A
wildlife crime drama is unfolding in Britain, as harriers go missing on the
increasingly perilous moors.
October
30, 2015
You’d
be hard-pressed to find a bird that beats the Hen Harrier for
sheer eeriness (as you can read all about in this week’s Sketch). In the U.K., the raptor is known as the
“ghost of the moor” for its habit of appearing and disappearing in
the mist that shrouds the hilly landscape running through Northern England,
Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Lately, though, the “disappearing” part
has become a major problem: In recent years, Britain's Hen Harriers have
been vanishing at an unprecedented rate, especially in England, where declining
numbers and failed nests have left the birds teetering on the brink of regional
extinction.
The
saga of the vanishing Hen Harriers has all the makings of an English country
mystery—except that it isn’t such a mystery after all. Conservation groups say
they know, for the most part, what’s happening to the harriers: They’re being
killed off by humans who see these birds as unwanted competition. That’s
because Hen Harriers hunt grouse, which places them in direct conflict with
landowners who cultivate the plump birds for the purposes of grouse hunting, an
expensive sport that rakes in millions each year.
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