Undercover footage of raptor persecution 'a game changer'

Gamekeepers recorded discussing killing Hen Harriers and a Buzzard

On 22 October Channel 4’s Alex Thomson introduced extraordinary video footage captured by the RSPB Investigations Team of three gamekeepers on a grouse moor in North Yorkshire, discussing (and then off camera killing) a Hen Harrier.

While that may not sound particularly ‘game changing’, what makes this footage especially important is that the audio quality is extremely good. Videos showing raptor persecution have tended to record sound at a landscape scale or not at all. This time (presumably using high-end and very well-positioned microphones) every word spoken between the Head Gamekeeper on his radio and the two other gamekeepers he is talking with can be heard. In the Channel 4 report their voices have been slightly changed - in all likelihood to mask their identities while the case is investigated by the police - but their words are absolutely clear.

In the conversation that was included in the edit (the full transcript is not yet available) the trio of gamekeepers can be heard discussing ‘jets’ (their name for harriers), a ‘bomber’ (a Buzzard shot earlier in the day), and ‘nolling’ (killing). They know what they’re doing is illegal as in damning dialogue the gamekeepers discuss whether a harrier in range is ‘boxed (wearing a satellite-tag that sends tracking coordinates back to conservationists) or ‘clean’: when they realise it is carrying a tag, the Head gamekeeper swears in exasperation. However, towards the end of the video one of the gamekeepers radios that he has a ‘jet’ in front of him. He thinks it’s ‘clean’. He is told to get as close as he can - if he sees there‘s ‘f*** all on it’ then he should ‘biff’ it. Moments later a single shot rings out and the keepers congratulate themselves for ‘nolling’ a ‘clean’ harrier…

As Alex Thomson puts it, “if their words are anything to go by, yet another rare Hen Harrier shot, by yet another criminal gamekeeper, on yet another grouse moor”.

Moorland Association

The landowner lobby group for grouse shooting, the Moorland Association, put up Andrew Gilruth to do his usual work of defence, denial, and distraction. Gilruth has been doing this for years but sounds less and less convincing as time goes on. The obvious strategy, knowing that this video would be seen by millions and discussed for months on blogs and social media, would have been to condemn the criminality, admit this looks appalling, and vow to do something about it. Instead, he is recorded saying “rather than attack rural communities with these sweeping generalisations, why is the charity not celebrating the boom in [the harrier] populations?”

Why? Firstly because there is no ‘boom’ - Natural England themselves reported in September that there had been a drop in breeding attempts, recording a total of just 34 breeding attempts in England (down from 54 in 2023) of which only 25 were successful. And, secondly, like the rest of us, the RSPB is bloody furious that the people he represents can’t stop themselves from committing wildlife crimes. He will know (if he does any homework at all) that just a few weeks ago Raptor Persecution UK reported that 129 Hen Harriers have now been confirmed ‘missing’ or illegally killed in the UK since 2018, most of them on or close to grouse moors. One was reported ‘missing’ just last week, when his tag stopped working in the Bowland area in July - the 10th reported Hen Harrier case of 2024.

The latest RSPB BirdCrime Report listed “1,529 confirmed incidents, involving the illegal persecution of at least 1,344 birds of prey. These include vulnerable and recovering species such as Hen Harriers, White-tailed Eagles, Golden Eagles, Red Kites and Goshawks”, stating that “The majority of these incidents are associated with land managed for gamebird shooting.” Note, those statistics won’t include ‘clean’ birds like the Hen Harrier (probably) shot in the undercover footage as there will be no data to show them ‘missing’ or even dead.

The ‘normalisation’ of wildlife crime

What was being revealed here was the ‘normalisation’ of crime on grouse moors. No one watching the footage (with the exception of Gilruth and the rest of the shooting industry perhaps) can be in any doubt this was NOT an exceptional or even unusual event. The gamekeepers knew exactly what they were doing. The language they used, the caution they took not to ‘noll’ a ‘boxed’ harrier, the easy admittance of the shooting of a Buzzard and a Raven (both protected species), were all striking. They were not co-conspirators in any covert sense - they were just doing a job.

The Hen Harrier has been described as a ‘litmus test’ for upland ecosystems. It is a species that has an abundance of favourable habitat for thousands of pairs to breed in, but has a tiny and declining population. If it is failing that ‘test’ - and it is - that is purely down to the shooting industry and persecution.

Licencing

The RSPB Investigations Team deserves a huge amount of credit for this expose, as does Channel 4 for broadcasting it. Where we would sound a note of disagreement with them both is over grouse moor licencing. The RSPB’s Mark Thomas, the Head of Investigations, was quoted discussing licencing saying that because licences were given to estates rather than to individuals, shooting estates could be shut down if they broke the law. The government, he said, ‘“could stop this overnight.”

Protect the Wild has enormous respect for Mark Thomas and the rest of the Investigations Team, but we simply don’t have the same faith in a licencing system that he does. We have explained why in detail in a previous post (“Raptor persecution: licencing shooting industry not the answer”), but in summary our doubts come down to five main issues: legitimising grouse shooting, existing laws, enforcement, and the legal system.

• Licencing means accepting that the mass slaughter of grouse (and the killing of native predators) is ‘okay’, it legitimises it and we find that unacceptable;

• birds of prey ostensibly already have all the legal protection they should need, the problem is not licencing but that the laws are widely ignored;

• there is barely any enforcement (no estate has ever handed over criminal gamekeepers voluntarily) and no extra police or investigators are currently being confirmed as part of the licencing ‘offer’;

• on the legal side we can be certain that even if the licencing system is robust (which it won’t be as Scotland’s fox hunting licencing system has dramatically proved recently) defence lawyers will entangle any cases in the courts for years while estates carry on regardless;

• and licencing also acts like a blank slate for all the criminality that has taken place over the decades since raptor persecution was made illegal.

Remarkably, Gilruth himself presented another reason why licencing won’t work: it hasn’t solved anything in other industries, why should it solve anything here, he asked? For once, we agree with him. The shooting industry doesn’t want licencing and they won’t work to make it a success. They’ve done absolutely nothing to stop Hen Harriers from disappearing now, they won’t in the future…

Licencing grouse shooting estates is not the answer to all the problems they cause. Shutting them down is. That’s never been so achievable. In the next few years (or the next twenty-five, who knows) the grouse shooting industry will be shut down. Whether that’s through public revulsion at the killing of millions of sentient animals for fun, exposure of crimes like in the footage shown by Channel 4, the impact of the climate crisis on the uplands (which is already seeing pheasants being shot in vast numbers on the lower slopes of grouse moors), the unacceptable burning that takes place every year, or the ongoing catastrophic decline in our biodiversity, it will happen.

Handing the industry a ‘licencing lifeline’ now makes no sense whatsoever.