AS gourmets tuck into the first grouse of the season this weekend, they might reflect on how the grouse arrived on their plate. The grouse is not the only bird to die for the Glorious Twelfth. According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the managers of grouse moors are deliberately killing one of Britain's rarest birds of prey, the hen harrier, because they view the harriers as competitors.
The RSPB has had reports this year of 17 nests destroyed or birds killed in Scotland and Wales. They include an instance in the Berwyn mountains in Wales where three chicks were stamped to death. In the past 17 years, the RSPB has received 167 reports of persecution of hen harriers, 97 of them since 1987. Killing harriers is illegal under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act.
A survey in 1988 showed that only a quarter of nests on ...
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