Three satellite-tagged hen harriers missing

21 August 2023

Director of the North Pennines AONB Partnership, Chris Woodley-Stewart, shares his thoughts on the news of three missing hen harriers.

Three satellite-tagged hen harriers are missing, two in the Yorkshire Dales and one here in the North Pennines AONB, in an area near Hexham.

Are we going down the same familiar road here? I set down these thoughts below just two months ago in relation to a red kite that had been both shot and poisoned. I thought then that seemingly nothing has changed, but it feels worse every time I have to highlight this problem.

At the moment, all we know is that three magnificent birds, of a species that should be soaring in the skies of the northern uplands in far greater numbers, are missing. In all these cases with missing, tagged, birds we don’t at this stage know what has happened. However, as I have said on many other occasions, these tags are reliable despite what you may have heard to the contrary. They do not frequently just stop transmitting. They are sophisticated, and in cases where birds have died from other causes, they continue to give out a signal, helping in the recovery of the body.

We don’t yet know for sure that a crime has been committed, but such things do happen, far too frequently, in our upland landscapes. The recent red kite killing is a case in point. Has someone, in a misguided attempt to protect their interests, or to satisfy some ingrained hatred of anything with a hooked beak and talons, broken the law and displayed their cruelty?

If there has been a crime committed here, then obviously only a tiny fraction of those with means, motive and opportunity will commit crimes like this (or any other). But each illegal killing, if that’s what’s happened, is one too many, and it doesn’t take many law-breakers for this criminality to have a population-level impact on some species.

I’m on Defra’s Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group, one of a number of such groups established to tackle similar issues in the nature and environment arena. There’s genuine good intention from everyone involved, I think, and the police input is serious, high-level and committed; but nothing seems to be changing.

As I asked over the recent kite killing, are we keeping doing what we’ve always done and getting the same (dreadful) results? Can we do something different? Surely we need to at this point. There are progressive estates and gamekeepers; how do we harness their power and influence, and that of land managers of all kinds? Is it time for greater regulation? Is the sentencing policy too lenient when there’s finally a conviction? How do we remove the pressure on some people might feel that makes them step over the line into breaking the law? Are we getting enough of the good news stories (there are some) out there?

Does this actually matter? I think it does, firstly because wildlife crime doesn’t seem to be taken seriously enough in society. Why not? Secondly, ecologically, the role of top predators is important in maintaining healthy ecosystems. But we also often overlook the simple beauty of these creatures, and how they can make us feel when we see and hear them; and that alone matters, because they are emblematic of some of our most dramatic landscapes.
Let’s hope that these missing satellite-tagged harriers haven’t met the fate that befell the red kite this spring, and that they will be found alive and well, or at least having died from natural causes. But that outcome for missing, tagged birds is rare in our experience, and their disappearance is depressingly familiar. So, once again, we find ourselves echoing calls from Northumbria Police and the RSPB for anyone who may have information about these missing birds to come forward.

Nothing is changing. It must.