NORTH YORK MOORS — Six police officers from the national wildlife crime unit and North Yorkshire police arrived at the Snilesworth estate last week. The officers were investigating the disappearance of a white-tailed eagle in the North York Moors and found little at a copse that was the focus of their search.

North Yorkshire police issued a public call for information on Monday, treating the eagle's disappearance as suspicious. The missing bird was fitted with a satellite tag at birth; it is the offspring of a pair that bred in Dorset.

Tim Mackrill, a representative of the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, stated that the bird was mainly on the south coast last winter before making a large flight north this spring. "Last winter it was mainly on the south coast but this spring, it did a huge flight up to the east of England, into Scotland and right into the Loch of Strathbeg in Aberdeenshire," Mackrill said. The satellite tag registered the bird near a roost site at 1:20 a.m. on May 1, which was the last signal received. "Then it went offline and we have had nothing since," Mackrill said. "Officers went to see the last known location and nothing was found. It is suspicious because the tags are really reliable. There is no reason for it to stop transmitting."

Estate staff assisted in searching the area after the signal stopped transmitting but found nothing. Mark Thomas, head of investigations, said that something likely happened while the eagle was at roost during the night. "I think something has happened in the middle of the night whilst this eagle was at roost. Now, these things don't fly around in the dark," Thomas said. "If you're asking me to look at the probability, it's most likely the bird has been shot. And if the bird is shot whilst it's roosting, then it's being shot at night, potentially with thermal imaging gear."

"All of those cases have been concluded because they just can't prove what happened," he said. "North Yorkshire is consistently the worst and has been for like decades." Three white-tailed eagles from the reintroduction project disappeared last year in Wales, Scotland, and Sussex. White-tailed eagles are highly nomadic during their first three years of life. Human persecution caused the extinction of white-tailed eagles in England, with the last pair breeding in 1780. The Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England have worked to reintroduce white-tailed eagles to the south coast since 2019, releasing 45 young birds from the Isle of Wight.

Ruth Tingay, director of a conservation campaigning organization, stated, "Wilful blindness is no longer an option." Between 2015 and 2024, 921 confirmed incidents of raptor persecution were recorded in the UK. During this period, 21.84% of confirmed raptor persecution incidents occurred in North Yorkshire. Fifty percent of persecuted raptors in North Yorkshire were shot, 21% were poisoned, and 13% were trapped.