You may have spotted raptors while driving your car along a country road. Maybe a kestrel hovering over the barren hillside or a silent blur of a barn owl under the treeline flitting across the glare of your headlights at night.
Merriam-Webster defines raptors as “a carnivorous medium- to large-sized bird that has a hooked beak and large sharp talons and that feeds wholly or chiefly on meat taken by hunting or on carrion.” Raptors include birds like the common buzzard, falcons and hawks and in 2021 the reintroduced white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Wight, where I was able to spot one perched on an isolated tree along the border of Brading Marsh and Centurian’s Copse.
Evolved to be the perfect killing machines, raptors enjoy a wide expanse of British and European forests, open meadows and even urban communities from which to forage and hunt, mate and raise young. They can often be seen impassively atop high tree branches, sometimes alone, or in pairs studying its territory for small mammals, worms, fish and other birds. But while widespread, raptors continue to suffer persecution both directly and indirectly by humans whether for sport or some isolated bizarre displays of cruelty as is in one case, hanging from a tree in Northern Ireland.
Protected since the introduction of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, birds of prey represent a part of an intricate ecosystem as chief predators that affect every other species below it on the food chain, from population control of rodents down to health of local plant and fungal life. Disruption of this natural process through illegal trapping, poisoning and shooting of the bird as well as stealing bird eggs is likely to destabilise this ecosystem.
The Bird Directive
Abroad, laws for the protection of birds are embedded in European environmental politics, after Member States unanimously adopted a new initiative called Directive 79/409/EEC, or the Directive, in April 1979. The oldest piece of EU legislation devoted to the environment, it was later amended in 2009, offering a more comprehensive series of legislation to address habitat loss and human encroachment for greater protection of endangered and migratory species.
While these apex predators enjoy increasing protection, complexities still abound as species — being largely migratory — move across borders, continents and jurisdictions. The question becomes how do protective measures hold up for the birds across continents. The United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals and The Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Birds of Prey in Africa and Eurasia form a legally non-binding international agreement to protect migratory raptors throughout African and Eurasian continents, especially as climate change infringes on their chances of survival over the coming decades.
“Overall coverage of raptor species in national monitoring programmes across EU territory seems to be relatively good, although some gaps remain. There have also been particular successes in establishing sustainable and resource-efficient pan-European network for raptor monitoring.” – The EU’s Strategic Approach to Raptor Conservation, Dec 2019
The EU Birds Directive as outlined in Appendix 1 of the EU Raptor Conservation Report recognises: “the need for trans-boundary co-operation to effectively protect our common heritage. [It] provide[s] the most important legal frameworks to take coordinated measures to achieve and maintain the good conservation status of birds of prey throughout their range and to reverse their decline when and where appropriate.”
While they might be protected in one area, migrating to new regions puts the species at risk both for their new habitat and their young. The Directive states that outside protection areas along migratory pathways requires EU Member States to enforce strategies to avoid pollution or deterioration of habitats as well as poisoning and other culling techniques.
One such key strategy— a proposal for an EU Action plan — to prevent illegal poisoning of wildlife and in late 2015, was developed by the European Network against Environmental Crime (ENEC), encouraging Member States to implement this Plan. Its purpose is:
“To set guidelines on behalf of the ENEC for the adoption of measures to eradicate the use of poison-baits in the countryside.”
This included gathering a database of occurences to better understand the extent and trends as well as developing knowledge on the drivers of poison-bating by offenders. This knowledge would be accumulated and shared across member states.
The Research and Monitoring for and with raptors in Europe committee of the European Science Foundation, running from 2010-2015, states that while “[raptors] respond to a range of environmental pressures, such as habitat, change in prey populations, contaminants, and human disturbance” yet just 64% of Europe’s 56 raptor and owl species have ‘unfavourable conservation status’ in Europe.
This mixed data shows that there is a glaring dichotomy between bird protection policy implementation and the results of raptor wellbeing in the wild, especially as the climate crisis and further human encroachment on habitats continue to threaten their existence. Yet this shouldn’t undermine conservation efforts, as one 2018 study affirms there is cause for optimism, concluding that raptor populations have been saved from the brink of extinction because of effective inter-border management strategies. But from a more sober stance, there is still so much to do in regard to a world-wide consensus of raptor protection as species move from place to place. All the while, it’s worth remembering that at the heart of this ongoing work, raptors have a right to the land too.