BY BEN O’ROURKE
Heavens to Murgatroyd! How did a botched bird report become the seminal study on raptor persecution?
Most of the tags attached to the birds of prey failed and less than a handful were confirmed illegally killed, yet researchers fiddled the figures to support an agenda.
Ruth Tingay sat in her office one morning in March, 2019, clutching a wad of freshly-printed paper, reading and rereading the words at the top of the first sheet.
“I’ve got to get this out,” she said to herself, tears welling in her eyes, nerves tingling with emotion. “They have to know the truth!” Her stubby fingers released their grip on the pages and began typing furiously, struggling to get the words out quick enough.
“At long last, after years of stalling, hiding, prevaricating and obsfuscating (sic),” began the fresh post on her blog Raptor Persecution UK. “Thirteen years after its publicly-funded study began, Natural England’s hen harrier satellite tag data has finally been analysed and published.”
A hot flush surged within Tingay each time she glanced at the title: Patterns of satellite tagged hen harrier disappearances suggest widespread illegal killing on British grouse moors, aka ‘Murgatroyd et all’ after lead author Megan Murgatroyd, one of the three South Africa-based researchers involved.
Lead author Megan Murgatroyd used tagging data from an RSPB source whose Twitter account was suspended for violating the website’s rules
Tingay and fellow Wild Justice member Mark Avery had been waiting years for this moment. On his blog, Avery had complained how much public money was being spent on “our” report, the one that would finally prove what he and Tingay had claimed for years – countless birds of prey were regularly being gunned down in cold blood on grouse moors across the UK by criminal gamekeeping bastards.
“The most devastating result, in our opinion, is the extent of the criminality and this is what should be grabbing the attention of Ministers,” Tingay typed in her blog post, as her mind began flapping its way towards cloud cuckoo land. “We’ve all known for years that hen harriers are killed by gamekeepers on many driven grouse moors; everybody knows and acknowledges that, but the scale of the killing has always been challenged (or more usually, denied). But this paper puts an end to those denials.”
Avery was equally as gushy: “It’s been a long time coming but the paper published today in Nature Communications is crushing proof that grouse moor management is overwhelmingly the source of wildlife crime against Hen Harriers.”
The figure that Tingay, Avery and others were most impressed with was “72% of the Natural England sat-tagged hen harriers are presumed to have been illegally killed”. That’s based on this table:
The figure for birds “confirmed illegally killed” is 10-times higher after adding on the 66% of birds with tags that stopped working. Dead and missing (or more accurately ‘untrackable‘) are not the same thing. But tell that to Wild Justice and RSPB, who have since its release, regurgitated the report’s findings and bizarre mashed-up figure ad nauseam, twisting the facts along the way.
RSPB, June 12, 2019: “A recent scientific paper using data supplied by Natural England concluded that hen harriers in England and southern Scotland suffer high levels of mortality during their first year of life and the most likely cause is illegal killing in areas associated with management for grouse shooting (72% of hen harriers tracked by this study).“
RSPB, June 13, 2019: “According to a recent government study, 72% of tagged hen harriers were either confirmed as illegally killed or disappeared in circumstances in which illegal killing is the only plausible explanation.“
MarkAvery.info, September 18, 2019 (quoting from the Nidderdale AONB Management Plan 2019-24): “A recent research paper by Murgatroyd et al. (2019) looked at the patterns of disappearances of satellite tagged hen harriers and concluded ‘that hen harriers in Britain suffer elevated levels of mortality on grouse moors, which is most likely the result of illegal killing.”
MarkAvery.info, July 12, 2020: “The biological analysis of the issue is, of course, sound although I think the Murgatroyd et al. paper of last year deserves a bit more highlighting (perhaps at the expense of some older studies).”
Wild Justice, June 22, 2021: “Only Olivia Blake mentioned the Murgatroyd et al. study which is a damning indictment of the impact of a hobby, driven grouse shooting, on wildlife crime figures in upland England.“
MarkAvery.info, July 4, 2021: “How does Coghill deal with the inconvenient fact that study after study has shown that raptor persecution on grouse moors is at a very high level and at a level high enough to explain the absence of such raptors from those areas to an amazingly striking, obvious and undeniable degree (here are links to some of those studies and discussion of them, just as a recap, Murgatroyd et al…”
RPUK, August 3, 2021: “Most recently he was a co-author on the important Murgatroyd et al paper (2019) which showed that at least 72% of hen harriers satellite-tagged by Natural England were presumed to have been illegally killed on or close to driven grouse moors”.
RSPB, May 11, 2023: “In 2019, a study of Hen Harriers satellite-tagged by Natural England revealed that 72% of the 58 birds tracked were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed (Murgatroyd et al, 2019)… A new paper by Ewing et al, adds fresh weight to these concerning statistics through analysis of the movement and fates of 148 Hen Harriers… between 2014 and 2021. Mirroring the methods used by Murgatroyd et al, researchers determined that 43 of the tracked birds were likely to have been illegally killed”.
MarkAvery.info, May 11, 2023: “The increasing intensity of red colouration in squares indicates the extent of grouse moor management using the same gradation scale as Murgatroyd et al. (2019).”
Wild Justice, August 8, 2023, Meddling on the Moors report: “an excellent scientific analysis of Hen Harrier survival”
RPUK, September 19, 2023: “The press release does acknowledge that hen harrier persecution remains an ongoing issue on many driven grouse moors, and includes a link to the important 2019 scientific paper by Murgatroyd et al showing the extent of these crimes.”
RSPB, November 30, 2023: “A previous Natural England study (Murgatroyd et al., 2019) revealed that Hen Harriers are ten times more likely to die or disappear within areas predominantly covered by grouse moor compared to those that were not managed for grouse.”
RSPB, February 5, 2024: “This built on a paper (Murgatroyd et al.) published in 2019 which showed that Hen Harriers are ten times more likely to die or disappear within areas predominantly covered by grouse moor compared to those that were not managed for grouse.“
RSPB, April 8, 2024: “This March saw the five-year anniversary of a seminal NE study by Murgatroyd et al. (2019), which revealed that Hen Harriers were ten times more likely to die or disappear in areas predominantly covered by grouse moor compared to those that were not managed for grouse. It concluded that at least 72% of tagged Hen Harriers were either confirmed to have been illegally killed or disappeared suddenly with no evidence of a satellite tag malfunction.”
Meanwhile back on Earth, there are no smoking guns and the figures do not support Tingay and Avery’s ridiculous claims. As my friend John Cavana always says: “Hen harrier dies on grouse moor is like saying ‘worm found dead in garden‘, it’s where they live.”
“No evidence of a satellite tag malfunction” is certainly not evidence of foul play. People who draw conclusions like that are intellectually challenged.
However, the report’s conclusions have become ‘fact’ and flawed methods used now standard, as the RSPB’s May 2023 post points out.
Does that mean fiddling the figures is common practice these days?
I emailed the writers of the report, asking them to answer these questions:
- 1. In the study of 60 tagged hen harriers, only “three birds were recovered dead and autopsies confirmed that they were illegally killed”. That is 7% of the 60 raptors. How can that be described as “widespread illegal killing”?
- 2. Your report says a tag “recovered with the harness intact but without the bird’s body [indicated] an illegally killed bird”. Where is the explanation for this assumption?
- 3. Following that logic, a bird that dies then is eaten by a fox, leaving only its tag and harness, would be classed as an illegal killing. Is that correct?
- 4. The RSPB and others often latch onto this finding: “42 birds (72%) were either confirmed to have been illegally killed or disappeared suddenly with no evidence of a tag malfunction”. Missing and confirmed illegally killed are not the same. Why are they lumped together as if they are? If the police did the same thing, do you think there might be complaints?
- 5. Why does the study ignore the possibility the tags simply fell off?
- 6. After more than 70% of the tags in your study failed, how can the RSPB regularly claim tags are reliable? Why do you consider data from tags to be so reliable, knowing that many fail?
I’ve also asked them to forward the email to a contributor from Natural England I could not find an email for, Stephen G. Murphy. Despite his contribution to the ‘seminal‘ paper, he was demonised by a frothy-mouthed Tingay for appearing fair and balanced: “I read an article in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago where gamekeepers were being ‘lauded’ as the hen harrier’s ‘friend’ by a straight-faced Natural England employee (Stephen Murphy) who also claimed that hen harrier Bowland Betty, who had been found dead with shotgun injuries on a grouse moor, had been shot away from the grouse moor, not on it – a statement for which he has absolutely no evidence whatsoever!”
Avery followed that up with a blog post devoted to smearing Murphy to the point where he suggested he might be an accessory to a crime: “Betty was a satellite tagged Hen Harrier that was found dead in 2012 on the Swinton estate. Tests showed that she had been shot, but that the shot had not immediately killed her. She could have been shot anywhere (likely near to where she was found) before succumbing to her wounds… The only way Stephen can claim this is if he has been told where Betty was shot. Is that the case?”
After being at the forefront of this nonsense for years, these losers are still nowhere near proving their claims about rampant raptor ‘persecution‘ in the UK. Most doctors would recognise prolonged repetitive futility as a psychological disorder.
I have a statistic that’s just as robust as the one they throw about: “90% of celebrity conservationists are presumed idiots”. How did I reach that figure? Well, I’ve just lumped together the 0% of ones I can confirm are idiots with the 90% of ones I can’t, but I presume they are.
Ben O’Rourke worked as Assistant International Editor of the South China Morning Post and as a journalist for Fieldsports Britain. Ben now works as a freelance journalist and investigator. His Substack can be found here.