White-tailed Eagle 'disappears' in North York Moors
Dorset-bred White-tailed Eagle made fatal mistake of crossing into grouse shooting country
G834 was born in August 2025. He was the first White-tailed Eagle to fledge in Dorset for more than 240 years. That fact alone tells you something about the long history of raptor persecution in England, and about how much effort, hope and public goodwill has been invested in a reintroduction project to bring these magnificent birds back.
G834 travelled widely this spring, arriving on the western side of the North York Moors on April 30, 2026. Overnight into May 01, the bird’s satellite tag went silent. There have been no further transmissions since.
North Yorkshire Police have issued an appeal for information (one of many they’ve issued over the last decade):
We are appealing for information after the disappearance of a white-tailed eagle.
The satellite-tagged juvenile white-tailed eagle (G834) was born in the wild in Dorset in 2025 and travelled widely across England this spring. On 30 April 2026, it arrived in the western side of the North York Moors.
Overnight into 1 May, the tag device did not communicate. There have been no further transmissions since then.
Following analysis by the National Wildlife Crime Unit, the eagle’s disappearance is being treated as suspicious, and an investigation is underway by North Yorkshire Police.
Anyone with any information is asked to call North Yorkshire Police on 101, quoting reference 12260086274.
A death zone for birds of prey
We can’t definitively say the bird has been killed. We can not point the finger at any individual or industry. There is no evidence yet. But modern satellite tags are robust, reliable pieces of technology. They do not simply stop working as a bird crosses onto moorland in an area with a long and documented history of raptor persecution. The silence of that tag speaks loudly…
And the fact is that North Yorkshire is one of the worst areas in the UK for the illegal killing of birds of prey.
Documented incidents over the past decade span almost every method of illegal killing.
In 2016 alone, confirmed incidents in North Yorkshire included four shot Buzzards, four shot Red Kites, two poisoned Red Kites, a shot Peregrine, a Buzzard nest destruction and seven incidents relating to the illegal use of spring traps.
In 2019, a buzzard was found shot on Bransdale Moor, and in 2020 five dead buzzards were found concealed in a hole on a Bransdale grouse moor — four were confirmed to have been shot and the fifth was suspected to have been shot.
That same year, three gamekeepers working on Goathland Estate, part of the Duchy of Lancaster lands inside the ‘national park’, were reportedly suspended after one was filmed battering an illegally-trapped Goshawk.
In 2023, the Chief Executive of the North York Moors National Park Authority spoke out after at least two Red Kites were killed in the northern area of the park.
In 2025, incidents continued in close succession: a Buzzard found dead near Goathland in May was confirmed by x-ray to have been shot, and a further Buzzard shot in the Bransdale area had its wing peppered with shotgun pellets and a leg broken, and had to be euthanised.
Also in 2025, a Buzzard was discovered fighting for its life on Daleside Road in Rosedale, with x-rays again confirming it had been shot.
Just a few months ago in May 2026 we reported on a yet another Buzzard that had been found shot in the North York Moors ‘national park’.
The list of raptors that have vanished here or been found poisoned, shot, or trapped is long and should be deeply shameful.
Whatever the ultimate cause of G834’s disappearance - whether shooting interests or sheep farming pressures - this bird has been lost in a landscape where such losses are depressingly routine.
Who has the power in North Yorkshire?
The evidence is clear: persecution/wildlife crime is treated by some in this part of the world as ‘just part of doing business’.
Some landowners and their employees have a mindset in which birds of prey are simply incompatible with the way they choose to use the land. Raptors are not seen as wild creatures with an intrinsic right to exist, nor as the source of joy and wonder that millions of people experience when they see them. They are pests. Threats. Problems to be managed off the record.
This attitude is not fringe. It is entrenched across generations, reinforced by a sense of entitlement to land and all that moves on it.
That sense of entitlement has deep roots. Both the North York Moors National Park and the neighbouring Yorkshire Dales National Park are dominated by grouse shooting. Approximately 80% of the North Yorkshire Moors ‘national park’ is privately owned: the North York Moors National Park Authority owns less than 1%. The name implies power it simply does not possess.
In practice, the ‘authority’ functions largely as a local planning inspectorate, and even then landowners regularly treat its rulings with contempt. It has no meaningful authority over what happens on private moorland. It cannot compel, deter, or punish.
The “National Park” designation, so valued by the public as a guarantee of protection and stewardship, is in practice a badge with little substance behind it.
The public cares
Conservationists from the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, the experts behind the reintroduction project, have said they are “deeply shocked and saddened,” noting that the return of White-tailed Eagles to England “has so much support from the public” and that “many people will be devastated.”
They are right. The public does care - passionately. And they prove that with their wallets. Eagle tourism has transformed rural economies in Scotland and on the Isle of Wight. These birds - the largest birds of prey in Britain - generate income, local pride, and the kind of connection to the natural world that a grouse shoot can never replicate.
So what can be done? Vicarious liability legislation - making landowners legally responsible for wildlife crimes committed on their land - has had some effect in Scotland and needs urgent extension and enforcement in England. Mandatory camera monitoring on moorland where satellite-tagged birds disappear should be standard practice, not a campaign aspiration. And perhaps most importantly, the illusion that National Parks are protected must be replaced with genuine statutory powers and real consequences for those who ignore them.
G834 is yet another entry on a long, grim list. The public anger this generates must be turned into public pressure and political will - the only forces capable of shifting a culture this deeply dug in.
Shooting’s shameful past - and present
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 employees enthusiastically killed every year.
But it is - and has been for more than 60 years - illegal to kill any bird of prey.
But they are still dying.
A large, relatively slow bird like a White-tailed Eagle appearing over a remote corner of a private estate makes an easy target. But let’s be clear about this. It won’t have made any difference what species of bird of prey had flown across this moor in the North York Moors ‘national park’. Gamekeepers kill ANYTHING - large or small - they perceive as a threat to ‘their grouse’, their pheasants and partridges.
Shooting lobbyists might protest that we’re blaming ‘shooting’ for the death of yet another bird of prey when there is no specific evidence. As we wrote in 2023 though (and we see no reason whatsoever not to say it again three years later):
“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…”
Who else but employees of the shooting industry are wandering around the countryside with specific instructions to kill wildlife?
And who the hell else wants birds of prey dead and is prepared to break the law to kill them?
End Bird Shooting
Over the coming years we will look at the shooting industry at every level. We will highlight the suppliers — the farms, hatcheries, importers and breeders producing tens of millions of birds under conditions that would provoke public outcry if applied to any other animal. We will expose the providers — the estates and syndicates that take those factory-farmed birds and sell the experience of killing them as leisure. And we will look at the clients — the paying guns who are fully aware of the wildlife crime, the trapping of native predators, and the mass suffering involved, and who have decided that none of it is reason enough to stay away.
This industry survives because suppliers supply, providers provide, and clients pay. We intend to examine them all.
We are working to END BIRD SHOOTING. This suffering has to stop. Please share this article. Share our socials. Follow us for updates.
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If I could be PM for a day, the first thing I would do is ban game bird shooting, every time I read about yet another BoP meeting an untimely death I feel rage and sadness in equal measure, the fact that these keepers think they're above the law makes me so angry, I loathe them with a passion
Why not tag all gamekeepers? They are the suspects let the law keep a close check on them. I know this won't happen, the psychopaths will cry foul and everyone in the shooting industry will bend over to protect these criminals.