Number of Hen Harriers killed or missing reaches new high

New report by RSPB says "record numbers" illegally killed or missing in suspicious circumstances over the past five years.

A new RSPB report - titled unambiguously Hen Harriers in the firing line - shows record numbers of Hen Harriers being illegally killed or going missing in suspicious circumstances over the past five years, and that the majority of the 102 incidents occurred on or near grouse moors.

Hen Harriers are a rare, protected bird of prey, known for their acrobatic ‘skydancing’ courtship display over the uplands. They are categorised as a Red-listed species in the UK, due to their low breeding population levels. Despite several (failed) conservation initiatives over the past twenty-five years, the Hen Harrier is now the most persecuted bird of prey in the UK for its population size.

None of this will be news to anyone interested in the appalling levels of wildlife crime that take place on grouse shooting estates. It’s worth noting though that even twenty years ago few people outside of conservation and birding circles would have even heard of the Hen Harrier, but - and shooting has brought this on itself - in the years since they have become emblematic of the intolerance that grouse moors have for legally-protected raptors.

Starting with the annual Hen Harrier Day (how many people reading this will have been part of the ‘Sodden 570’ at the first HHD at Derwent Dam back in 2014 we wonder?) and Mark Avery’s 2015 ‘Inglorious’ to the rolling tally of dead or missing Hen Harriers studiously compiled by the remarkable Ruth Tingay on Raptor Persecution UK since 2018 (the tally reached 141 in May 2025), the mess of Natural England’s ‘brood meddling’ project (a nonsensical scheme solely set up to placate grouse moor owners), and a damning report on Channel 4 News which saw three gamekeepers on a grouse moor in North Yorkshire discussing (and then off-camera killing) a Hen Harrier, this most beautiful bird of prey has rarely been out of the headlines. And - unless it’s in a piece of spin dreamed up by the Moorland Association, the grouse moor owners’ lobby group - it is never good news.

Hen Harriers

Hen Harriers have had legal protection since the Protection of Birds Act 1954. But they have a varied diet that includes a lot of voles and some Meadow Pipits, as well as Red Grouse chicks. This should be an entirely natural part of an upland ecosystem and a healthy predator-prey relationship, but it infuriates the shooting industry which keeps moors stocked with as many as 10x the natural levels of grouse. In the eyes of extremely wealthy, often highly-subsidised moorland estate owners, every chick eaten is money lost. A chick eaten by a harrier is one less grouse to be sold to the guns.

Shooting estates have openly said that if there are ‘too many’ Hen Harriers on a moor they can’t run a profitable business. The industry has had decades to come up with a more sophisticated response than raptor persecution, but has failed to do so.

As Mark Thomas, the RSPB’s highly-experienced Head of Investigations, says:

"Hen Harriers should be thriving in upland areas across the UK, but decades of illegal killing – linked to land managed for grouse shooting – is directly preventing their recovery. We’ve seen a recent rise in confirmed and suspected incidents of Hen Harrier persecution, with 102 incidents recorded from 2020–2024."

Hen Harriers in the firing line lays out some brutal facts:

• Hen Harriers are 10 times more likely to die or disappear on grouse moors than on other land uses

• The average life expectancy of a young Hen Harrier in the UK is just 121 days

• North Yorkshire, Northumberland, and County Durham (all regions with extensive grouse shooting) are the three UK counties with the highest number of confirmed and suspected persecution cases

• There have been NO convictions for crimes against Hen Harriers in England - the only two convictions in the last 25 years have both been in Scotland

• In the last five years, 102 confirmed and suspected persecution incidents have been recorded, 89% in northern England

That point about life expectancy being so short is very important to bear in mind when shooting lobbyists attempt to ‘greenwash’ their industry by claiming that the number of harrier chicks has risen in recent years. As we have pointed out many times, those chicks are often hatching in closely-monitored and relatively protected nests. It’s once they leave those nests and move out onto the open moors that they are being killed - and long before they have a chance to reproduce.

The solution?

The new report comes out ahead of a parliamentary debate at Westminster Hall on Monday 30 June on the future of grouse shooting, triggered by a petition launched by Wild Justice. Over 100,000 people signed the petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting.

The RSPB says they “want to see an end to the illegal killing of birds of prey and other harmful practices associated with the grouse shooting industry” and that “action on this issue by Government in England is long overdue”.

Evidence that shooting estates are killing birds of prey has been collated year on year, especially now that the use of lightweight GPS staellite-tags which show in real time where tagged birds are., Action is indeed long overdue, although there was no chance at all that previous Conservative governments with direct links to shooting lobby groups would have ever taken steps to properly regulate grouse shooting. We and the RSPB want the same thing, of course, but where we disagree is on how the RSPB’s preferred compromise - a grouse moor licencing system - will get us there.

The RSPB says in Hen Harriers in the firing line:

“Some parties call for a ban on the whole activity of grouse shooting for sport and whilst we can see the attraction of what might sound like a simple fix for this long overdue problem, the RSPB is concerned this could further polarise views in rural communities.”

Licencing is supposed to be a deterrent to crime. According to the RSPB, the licence “could be revoked if evidence suggests a crime has been committed”. Why ‘rural communities’ (many of whom don’t in fact support shooting in any way at all) should have any sort of sway over how criminality is tackled is not explained. Besides which, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions, wildlife crime is just part of the problems associated with grouse shooting.

• Licencing will legitimise the grouse shooting industry and officially condone the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse every year. That is not acceptable to us, and we don’t think it should be acceptable to anyone - or any organisation - that says they love birds.

• Licencing essentially says that the ‘legal’ killing of countless numbers of foxes, corvids, stoats/weasels, and other native animals in traps and snares to support the shooting industry can continue as of now. That is also unacceptable to us.

• We are led to believe that licencing will ‘act as a greater deterrent to those tempted to harm or kill birds such as Hen Harriers’, but estates aren’t ‘tempted’ to break the law, they are doing it. That’s despite legislation which already exists to protect birds of prey ‘such as Hen Harriers’ and has done so for well over half a century.

• Raptors are being killed on grouse moors as a matter of routine because it is so difficult to catch the criminals in the act. Estates are huge, often isolated, and largely private. Estates shield criminals (no estate has ever handed one of its gamekeepers over to the police). There is no suggestion in licencing legislation to suggest increased resources for investigators or enforcing authorities, or new powers for police to investigate crimes.

• New legislation in Scotland brought in to supposedly tackle raptor persecution has become a mess already (see Grouse Moor Licencing: the legal mess we always thought it would be). Shooting groups put so much pressure on NatureScot that they decided to hugely reduce the area of land affected by a new licensing regime after legal threats. Estate owners don’t want legislation and are doing everything they can to limit its reach. Given Natural England and Defra’s closeness to landowners and support for what they (and the government) call ‘sustainable shooting’, why would anyone think that wouldn't happen again?

• Estates don’t want it. In 2019 the Scottish Field wrote that “Scottish grouse shooting estates fear any introduction of a licensing system will expose them further to false claims by campaigners vying to have them closed down.” What that means is that estates will fight any attempts at scrutiny by, for example, claiming activists are planting dead harriers…

• Estates can afford defence lawyers that will gleefully exploit exemptions in laws that are either poorly written or deliberately hobbled by Parliament itself (like the Hunting Act 2004). Does anyone have any faith that an estate will simply say 'You got me, take away my licence'? They will threaten legal action, deny responsibility, and tie up the courts for years. In the meantime, birds and mammals will continue to die.

Licencing grouse moors is not the answer to these problems. Getting rid of them is.

Licencing is a lifeline for a beleaguered industry

We recently visited Moscar Moor, a grouse moor in the Peak District owned since 2016 by the Duke of Rutland, with the campaign group Reclaim Our Moors (ROM).

We wrote that “Moscar is perhaps the archetype of a modern grouse moor. It is a huge, trashed grouse farm (with surprisingly few grouse), burnt in to a mosiac of patches visible from miles away, littered with medicated grit trays, ringed by snares and traps, and patrolled by gamekeepers who act like local ‘hard men’ and – unless you are staying at the likes of Moscar Lodge (a renovated shooting lodge that overlooks the Moor) – eye visitors with all the warmth of a chest freezer.”

None of what we saw and reported on is acceptable. The destruction of such important landscapes just shouldn’t be happening. Reclaim Our Moors wants to bring Moscar into community ownership. Lobbyists from the Moorland Association have tried to rubbish ROM’s arguments, but they are (and they know it) on incredibly shaky ground.

The public increasingly recognises that the way shooting estates operate grouse moors is incompatible with the realities of the biodiversity and climate crises. Burning one of the most scarce habitats in the UK, and one of its most important carbon stores, is nonsensical. Slaughtering predators just to increase the number of birds for hobbyists to shoot doesn’t fit into modern understandings of sentience or the importance of all species to properly functioning ecosystems. Wildlife crime on moors is not about ‘conflict’ as they’ve repeatedly been told, it is about criminals and money.

We need to use the growing disgust that more and more people have for this vile industry. Instead of licencing these wretched businesses, they need to be legislated out of existence using laws we already have.

• Take away the grotesque public subsidies paid to already wealthy owners for the supposed protection of SSSIs that are in ‘unfavourable condition’ and force them to re-wet the bogs they’ve dried out if they want any of that subsidy back.

• Use laws on air pollution levels to prosecute estates that cloud urban centres with smoke from burning heather.

• Don’t accept the ‘remoteness’ excuse and push the police to properly enforce existing welfare laws and laws protecting birds of prey.

• Introduce vicarious liability for landowners and prosecute them and gamekeepers for breaking those laws more robustly.

• Use buy-out legislation to take moorlands into public ownership.

• And if you’re an organisation that says you put birds first, put them first - all birds - because putting forward suggestions that still allow birds to be shot in huge numbers is not protecting them and not what the public wants.

Shooting birds is an abhorrence. We should be working to end it, not licencing it to continue.