{"id":245703,"date":"2025-11-05T17:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245703\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T17:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:37:10","slug":"peregrine-falcon-chicks-at-worcester-cathedral-died-from-ingesting-poison-raptor-persecution-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/245703\/","title":{"rendered":"Peregrine Falcon chicks at Worcester Cathedral died from ingesting poison \u2013 Raptor Persecution UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three Peregrine chicks that hatched on Worcester Cathedral<\/a> all died within a few weeks, earlier this spring. Two of the dead chicks were retrieved and sent for post mortem and the results have now shown they died from ingesting poison.<\/p>\n

The name of the poison hasn\u2019t been published but a statement by the group who monitor the adult Peregrines at Worcester Cathedral (\u2018Peregrine Falcons in Worcester\u2019) says, \u2018Both birds had internal bleeding consistent with death from poison\u2018, which suggests the poison was probably a Second Generation Anti-coagulant Rodenticide (SGAR).<\/p>\n

The adult breeding pair (known as \u2018Peter\u2019 and \u2018Peggy\u2019) are fine.<\/p>\n

The BBC News website has an article on the news (here<\/a>) and states that West Mercia Police had received a report but the investigation has closed due to \u2018evidential difficulties\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One of the adult Peregrines at Worcester Cathedral. (Photo from Worcester Cathedral)<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> written by Dr Ed Blane and published on the Wildlife Poisoning Research UK<\/a> website shows that there has been a substantial increase in Peregrine exposure to SGARs, and especially to the poison Brodifacoum. The same issue is affecting Foxes and Otters.<\/p>\n

This follows a report published last year \u2018Collateral Damage<\/a>\u2018 by Wild Justice which reported an alarming increase in SGARs exposure in Buzzards and Red Kites and was heavily critical <\/a>of the Rodenticide Stewardship Scheme and how the government was ignoring the evidence.<\/p>\n

As a result, the Health & Safety Executive, which controls the approval regime in the UK for rodenticides and decides what can and cannot be used, ran a public consultation<\/a> in September 2025 to look at alternatives to SGARs.<\/p>\n

The results of that consultation are awaited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Peregrine chicks that hatched on Worcester Cathedral all died within a few weeks, earlier this spring. Two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-245703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}