Birds of
prey 'vanish without a trace' within months of hatching, raising suspicions of
illegal killing
Three
critically-endangered birds of prey have disappeared from the British
countryside “in suspicious circumstances”, raising fears they have been
illegally killed.
The
young hen harriers all
“vanished without a trace” months after hatching, said the RSPB,
which had tagged the birds with satellite trackers as part of a
conservation programme.
Police
are investigating the birds’ presumed deaths in Northumberland, the Peak
District and North Wales.
“While we
don’t yet know what has happened to these three birds, we do know that the main
factor reducing the hen harrier population in the UK is the illegal killing of
birds associated with the intensive management of grouse moors,”
said Cathleen Thomas, project manager of the RSPB’s Hen Harrier Life project.
She said
tags attached to each raptor had “inexplicably stopped” working. The devices
typically continue to send details of their location if a bird dies of natural
causes.
Hen
harriers are one of the UK’s rarest birds of prey, with only nine successful
nests recorded in England this year despite sufficient habitat for 300 breeding
pairs.
Illegal
persecution linked to moorland grouse shooting is thought to be principally to
blame for their low numbers.
Two of
the three birds that recently vanished were last known to have been over land
that was managed for driven grouse shooting.
A young
female harrier known as Hilma was recorded at moorland near Wooler, Northumberland, on 8 August, before going missing.
Another
female, Octovia, vanished in the Peak
District weeks later. She had hatched alongside three other
chicks from a nest in the National Trust’s High Peak Moors in June, the first
time the species had bred in the area for four years.
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