RSPB nails Hen Harrier persecution to grouse moors
Six sat-tagged Hen Harriers suspected illegally killed, another confirmed poisoned.
The RSPB has just released perhaps its most unequivocal condemnation of systematic raptor persecution by the shooting industry. Published on 20 January 2026, “Yet more Hen Harrier persecution on grouse moors in 2025” suggests that the nation’s largest bird charity has completely run out of patience with the lies and the crimes committed in the name of ‘sport’.
“Seven satellite tagged Hen Harriers are suspected or confirmed to have been illegally killed on or near land managed for grouse shooting in England in 2025. One bird was confirmed poisoned, with a further six disappearing in suspicious circumstances. All final transmissions from the birds’ tags were on or near land managed for grouse shooting.”
At the same time, the news item also highlights the difficulty in bringing the criminals to court. While these are not the RSPB’s words, the facts are that grouse moors are large and remote; ‘outsiders’ are not welcome; estates never hand over employees; and despite all the evidence of GPS-equipped satellite tags stopping suddenly on estates, going on to prove which individual pulled the trigger or laid the poison is incredibly difficult.
“To monitor Hen Harrier movements and survival, the RSPB and Natural England have been tagging Hen Harrier chicks for over 15 years. These highly reliable satellite tags normally continue to transmit even when a bird dies. However, as multiple incidents have shown, many tags have suddenly and suspiciously stopped transmitting on or near grouse moors without sign of malfunction.
Evidence – including peer reviewed data, intelligence reports and forensic analysis – indicates that it is highly likely that in these circumstances the Hen Harrier’s tag has been intentionally damaged or destroyed after the bird has been illegally killed. So despite strong indication that a crime has been committed, in the absence of substantive evidence, the perpetrator cannot be brought to justice.”
The crimes in detail
Unusually, the RSPB has published full details (reprinted below) for all seven satellite-tagged Hen Harriers that are confirmed or suspected to have been illegally killed in 2025. It is a shocking catalogue of serious crime.
Importantly, a wealth of context is given too. These birds haven’t just vanished unexpectedly or randomly - they have ‘disappeared’ in raptor persecution hotspots. Locations where the criminals employed by the shooting industry overlap with habitats used by one of the UK’s (supposedly) most protected birds of prey. Our so-called ‘national parks’, riddled with shoots and largely managed by private estates, come out of the analysis particularly badly (a subject we have discussed many times eg ‘National Parks’ in name only).
Ataksak
Ataksak was found poisoned on a grouse moor in North Yorkshire – poisoned with the Nidderdale Cocktail [a deadly mixture of chemicals including bendiocarb, alphachloralose and the banned pesticides carbofuran and isofenphos: see our 2022 article ‘Nidderdale AONB in the Yorkshire Dales slammed by RSPB as the ‘bird of prey poisoning capital of Britain’] – in January 2025. The area where Ataksak’s body was found is recognised as a bird of prey persecution hotspot. In the last ten years, 25 confirmed bird of prey persecution incidents have been recorded in this area, including Ataksak. These included four Hen Harriers, 13 Red Kites and five Buzzards. A satellite tagged Hen Harrier also disappeared in this area in 2024.
Sita
Sita disappeared on 27 February. Her tag sent its final transmission from a moor south of Reeth, in the northeastern area of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. [Sita vanished ‘after her last GPS signal showed her at a harrier roost - see ‘Another Hen Harrier vanishes on grouse moor in Yorkshire Dales National Park’.]
Dynamo
Dynamo was a six-year-old RSPB satellite tagged Hen Harrier which suspiciously disappeared whilst provisioning a nest in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire in May 2025. He was one of four breeding male Hen Harriers that disappeared in northern England over a period of eight days – two from RSPB Geltsdale Nature Reserve in Cumbria, and a further two from the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire. All of these birds vanished whilst foraging for food away from their nest.
Based on intelligence reports and confirmed incidents it is highly suspected that these male Hen Harriers were killed whilst foraging away from their nest site. The disappearance of the male during the breeding season can often result in the female abandoning the nest or reduce the number of chicks which survive.
Since 2020, at RSPB Geltsdale nature reserve, eight breeding male Hen Harriers have failed to return to the nest whilst foraging away from the reserve. In 2023, the body of a satellite tagged male, named Dagda, that had been breeding on the reserve was recovered from a neighbouring moor. Post-mortem examination determined that Dagda had died after being shot. It also revealed a historic shooting wound confirming that he had in fact been shot on two separate occasions, the final proving fatal.
Wadrew
Wadrew was one of three chicks that successfully fledged from RSPB Geltdale in the summer of 2025, raised with the assistance of RSPB staff and volunteers. When the male parent suddenly disappeared whilst foraging off the reserve (suspected to have been illegally killed) reserve staff and volunteers provided emergency supplementary food under licence.
On 27 September, just weeks after fledging, Wadrew disappeared whilst on a grouse moor near Birkdale, in the north-west of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Based on incident data, this area, dominated by grouse moors, is the epicentre for Hen Harrier persecution in the UK. Since 2016, in this area four confirmed persecution incidents involving RSPB and Natural England satellite tagged Hen Harriers have taken place and 13 satellite tagged Hen Harriers have suspiciously disappeared (including Wadrew) – all suspected to have been persecuted (2016-2025).
Morrigan
Morrigan suddenly disappeared on 30 September just three days after Wadrew’s final transmission and 17 km away, in the southern area of the North Pennines National Landscape, a notorious bird of prey persecution hotspot.
In the same area in 2022, concerns were raised when irregular tag data was sent from a satellite tagged Hen Harrier named Asta. A search of the area lead to the discovery of Asta’s satellite tag, found fitted to a dead Carrion Crow. The harness was intact. As a tag harness cannot be removed intact without inflicting significant harm to the bird it was clear that Asta had been illegally killed. In the last ten years 13 confirmed and suspected bird of prey persecution incidents have been recorded in this area including one confirmed incident (the sat-tagged Hen Harrier Asta) and the suspicious disappearance of 10 satellite tagged Hen Harriers, including Morrigan, between 2016 and 2025.
Beatrix
Just 10 days before Wadrew and Morrigan disappeared, another young RSPB satellite tagged Hen Harrier, Beatrix, also vanished. Beatrix fledged from the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve in Scotland in the summer and dispersed south into the North Pennines, settling in an area dominated by grouse moor near Allendale. Her sat-tag sent its final transmission from this location on 17 September. This area is another recognised persecution hotspot for Hen Harriers with four satellite tagged Hen Harriers confirmed to have been persecuted and six satellite tagged birds (including Beatrix) suspiciously disappearing in the area (2016-2025).
Red
In January 2025, eight months earlier, a one-year-old Scottish Hen Harrier that had also fledged from the Tarras Valley nature reserve, named Red, disappeared in another part of the North Pennines in County Durham [see ‘Tarras Valley, Hen Harriers, and the lies of the shooting industry’]. Another satellite tagged Hen Harrier, named Sia, disappeared in the same area in 2022.
Systematic persecution
Raptor persecution on grouse moors is routine and systematic. Hen Harriers are 10 times more likely to die or disappear on or near grouse moors compared with other habitats. Just last year, the RSPB Birdcrime Report 2024 stated that “The majority of raptor persecution incidents are associated with land managed for gamebird shooting”.
Incontrovertible proof was broadcast by Channel 4 News in October 2024 (see ‘Undercover footage of raptor persecution ‘a game changer’). A trio of gamekeepers from the Coniston and Grassington Estate in the Yorkshire Dales National Park was recorded discussing ‘jets’ (their name for harriers, presumably thinking no one would possibly work that one out!), a ‘bomber’ (a Buzzard shot earlier in the day), and ‘nolling’ (killing). The broadcast ends with a single shot ringing out off-screen and the keepers congratulating themselves for ‘nolling’ a ‘clean’ (ie untagged) harrier…
Using data compiled from its own comprehensive Birdcrime reports, the RSPB goes on to state in today’s press-release that “in England, 72 satellite tagged Hen Harriers – monitored by the RSPB and Natural England – have suddenly and suspiciously disappeared between 2016-2025. The vast majority - 85% - of the birds vanished on or near grouse moors”: land managed by wealthy estates for grouse shooting. Many (if not all) will have been killed by gamekeepers like the trio above (the undercover footage of the casual clubbing to death of a Buzzard we wrote about last week displayed just how indifferent these ‘professionals’ are to the law).
What is addditionally chilling about the seven birds detailed above is how young many of them are. The statistics collated over the last decade show that “illegal killing accounted for the deaths of 27-41% of birds under one year of age, and 75% of Hen Harriers aged between one and two years of age.” Removing young birds from a population effectively ends the potential for population growth. Heartbreakingly, the median lifespan of tagged Hen Harriers in the UK is just 121 days. That’s just four months - the time it takes for young birds to fledge in relative safety from monitored nests and wander away to grouse moors where they are relentlessly targeted for ‘taking’ Red Grouse.
These are birds whose disappearance has been registered only because they have been sat-tagged, remember. As the RSPB points out, just a fraction of the total Hen Harrier population is fitted with satellite tags and “these incidents indicate a much wider scale of illegal killing”. The classic ‘tip of the iceberg’ scenario, in other words.
Licencing
We have huge respect for the work that the RSPB does. Their Investigations Team is second-to-none. Without the RSPB, many of these crimes would never be reported or looked into at all (our faith in the police forces that cover these persecution hotspots is not especially high).
However, we fundamentally disagree with its stance on ‘licencing’.
In the same press release, the RSPB states that “To prevent and deter these crimes and ensure the recovery of Hen Harriers in England, we are urgently calling for the introduction of licensing of all gamebird shooting in the UK.”
That claim of ‘prevention’ is repeated in a quote from James Robinson, RSPB Chief Operating Officer, who says that:
“These latest figures paint a desperate picture for Hen Harrier recovery in England. To prevent this pattern of killing, and give this vulnerable species a realistic hope of recovery, we urgently need licensing of all gamebird shooting to be introduced in England.”
Licencing is regularly touted by the RSPB and others as a solution to raptor persecution. The thinking is that under licencing, if a crime was suspected to have taken place the shooting estate could have their licence to shoot revoked – supposedly creating the ‘meaningful deterrent against raptor persecution’ that the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 and numerous other legal amendments have so far failed to achieve.
The licencing proposal (which in England is nothing more than that at the moment) lives or dies on the supposition that any decisions on withdrawing licences would be based on a ‘civil burden of proof’. In legal terms, the civil burden of proof is significantly less when compared with the much higher criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt”. According to licencing proponents, then, the likelihood of a licence being withdrawn will be higher because crimes like the ones above won’t have to be provably linked to an individual, but will be based on a ‘balance of probabilities’ - in other words, where the evidence suggests something is more likely than not to have happened.
In theory, that sounds reasonable, but how likely is it to happen?
Last summer Parliament held what was supposed to be a ‘debate’ in response to a government petition on banning grouse shooting reaching 100,000+ signatures (see Ban Grouse Shooting Debate June 2025). In the opening paragraph of our report we said that the ‘debate’“was a stark lesson in just how normalised killing birds” has become in this country. It was also a stark signal that while proponents may want licencing, there is no will in Parliament to bring it in (especially with the condition that licence withdrawals would be based on civil rather than criminal standards).
There is also fierce opposition within the influential and wealthy grouse shooting industry to any restrictions on its activities. Shooting lobby groups don’t even agree that raptor persecution is an issue: the Countryside Alliance dismissed the RSPB’s 2023 Birdcrime report by describing it as written “in order to create support for their targeted attack on game shooting”.
Licencing proponents regularly point towards Scotland and the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 as evidence that licencing works. Passed in March 2024, the new legislation was brought in to supposedly tackle raptor persecution, but has already become a mess (see Grouse Moor Licencing: the legal mess we always thought it would be). Nearly two years on the full licensing scheme still isn't fully in force yet (it’s expected in Autumn 2026). It is bogged down by what is euphemistically termed “ongoing work on conditions and processes” ie the shooting industry is knackering it. No one has been convicted under it.
Estate owners don’t want legislation, and they are doing everything they can to limit its reach. The Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 is in danger of becoming like the Hunting Act 2004, which started off as potentially strong legislation but was so riddled with holes by the time it reached the statute books that it has allowed fox hunts to still chase wild animals over twenty years later.
And should a case potentially go to court, estates will threaten legal action, deny responsibility, deflect attention away from themselves, and tie up the courts for years. Taking a licence away will be incredibly expensive (costs which the taxpayer will have to meet) and extremely time-consuming. In most cases we predict it will never happen…
Licencing is not just about raptors though…
Our biggest issue with licencing is not to with whether or not it would ‘prevent and deter’ crimes against birds of prey, though. As we have stated many times (and will continue to do so), licencing effectively legitimises grouse shooting and ‘predator control’ by the shooting industry.
That’s certainly the case in Scotland. The Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 does ban snares and glue traps but not cage, larsen, or fenn traps. And it has nothing at all to say about the morality of shooting dead one of the UK’s only two endemic bird species: the Red Grouse.
As we have said before (and will say it over and over again if we have to), the Red Grouse is a very special bird. In 2024 genomic evidence and differences in plumage saw Lagopus scotica split from continental Europe’s Willow Ptarmigan, making Red Grouse and Scottish Crossbill our only two endemic bird species (on a side note, the Pied Avocet which features in the RSPB’s logo breeds right across Eurasia to far east Russia).
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), which monitors populations of British birds, recognises the ‘split’ and quotes a decline of around 19.6% between 1995 and 2023. Natural England has recently recognised the Red Grouse as a ‘species of conservation concern’ (which shooting lobbyists have taken as permission to slaughter any wildlife that ‘threatens their grouse’).
Presumably, the ‘Red Grouse as a conservation concern’ issue is something the RSPB has been discussing. Surely the sensible (let alone humane) thing to do is to take a stand now, acknowledge the harm being done to an endemic UK bird species, and speak out against an industry that is literally killing hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse (and millions of birds in total) every year.
We have to ask: what on earth is a ‘global force for nature’ (which is how the RSPB describes itself) doing supporting the shooting of Red Grouse by working for licencing of grouse moors rather than shutting them down? There is no excuse, and no good reason.
When it comes to raptor persecution the shooting industry has had decades to get its house in order, decades during which it has been illegal to kill birds of prey. But the killing is routine and out of control. It might sound simplistic, but the only way to ‘prevent and deter’ the shooting industry killing Hen Harriers is to get rid of the shooting industry. Not licence it.
Our Undercover Investigation: perhaps the largest and most widespread investigation into the breeding and rearing of birds for shooting ever documented.
We’ve now compiled over 100 pages of notes, captured more than two hundred screenshots, and have outlined at least thirty ‘stories’ we intend to tell.
Pheasant and partridge farms are intensive, industrial-scale factory farms where birds are treated appallingly badly. There is a built-in ‘redundancy’ where owners accept bird deaths as ‘par for the course’, and routine disregard for the industry’s own Codes of Practice.
The shooting industry likes to portray itself as a high-standard, high-skilled producer of wild birds for the gun. We will prove that this is patently untrue.
Coming very soon…
This repellent killing of raptors will continue as long as shooting estates exist, licensing will not stop
this illegal slaughter, get real RSPB and condemn shooting estates.
The detail here about how satellite tags just suddenly stop transmiting on these estates is chilling. Ataksak's case with the Nidderdale Cocktail shows these aren't isolated mistakes but deliberate, coordinated efforts. I've seen similiar patterns with protected species near industrial operations where enforcement gaps create de facto impunity. The 121-day median lifespan for tagged Hen Harriers really undercuts any argument that this is just occasional poaching rather than systematic removal.