RSPB says bird of prey attacks persist on game shooting land

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says bird of prey persecution is still being driven by land managed for game shooting, with more than half of recorded attacks happening on or near such land. Its latest Birdcrime report, the first to examine 15 years of data from 2009 to 2023, recorded 1,529 confirmed incidents involving 1,344 individual birds of prey, while probable or unconfirmed cases pushed the total beyond 5,000.

The scale of the losses is wide and specific. The confirmed victims included 586 buzzards, 270 red kites and 154 peregrines, and the charity says vulnerable and recovering species such as hen harriers, white-tailed eagles, golden eagles and goshawks have also been targeted. It says birds of prey are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, yet continue to be shot, trapped and poisoned in ways that remain concentrated in upland grouse shooting areas and lowland pheasant and partridge shooting areas. Because many crimes happen in remote places and are never detected or reported, the charity says the real toll is likely higher still.

That concentration on gamebird land is where the accountability gap becomes hardest to ignore. The RSPB says some individuals target birds of prey to boost gamebird stocks for sport and profit, and it is now pressing for licensing of gamebird shooting across the UK. Without a change in the law, it argues, persecution will continue. A 2023 paper in Biological Conservation found that illegal killing linked to gamebird management can account for up to three-quarters of hen harrier annual mortality, underscoring how directly land use decisions can shape the survival of a protected species.

The record remains bleak. The RSPB says suspected hen harrier persecution hit a high in 2023, with 34 birds suspiciously disappearing or being confirmed persecuted on or near grouse-shooting land. Other cases include two young white-tailed eagles found poisoned in County Antrim in 2023, a short-eared owl shot in the Peak District in 2024, and a satellite-tagged hen harrier known as Rannoch, found in a spring trap on a grouse moor in Perthshire in 2019. In Scotland, government figures recorded 22 raptor persecution offences in 2022-23, spanning poisoning, shooting, trapping, disturbance and egg theft.

Scotland has begun tightening the legal framework. The Scottish Parliament passed the Wildlife and Muirburn Bill in March 2024, introducing licensing for grouse shoots and putting estates at risk of losing their licence if there is evidence of illegal persecution on their land. Shooting groups deny that persecution is widespread across the industry. BASC says it condemns raptor persecution and will expel members convicted of it, while also arguing the RSPB’s 2023 Birdcrime report showed a year-on-year fall in incidents across the UK.