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“The association has a policy of zero tolerance of raptor persecution,” she says. We suspect the total number of incidents is far greater.”Ĭaroline Middleton Gordon is a spokesperson for the Moorland Association, a landowner organisation representing 860,000 acres of heather moorland in England and Wales, including the 18,000-acre Bransdale Estate. We only know about these incidents because of specific intelligence from people based in these exact areas. People with guns who had the motive to kill birds of prey went on a killing spree. This was a direct response of the public being removed from the countryside. “In a typical year across the entire U.K., we’re looking at about 65 to 75 confirmed incidents of raptor persecution,” says Mark Thomas, head of U.K. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ( RSPB) reports a large spike in raptor persecution in 2020 while the U.K. Nonetheless, hen harriers and other imperilled birds of prey are routinely found shot, trapped, and poisoned on or near grouse moors, including on land owned by the Crown. are protected by the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, under which it’s illegal to intentionally kill or injure them. Hen harriers, abundant throughout most of their range in Europe and Asia, are endangered now in the U.K., where fewer than 600 pairs remain in an area with enough natural habitat to support more than 2,600, according to bird experts. For a pair of nesting hen harriers, a grouse moor is an all-you-can-eat buffet to nourish their chicks. Conservationists say they kill the birds because if an aerial predator such as a hen harrier, a peregrine falcon, or an eagle soars over a grouse moor during a shoot, the grouse scatter, foiling elaborate and costly planning and disappointing clients who pay as much as £8,000 for a day of sport in the countryside. What’s more, some raptors gobble the grouse. Gamekeepers who manage wealthy estates to preserve the centuries-old tradition of grouse shooting have long been accused of illegally killing buzzards and other protected raptors. They were wearing matching outfits-tweed jackets and short trousers. As he made his way down the crag, he was joined by a second man. The man disappeared behind that boulder,” she says, pointing from where she stands on a country lane toward a large rock on the far hillside. “It was very clearly a large bird, greyish-brown in colour, like a buzzard. Peering through her binoculars, she says she saw a man grab something off the ground. “It was six or seven shots in close succession.” “It wasn’t the usual bang, bang and a pause to reload, like when men are hunting rabbits,” says a witness who asked to be identified only as Helen because she fears retaliation for speaking out about the incident. Gunshots shattered the morning stillness on Bransdale Estate, in the North York Moors National Park, on April 16, 2020.