The strange case of Natural England and the Hen Harrier conservation licence
- C4PMC
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
The Moorland Association have announced that their application to Natural England for a Hen Harrier conservation licence has ultimately not been approved, despite the fact that Natural England agreed with large parts of the MA’s plans.
Why on earth is this? The brood management trial aimed to strike a balance between protecting hen harriers and supporting the management of grouse moors, and as far as hen harriers go, it certainly seemed to be doing well. In fact, you could argue that the Hen Harrier brood management project is the most successful conservation scheme in the country, if not in all of Europe. Hen Harrier numbers have increased in huge leaps and bounds throughout the course of the project. From just four breeding pairs in 2016 to 50 pairs in 2023; who else can boast similar figures?
The decision from Natural England is a very strange one. One of their main reasons for not continuing the trial scheme appears to be their love of satellite tagging and the belief that without satellite tagging each separate Hen Harrier, the project would not work. This is particularly odd; the Moorland Association had suggested fitting high visibility Darvic rings to each leg of the bird – rings which are particularly visible on Hen Harriers – as a way of managing bird identification post release or fledging. The Moorland Association had “confidence that the project has been well planned and has a high likelihood of success”, something that Natural England had asked for in their application. However, the MA were against the idea of satellite tracking, as they believed that the use of these tags would not be proportionate and, further, would undermine the project’s aims.
There were a number of reasons why the Moorland Association wanted to shift to coloured rings. The satellite tags add unnecessary cost and project complexity; they were fitted as a luxury when the project began but they are still expensive and as the numbers of Hen Harriers involved in the trial increased, the cost of the tags naturally did so as well.
The second reason is that the 456 remote tagging devices which have so far been fitted to Hen Harriers since the project began have not resolved the human/wildlife conflict which revolves around the birds. In fact, the satellite tags have been used to increase conflict. The RSPB in particular – who tried to stop the brood management plan and have tried their best to halt the southern one as well – love to use satellite tag data to promote their own views.
Tags which stopped transmitting for any reason were immediately used as evidence of a crime, and allegations of criminality were thrown about as soon as a tag either stopped working or stopped moving on a grouse moor. No other reasoning was considered, and the MA believes that this attitude has in fact made the human/animal conflict surrounding Hen Harriers demonstrably worse. The threats from Natural England staff and the RSPB surrounding the non-transmitting of a tag have made landowners and gamekeepers wary of Hen Harriers on their land. Fitting satellite tags to hen harriers is now counterproductive and, as such, detrimental to the recovery of the species, as it inflames the conflict around the birds.
We believe that all of the above reasoning was presented to Natural England; but despite this, Natural England never made satellite tagging a requirement of the project. If they had done so, the MA would perhaps have agreed, despite their misgivings surrounding satellite tags. But rather than suggest that, Natural England appear to have simply walked away from the project; a conservation like no other, and with a simply astounding success rate. Odd, no? This isn’t the end of the story; the MA “remain fully committed to finding a workable, long-term solution”. All we can say is, watch this space...