Hen Harrier Day

The weekend saw the now annual Hen Harrier Days take place across the UK! The first Hen Harrier Day took place at the Derwent dam in the Peak District on a very wet day in August 2014, where the 570 attendees earned the collective description of the #sodden570. That year Mark Avery and Chris Packham spoke at the event and there were three other small gatherings in support of Hen Harriers across England.

Last year, the main event was again held in the Peak District but on a much hotter, sunnier day and in the Goyt Valley this time. We became known unofficially as the #sunburnt600! Last year there were 7 Hen Harrier events across the country and here we had a Hen Harrier Evening the night before Hen Harrier Day. Both of those were blogged here...

http://louises30dayswild.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/day-69.html

http://louises30dayswild.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/day-70.html

On Sunday I attended the third Hen Harrier Day in the Peak, this time in Edale. I don't know how many people attended this time but I do know it was well attended and there were 12 events across the UK this year. Awareness is spreading, the movement is growing.

This year, the main event was at Rainham Marshes so Chris Packham and Charlie Moores didn't attend the Peak District event but there were six speakers in Edale in total:  Mark Avery, Findlay Wilde, Natalie Bennett (leader of the green party, who made an 8 hour round trip to attend for her short speech!), John Stewart (National Trust), Tim Birch (Derbyshire Wildlife Trust) and Hardyal Dhindsa (Derbyshire's police and crime commissioner who is very committed to tacking wildlife crime).

All the speeches were good but I will include Mark Avery's here (12 minutes if you have the time, it's worth listening to).


and this was Natalie Bennett (again 12 minutes)...



If you don't know what Hen Harrier Day is all about, there is plenty of information about it in last year's posts (linked above), with videos of the speakers from the events too.

The gist of it is a campaign to ban driven grouse shooting. Not shooting, not hunting in general - just driven grouse shooting. If you don't know, driven grouse shooting is killing grouse for fun, no skill involved: canned hunting. A line of beaters drive thousands of grouse up into the sky whilst a line of men fire guns and kill far more birds than can be eaten (any 'leftovers' are simply dumped). In order to produce such unnaturally high numbers of grouse on our uplands, the moorlands have to be very intensively managed and little other life is tolerated. Birds of prey and corvids are trapped, shot and poisoned for the simple reason that they will take a few grouse chicks over a couple of months each year. Foxes, weasels, stoats, hares all suffer the same fate. If you've ever visited a grouse moor, you might have noticed the eerie lack of birds and other wildlife around. The issue is not just the killing of the wildlife but also the consequences of the land management practises with driven grouse shooting - things like heather burning. The way the moors are managed so intensively for grouse leads to a whole host of other problems including flood risk (just ask the people of Hebden Bridge about that - the flooding there is hugely exacerbated by the surrounding grouse moor). In short, driven grouse shooting is a practise that is causing huge damage both ecologically and economically.

This book explains the issues in full detail and covers both sides of the argument - a really interesting read. 

There's a petition you can sign if you feel inclined too - we have until mid September (ish) to get another 20,000 signatures to instigate a parliamentary debate on the issue!


https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/125003

http://birdersagainst.org/circus-cyaneus/