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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulD" data-source="post: 1710263" data-attributes="member: 11840">I wholeheartedly agree that illegal persecution is much more of a threat to our raptors than EOs can or will be. It would be a great shame if we focused so much on EOs that we took our eye off the disgraceful levels of persecution of Hen Harriers.However I have to disagree with your comment about the "dangerous assumption" that the EO "was never indigenous in the UK."  It's not an assumption, it's based on an examination of the available information and is detailed in the BB paper. My original "gut feeling" was that there probably were some wild birds involved, but when you look at the actual information the only tenable conclusion is that our population is due to escapes, illegal releases and their offspring.I can't see any merit in putting up an unsubstantiated case for the occurence of wild EOs in Britain as any proposals or measures based on that are easily undermined by their lack of any factual foundations.</blockquote>