Another record year for hen harriers – again with no thanks to the RSPB

Natural England has recorded a record number of 119 hen harrier chicks fledging successfully from nests across uplands in Co Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Yorkshire in 2022.

Of the 49 nests recorded, 34 were successful in producing chicks. Lancashire remained a stronghold, with 18 nests recorded in Bowland, and Northumberland had the next highest with nine nests. There were a further 10 nests across the Yorkshire Dales & Nidderdale region, seven in the North Pennines, and five in the Peak District, representing an encouraging increase in numbers across their range. A total of 344 hen harrier chicks have now fledged since Natural England issued its first licence for the Brood Management Trial in 2018, and this year's figures of 119 chicks are exceptional when compared with those during the previous 30 years. Our chart below, which shows the number of hen harrier breeding attempts, successful nests, and chicks fledged in England between 1992 – 2022, speaks for itself.

Both brood management and re-introduction schemes are internationally recognised conservation tools that the RSPB uses for other species, but for some inexplicable reason they refuse to support either when it comes to the hen harrier; the conservation status of which other interested parties are actively trying to improve. Both schemes are fundamental components of Defra's Hen Harrier Action Plan that was published in January 2016, the aim of which is to reverse the decline of the hen harrier in England. Although initially supportive of that Plan, the RSPB withdrew their support just six months after it was launched, citing their opposition to the Brood Management Trial and southern re-introduction of hen harriers as their reasons for doing so. Given the considerable success of the Brood Management Trial, we welcomed the decision by the Court of Appeal in November 2021 to uphold the decision of the High Court to dismiss legal challenges that had been bought against it by the RSPB, the High Court having dismissed their application on all seven grounds. Why the RSPB should want to go to such steps to stop a scheme that is doing so much to help the conservation status of the hen harrier in England defies belief. So too was their preventing Natural England's southern re-introduction of hen harriers with chicks from Spain in 2019.

Correspondence obtained from Defra and Natural England under the Freedom of Information Act clearly showed that someone, or some people, of influence within the RSPB prevented that re-introduction from happening, despite Natural England having had the necessary infrastructure and personnel in place in Wiltshire to receive the first hen harriers from Spain in 2019, some £300,000 of public money having been allocated to the project in 2017/18 and 2018/19, and the support of local landowners. When challenged by the Alliance, the RSPB claimed that "The allegations that have been made that RSPB staff deliberately set out to influence the reintroduction of hen harriers to southern England are simply not true". They went on to say: "No-one is saying that Defra or Natural England staff were being deliberately untruthful in their reports, but there may have been some assumptions made about communications". Really? There is no doubt that someone is being 'deliberately untruthful', but it must be for individuals to make their own decision as to who that might be.