North York Moors NP: yet more raptor persecution
National Park in 'worst county in England for raptor persecution' is a wildlife crime hot spot
An all-too-familiar headline in a Yorkshire newspaper (this time The Scarborough News) about an all-too-familiar problem in an all-too-familiar part of the country: raptor persecution in the grouse moor-riddled North York Moors National Park.
“Police appeal launched after bird of prey illegally killed in North York Moors National Park.
The Rural Task Force of North Yorkshire Police are appealing for information following the suspected shooting of a buzzard in the North York Moors National Park.
The Buzzard is thought to have been killed near to Beck Hole Road, Goathland on Friday May 2, and the police are appealing for anyone who may have seen any suspicious people or vehicles in the area to come forward.”
The report is more or less a direct quote from the Facebook page of the North Yorkshire Police - Yorkshire Coast team. Their post unfortunately didn’t give any context or explanation why they ‘suspected’ a shooting had taken place - they don’t say that the shooting was witnessed or whether the Buzzard’s body was recovered - and unlike the Scarborough News they don’t say the bird was ‘illegally killed’.
But this is North Yorkshire, so the chances are odds-on that we’re talking about wildlife crime…
North Yorkshire: a black hole for raptors
Why so? Because North Yorkshire is renowned as a national raptor persecution hotspot. Both the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the North York Moors National Park are dominated by grouse shooting. Approximately 80% of the latter ‘national park’ is privately owned (the North York Moors National Park Authority owns less than 1%).
In just the last decade that specific ‘ownership’ has led to a rash of reports of crimes against birds of prey.
In 2016, a 23-year-old man from Hawes received a police caution after admitting using spring traps - which have been illegal since 1904 - on Widdale Fell on the Mossdale grouse shooting estate in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. A Hen Harrier had been seen on the same day a member of the public found three pole traps - which crush a bird's legs - out in the open.
In 2019 the normally pro-shooting Yorkshire Post wrote an article headlined “The scale of birds of prey persecution in Yorkshire's countryside”. Commenting on the release of the RSPB’s 2018 Birdcrime Report it wrote:
“Yet again North Yorkshire has been confirmed as the worst county in the UK by far for illegal persecution of birds of prey. Nationally there were 87 confirmed cases, with 15 within North Yorkshire. Blackspots included Nidderdale and the Dark Peak area of the Peak District.”
In 2020, for the seventh year in a row, North Yorkshire again had more confirmed raptor persecution crimes than any other county in the UK. Twenty-six of the 137 confirmed UK incidents occurred in North Yorkshire. Of these two two-thirds were directly related to grouse shooting and a further four incidents to other types of shooting. Victims included 16 Buzzards, two Peregrine Falcons, two Red Kites and a Goshawk.
In March 2020, a passer-by saw a Buzzard ‘fall from a tree’ near Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale. Tests revealed the bird had ingested four different pesticides, three of which were banned substances. A rabbit carcass had likely been baited with the chemicals.
Eight people were interviewed over the burial of five dead Buzzards, four of which had gunshot wounds, near the 16000-acre Bransdale Moor (described by shooting lobbyists William Powell Sporting as “one of the largest grouse shoots in the UK”) in April 2020.
In October 2023 we reported that North Yorkshire Police had launched (yet another) appeal for information after a Buzzard was found shot by the side of the road in Rosedale, the third Buzzard in the last four months that had been shot or had died in suspicious circumstances in the area - a valley surrounded by moorland located almost in the centre of the North York Moors ‘national park’. The bird was taken in by the renowned and remarkable Jean Thorpe, an internationally acclaimed wildlife rehabilitator. Sadly, after surviving the initial trauma the bird died, leading to an emotional and heartbreaking tweet from someone who has witnessed firsthand far too many instances of raptor persecution in the ‘national parks’ of North Yorkshire.
The Goathland Goshawk
Anyone interested in the region’s dire history of raptor persecution will recognise the place name ‘Goathland’ from the original police report we highlighted at the top of the page.
Standing in for the fictional village of Aidensfield, a key setting in the fictional ITV police series ‘Heartbeat’, Goathland featured in a real-life drama in 2020. North Yorkshire Police were yet again appealing for information after a recording was passed to them by Ban Bloodsports on Yorkshire’s Moors of a Northern Goshawk being killed by a gamekeeper. The Goshawk was killed after becoming caught in a cage trap set on Howl Dale Moor near Goathland.
Headlined by The Independent as “Three gamekeepers suspended over suspected killing of rare goshawk on Queen’s land”, the crime took place on an estate which is part of the Duchy of Lancaster, but leased to a commercial shooting company called W&G LLP, who in turn had appointed Scottish agents BH Sporting to manage the moor. North Yorkshire Police searched part of the estate under warrant and interviewed three individuals under caution. The gamekeepers were subsequently suspended from their duties by their employers (one later resigned, the other two were reinstated at Goathland estate, according to The Yorkshire Post).
Can you blame us…
Shooting lobbyists might protest that we’re blaming ‘shooting’ for the death of yet another bird of prey when there is no specific evidence (at least yet). We think they ‘doth protest too much’. As we wrote in 2023 in “Raptor persecution: if we think 'shooting' first who can blame us?”
“It's hardly surprising that the public is now almost automatically linking raptor persecution with an industry that is all about taking life - and especially the lives of birds of prey.
After all, it has plenty of form…”
Shooting’s past history of massacring birds of prey is undeniable. It was once legal for gamekeepers to eradicate birds of prey, and estates used to keep very detailed records of the eagles, hawks, and owls their keepers enthusiastically killed every year. It is - and has been for more than 60 years - illegal to kill any bird of prey, though, but they are still dying. And who else but employees of the shooting industry are wandering around the countryside with specific instructions to kill wildlife?
As the RSPB states, many incidents of raptor persecution are linked to land managed for bird shooting (72% in England in 2022). “71% of those convicted for crimes relating to raptor persecution between 2000 and 2022 were employed as gamekeepers.”
Scientific studies reach the same conclusion. A 2023 paper by Ewing et al published in Biological Conservation revealed that the illegal killing of Hen Harriers associated with shooting management accounts for up to three-quarters of Hen Harrier annual mortality.
Perhaps, though, these are now well-known and established facts. At End Bird Shooting we’re wondering whether now might be the time to focus not on the where and who but on the why.
That might seem obvious. Clearly the shooting industry is looking to maximise profits by removing all predatory threats to the ‘surplus’ of birds it sells to shooters, but they are only doing that because a complicit, ‘wilfully blind’ customer base keeps turning up with their guns regardless of all the data and all the information - regardless of those established facts, in other words.
Shooters are not simply passengers on a ship they’re not steering. While pressure is being ramped up on the industry itself (as it should continue to be of course), it’s surely time to also point out that by remaining silent and paying stupid amounts to blast birds out of the air for ‘fun’, it is shooters themselves who are driving this shameful persecution and wildlife crime.
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I note RSPB's comment on this senseless slaughter, but the RSPB is conflicted. The patron of the RSPB is an avid shooter himself (as is his elder son and his wife). I stopped donating too the RSPB and RSPCA when they appointed big ears as their patron
Not just the poor innocent pheasants, grouse and partridges who suffer, but also birds of prey, rabbits, foxes, stoats etc 😿💔🤬🤬🤬!! This all must stop!!