Hen harriers raise record 58 chicks in Bowland as fewer tagged birds disappear

Hen harriers fledged 58 chicks from 16 nests in the Forest of Bowland this summer, the most recorded in the Lancashire uplands since the species was almost lost from England, according to figures released on Sunday by Natural England.

The total is nearly double the 31 chicks counted in 2024 and compares with a single successful nest in 2013, the year the bird was declared effectively extinct as a breeding species in England. Across the country, 68 nests were recorded this year, producing 219 young, with Bowland, the North Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales accounting for three-quarters of them.

Officials attribute the recovery partly to a drop in the number of birds disappearing in suspicious circumstances. Of 74 harriers fitted with satellite tags between 2023 and 2025, nine have stopped transmitting without any trace of the bird or the tag being found, compared with 31 of 89 in the preceding three years. Hen harriers prey on red grouse chicks and have long been persecuted on moors managed for driven shooting.

“We are not naive enough to say the problem has gone away, but the data are moving in a direction they have never moved before,” said Dr Caroline Ashby, Natural England’s senior upland ornithologist. “Sixteen nests in one valley system is the kind of density you read about in Victorian records.”

A programme under which estates can apply for a licence to remove harrier chicks from nests on grouse moors and rear them in captivity, known as brood management, took four broods this year. Natural England said the scheme, which conservation groups have challenged in court, would be reviewed next spring.

Gamekeepers’ representatives said the figures showed moorland management and harrier conservation were compatible. “Our members have fed these birds through diversionary feeding, protected nests from foxes and lost grouse to them,” said Alistair Rowe, regional director of the Moorland Association. “It would be nice if that were acknowledged occasionally.”

The RSPB, which runs a nest-monitoring scheme in Bowland with the United Utilities estate, was more cautious. Its investigations officer for northern England, Beth Kilburn, said three tagged birds had disappeared in the North York Moors in September alone. “One good summer does not undo 30 years,” she said. “The test is whether these 58 birds are still alive at the end of the winter.”

The hen harrier is a ground-nesting raptor whose skydancing display flight, in which the male tumbles repeatedly over the moor, draws birdwatchers to the Pennines each spring. The Bowland fells are the species’ most important site in England and appear on the Lancashire county badge.