being able to say – ‘look, there are plenty of Hen Harriers now, they’re on the up.  Just Not In Our Back Yard’.

The RSPB’s chief executive, Dr Mike Clarke, has said that a lowland reintroduction project “wouldn’t be an alternative to tackling persecution – indeed, the project would be most unlikely [to] be successful unless persecution was addressed… it is critical that a reintroduction element does not distract us from getting Hen Harriers settling and breeding successfully in the uplands of England.”

HOT chair Philip Merricks spoke to Charlie Moores on the subject for a Talking Naturally podcast a few days after my interview with Ms Murray.