Blanaid Debman Skydancer project leader, would love to hear from anyone with their thoughts on the blog and all things Skydancer. To leave a comment, simply register with RSPB Community by clicking on the link at the top right-hand corner of the RSPB blog page. Registration is completely free and only takes a moment. Let the RSPB know what you think! THIS MONTHS MARKS THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THIS FOUR YEAR LOTTERY FUNDED PROJECT.
As Skydancer fast approaches its first year marker, the truth of these words is becoming ever more apparent. Assumptions (ie the conclusions we reach based on little or no evidence, stereotypes, hearsay, or more often so-called common knowledge) are a bad habit and one of which we are all guilty from time to time. As a student Debman says she once endured a 20 min taxi journey with a very confused and seemingly upset driver who couldn’t reconcile the fact that as a conservation student, she had neither dreadlocks nor vegetarian tendencies. In fact even now, people regularly assume that working for the RSPB as she does, she must be vegetarian which she is not. At the other end of the spectrum, assumptions do have the potential to be hugely damaging (it is, after all, assumptions that form the basis of racial stereotypes), but innocent or malicious, all assumptions do have one thing in common – they are quite simply unproductive.
If you don’t ask questions, how will you ever know the answers?
In the spirit of fair play and open-mindedness, Blanaid Debman says she would like to invite anyone involved in the shooting community, all you Shooting Times and Countryman’s Weekly readers out there, to email her with the assumptions that you feel that conservationists make about shooting/people who shoot, which you feel are unjustified and the reasons why, andshe will do her best to publish and address them on the RSPB blog (reasoned arguments only please – rants, though therapeutic for the ranter, are rarely productive).
Blanaid Debman also thinks it’s high time we all started questioning our assumptions and started challenging ourselves to find new paths and opinions. Here’s a starter for ten that I know will do that for some people claims Debman : Gamekeepers do not want to see anything go extinct and the RSPB does not want to ban shooting.
If any of your readers have read my previous comments on raptor politics they will already know I worked as a gamekeeper for many years coming into contact on a regular basis with hen harriers in the Forest of Bowland. Although I was not surprised to learn there were no breeding harriers this year, I was never the less disappointed unlike a number of my contemporaries at this news. I have always held the view more could have been done by estates to protect these wonderful birds, but as time has shown this was not to be. The RSPB Skydancer project is very important as an educational tool, but as the Natural England’s Hen Harrier Recovery Project has now clearly demonstrated moorland land owners and their gamekeepers are simply not prepared to accept harrier along side red grouse under any circumstances. In the short term education is unfortunately unlikely to change this situation, especially within a close knit community such as Bowland.
I really want to be positive, but having followed recent events in Bowland and read about problems caused by licensed field workers crossing estate boundaries in the Shooting Times this is very difficult. The author is asking for reasoned dialog with the shooting community, and yet she appears to ignore what is now common knowledge that hen harrier nests, particularly on the United Utilities estate, were visited by at least one voluntary warden much too frequently, often without coordination and before nests had been completed or just as harriers were laying their eggs. What damage this sort of unacceptable behaviour caused will never be known, but the legacy is now likely to last a long time in my opinion.
Although I’m split on the RSPB, aware they have done sterling work with certain species/reserves I am of the opinion with this Hen Harrier ‘Skydancer project’ its all been to little to late and would they have done it if they hadn’t had a massive chunk of lottery money. I totally agree education is needed but from what I have seen most of Skydancer education was aimed at school children which won’t make much difference in saving the Hen Harrier when the birds extinct from Britain by the time these kids can drive or show a real interest, but I am willing to be proved wrong, I know they have also ran guided walks and opened a hotline.
I’m not anti RSPB but every time I have met an RSPB volunteer or group its all about membership, with over a million their hardly short and everytime they do a plea for funds to buy a reserve I’ve never had a second e-mail saying we didn’t get it, they always do. I would like to know out of interest how many members they recruited off the back of ‘Skydancer’ if they could answer it.
I have said all along its about building bridges with the shooting fraternity even if they are small ones maybe the 300k could have been used to set up a working group with Hen harrier hotspot estates/keepers (I understand its not that simple just making a quick point)
I’m not sure whether she will get that many replies from shooters and landowners other than ones defending themselves from having it just how they want it. Sorry I’m not much more upbeat about the the project and obvious attempt to be open and fair.
Editor’s Comment. Hi James we appreciate your comments, thank you. There was a working group established under the umbrella of Natural England called the Hen Harrier Recovery Project over seen by the Environment Agency. This came to nothing in the end. Perhaps more significant Mark Avery reported several weeks ago on his blog about the dinner hosted by the Chairman of the Moorland association attended by Mr Richard Benyon at which the MA chairman asked the Minister about derogation for the hen harrier. That was at the time we already knew their was only a single breeding pair in the whole of England.
Steve, Over zealous nest twitching is sadly one of the reasons why so many Hen Harriers deserted the area where they have chosen to nest build in Bowland. I have personally witnessed this UNACCEPTABLE fieldwork being carried out by RSPB licensed volunteers in Bowland BUT IT WAS IGNORED. Please do not let other raptor organisations belittle this statement…Because it all true, in fact I have made a sworn affidavit to that effect and am willing to supply a copy if requested!
Surely, if it is was tax payers money that funded the Hen Harrier Recovery Project, this CANNOT be ignored. A part of everyones taxation is being spent on a Recovery/Persecution Project!!!!! Oops…
Dear James
there is no point in being anti-RSPB – without them the state of our avifauna and nature in Britan would be infinitely worse.
By all means criticise strategy but do you have to attack thye RSPB for their very success? Would you rather they ignored the opportunities for making new members and earning more subscriptions. For heavens sake, the enemies of conservation have huge power and influence and wealth well beyond their numbers and it will take good science, numbers and money to finance the fight against this destructive minority. What is the point of your question about the number of members recruited through the Skydancer project? Are you suggesting that the RSPB weren’t interested in saving the hen harrier? Or that having more members and creating more awareness of nature is somehow sinister and the only, self-serving objective of the RSPB? Is this a watered-down conspiracy policy?
If you support conservation but don’t happen to agree with some RSPB policy by all means voice your objections, but keep unworthy insinuations and smears to yourself. The anti-nature lobby is strong and will delight in any evidence of division that you can give them. Comments like yours tend to end up in the regular pastiches submitted by interest groups to the press – with the opinions – inevitably unattributed – dressed as facts to discredit the geatest champion Nature and conservation in general has in Britain.
Editor’s comment. Dave thank you for your comment it was appreciated.
As a raptor study group member I have increasingly come to doubt the need for nest visits to be the norm. My basic problem is that I’m not convinced the visits are contributing to any worthwhile research. We know all the basic parameters about Harrier eggs, clutch sizes, laying rates etc….unless we are part of a specific project researching something “new”-what’s the point? In terms of breeding..that can be proven without nest visits and its relatively easy to see how many birds are fledging from a distance.
Any nest visit, no matter how expert the field worker, introduces an element of risk to the success of the nest. A nest visit should be only in well justified circumstances.
Re Nest visits – if it is possible to do the monitoring without visiting the nest then a disturbance license is not needed, so estates will have no leverage over the activities of raptor workers. It should be possible to use open access rights to watch birds.
Editor’s Comments. We have now taken this issue up with the North West Raptor Group who says it is vitally important that nests visits to some raptor nests are undertaken, particularly ground nesting sites on grouse moors to verify and record content.
If nests are not examined there exists the strong possibility the content will disappear before a record is taken. For example in the Forest of Bowland peregrine eggs have been replaced with bantam eggs in the past at nests which were then not examined until the end of the season. There are also suggestions clutches of peregrine eggs laid within ground nests are being covered with chopped ice to prevent them from hatching. All too often when nest scrapes had been checked in the past under licence, eggs had already disappeared or dead young were found just as they were emerging from the egg shells. Had these sites not been examined until the end of the season, the dead chicks would certainly have been predated by other predators removing all evidence of what had happened.
This year is a very good example of what can happen when nests are not visited as they should. When Bowland peregrine territories were examined at the end of this season by the NWRG, at a number of sites where the birds were known to have been inclubating eggs in April, these territories were found abandoned with just an empty scrape. Typically, because very few or no prey remains could be found in and around or within these abandoned nests, this strongly suggested either the eggs had been removed, or no eggs had been laid and the adult pair had for some reason deserted the territory before laying any eggs at all. Once again this years evidence indicates no fledged young had been produced at any of these particular nest sites.
There is now a very disturbing trend developing throughout shooting Estates in the Forest of Bowland, including estates owned by United Utilities, where the NWRG are finding an increasing number of traditional peregrine territories which up until 2009/2010 had been regularly tenanted by peregrines throughout the past decade or longer, instead of being productive today, these sites are now abandoned, why?
In none of the instances you cite does the nest visit provide a full picture of what happened. The nests failed but cause unknown. Monitoring from a distance will not demonstrate that eggs were laid but disappeared or did not hatch BUT it should be possible to determine whether known territories are occupied or not.
Such monitoring can continue to demonstrate that good raptor habitat is unoccupied and allows the question “Why?”.
I still do not buy the idea that nests have to be examined.
In any case this argument is irrelevant – nests CANNOT be examined legally without the landowner’s consent. That leaves no choice but to develop alternative tactics. It is clear from you response and other posts here that those who would do raptors ill are constantly adapting their tactics so maybe time for raptor workers to do likewise and adapt to the current operating conditions.
Editor’s Comment. Any holder of a Scientific Disturbance Licence may visit the nests of all Schedule 1 species included on his or her licence without land owner consent, provided the land being visited is designated as access land under the CRoW Act. However this is the very big problem, if ringing any species the land owner MUST be approached first to seek his approval to ring irrespective of the CRoW Act. On grouse moors this remains a very big problem (not only for the ringer but also for the birds) because the estate may not be aware a nest exists, once they are informed generally it has been our experience that where permission to ring is denied, nine times out of ten the nest is then destroyed. This BTO rule does not apply to any National Park where ringing of raptors has been undertaken for many decades without land owner approval being obtained. We are aware that there are some licence holders who choose to disregard this condition and ring without asking the landowner for his permission, but although the BTO are aware this is taking place, if the land owner makes a complaint the ringer may lose his permit, it’s a big risk. On the other hand there is an interesting dilemma for the landowner and his keeper to consider, because to establish who placed rings on any nestlings, the nest must be disturbed to read the ring numbers, this is an offence.
The other difficulty with some of your conclusions, anyone who has tried to locate a ground nest in deep heather, for example hen harrier, merlin, short-eared owl or peregrine knows only too well the nest must be visited at least once to establish the content before the nest is destroyed, or the content disappear. If you wait and take a chance until the young are on the wing at the end of the season, the advantage has been lost. If the nest visit is carried out according to accepted good practice, in fine weather and visits are restricted to just 5 minutes there will be no problems at all. But when a nest is disturbed for at least one hour twenty minutes, as witnessed in Bowland last season, this is totally unacceptable.
Hi David,
I’m sorry if you feel my question on how many members the RSPB received off the back of the project and that the project was only set up to do this was out of order. The question was no way intended to be a smear on the RSPB and the great work they do for conservation. As I mentioned though I feel the money could have been deployed elsewhere for the benefit of this species, but that is just my personal opinion.
I read at the end of one blog post a child asked ‘When will we see a Hen Harrier?’ and that was my point, kids won’t see HH until we tackle the root of the problem instead of spending thousands on encouraging people to phone in sightings or getting kids to make paper harriers.
But then I suppose 300k would be a drop in the ocean against the landowners who need to be won round.
Checking for interference as the key the reason for visits?
I’m still not convinced.
Proof of breeding without a nest visit is easy to establish.You dont have to visit the nest to prove breeding.
Visiting the nest simply confirms what is already known.
A nest visit on discovery (or very strong suspicion of) failure, may reveal some evidence of the reason for failure. In most cases it simply reveals an empty nest which tells us very little. Does it actually matter if there was six eggs in the nest or one? It is simply a failed nest.
If intereference is witnessed…it should not matter what the nest contains …a broody hen, one egg, six chicks. The nest, backed up by the witness evidence, should be enough.
Pinpointing a harier or seo in a patch of rank heather is not always easy (if the bird sits tight. I have had to walk backwards and forwards in a grid across the patch to get the precise location. There is no way that this does not leave a huge scent trail.
Waiting till the end of the season to count the fledged chicks….lets you count how many chicks fledge…precisely what you need to know. A clear indication of the success of the nest and the productivity of the season.
Editor’s Comment. When you consider that many nests on grouse moors are regularly visited by unlicensed gamekeepers anyway, why not simply hand over this responsibility entirely to estate gamekeepers and be done with it altogether.