Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government (1) whether Natural England's Scientific Advisory Committee will publish their recently completed assessment report on the hen harrier brood meddling trial, (2) on what basis the decision was made by Natural England licensing services to extend the trial by two years rather than a longer or shorter period or not at all, and (3) whether they can identify the number of hen harrier chicks that were part of the trial and are subsequently known or thought to have fallen victim to illegal persecution.

An overview of Natural England's (NE) Science Advisory Committee review of the Brood Management Trial was published in this NE blog on 16 March 2023: naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2023/03/16/update-on-the-hen-harrier-brood-management-trial/. A copy is attached with this answer. They advised that further social science data on changing attitudes, was needed. Consequently, The Brood Management partnership has applied for a licence for two years (2023-2024) to allow for further data to be collected. NE’s wildlife licensing service assessed this two-year licence application and issued the licence on 4 May 2023.

The trial is designed to understand how the availability of brood management may affect the persecution of all hen harriers. All hen harriers in England are therefore part of the trial, and research is underway on survival rates of wild reared hen harriers satellite-tagged by NE, before and after the availability of brood management. Of the 32 hen harriers reared in captivity and released with satellite tags, 10 are still alive, six dead birds have been recovered (five confirmed died naturally, one currently under investigation), and 16 have stopped transmitting and have not been recovered. The status of all tagged hen harriers tracked by NE is regularly published on this page: www.gov.uk/government/publications/hen-harriers-tracking-programme-update/hen-harrier-tracking-update.