The Moorland Association sent the following letter to The Guardian in response to an article published this week about hen harriers.
Sir,
The RSPB should hang its head in shame for brazenly deceiving the public (Hen harrier killings in 2023 highest on record, RSPB says, 23 October).
It is well known that hen harriers are not terribly good at looking after themselves in the wild, with 60% dying from natural causes in the first year alone.
This species has reached a 200-year high, in England, thanks to one of the world’s most successful conservation plans, led by Defra.
Thank goodness the High Court threw out the RSPB’s ludicrous attempt to stop the plan three years ago. With more hen harriers in our skies than ever before, we should accept that it is perfectly normal for more to go missing – nature can be cruel.
Attributing all these losses to crime is just daft.
Unfortunately, it also appears that the public should expect the RSPB press office to keep issuing stories of doom as part of its campaign to incite hostility against some of the hardest working people on earth, moorland gamekeepers.
Perhaps it’s time for the RSPB to let the police lead on crime and accept the internationally recognised view that driven grouse shooting has best protected and preserved some of the rarest habitat on the globe – open heather moorland.
Andrew Gilruth,
Chief Executive