Exclusive: Secret filming reveals the killing of rare Hen Harriers on grouse moors

One thing is clear, the passing Swaledale sheep certainly notices the hidden camera.

But what’s this?

A few minutes later, a man appears dressed in full camouflage gear.

He’s wearing binoculars and he’s also carrying a shotgun. A tad overdressed, you might think, for a spot of bird watching. Unlike the sheep, he has not noticed the secret camera placed in the vicinity by the RSPB.

What unfolds after this is what the RSPB calls groundbreaking evidence in its fight against the illegal killing of rare Hen Harriers on the uplands of Britain.

This evidence has been passed to the police, and because of that investigation, we won’t disclose who these people are or where this is happening in the north of England, but we can say this is a head gamekeeper with his two assistants, and this is on a grouse shooting estate.

Hen Harriers across the UK have been shot, trapped and poisoned to the verge of extinction in the past. They are remarkable birds, by any measure, capable of flying upside down in the breeding season, but there’s no doubt that they eat and disturb red grouse and that means they come into contact with money, big money.

To put half a dozen or so guns onto a grouse moor can cost well in excess of 20 or 30,000 pounds a day, and that means gamekeepers feel under enormous pressure from the wealthy owners of shooting estates to produce as many game birds as possible.

Back on the moors, the three men discuss via walkie-talkie which birds they will kill. They are near a Hen Harrier roost, but they are terrified of shooting a bird with a “box”. They mean a monitored satellite tracker, which is strapped to the bird’s back that could lead to discovery of where and when it was killed.

As they settle into their positions with their guns, they discuss how two of them have already committed criminal acts that very day, shooting a raven and a buzzard, which are both protected species.

Eventually they get what they came for. The first Hen Harrier they see does have a tracking device, so they shoot into the sky in order to scare it away. But as dusk falls, it is clear another Harrier fatally follows the same route, and they laugh as they discuss how this bird is shot and how they are relieved that it is “clean” i.e. does not carry a “box” or satellite tracker.

The RSPB launch their Birdcrime report this week. It says that the past two years have seen the highest number of rare Hen Harriers disappearing and killed under suspicious circumstances, since records began.

Their numbers remain way, way below the sustainable figure of 300 pairs across the UK. The Moorland Association, which looks after the interests of shooting estates, hotly disputes the RSPB claims and says quite rightly that the numbers of all birds of prey are higher than they’ve ever been since records began.

That is true, but as the association well knows, that includes, of course, the huge numbers of Buzzards and Red Kites, whose populations have grown enormously following reintroductions in recent decades across the UK.

Hen Harriers remain on the critical Red List, so now the RSPB and other conservation organisations are pushing for England and Wales to come into line with Scotland. There, a recent new law means that all shooting estates have to be licensed, and that is critical, because it means if a crime is committed, it is no longer the liability of the individual shooter, which is often very hard to prove.

Now in Scotland, the entire shooting estate could lose its licence if a crime is found to have been committed, and that would mean closing the shoot. The stakes are high. It’s too early to say what effect this law has had, but the pressure is growing for shooting estates across England and Wales to be brought into the same situation.

Critics like the RSPB say the industry has shown that it is incapable of policing itself, that it is not a question of a few bad apples, and that this remarkable footage is, they say, further and conclusive proof that shooting has failed entirely to police itself.

Shooting bodies like the Moorland Association hotly dispute that. They say licensing has not worked when used in other industries and it would simply add another layer of red tape. But there’s no question, they are on watch and are extremely concerned about what licensing might bring.

To that extent, all eyes are on Scotland on this issue at the moment. But of course, the secret eyes, the covert cameras, will be out as ever across the uplands and moorlands of England and Wales as well. The statistics from the RSPB Birdcrime report show that over a 15 year period, 68% of people successfully convicted for crimes against birds of prey were gamekeepers on shooting estates.