Defra holds firm on game bird releasing in England

Wednesday, 12 February 2020 6:31 PM

The shooting community has been provided with reassurances by Defra that no knee-jerk reactions will occur following the ongoing review of releasing gamebirds in and around designated sites.

In response to a written question by Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Shooting and Conservation, regarding timescales, Defra Minister Rebecca Pow said ‘it is not in its [Defra’s] view reasonable nor realistic to expect measures to be implemented before summer/autumn 2020’.

Caroline Bedell, BASC’s executive director of conservation, said: “BASC has been raising its concerns at the highest levels of government and we are delighted that Defra will not be bullied by threats of legal action into a knee-jerk ban on the release of game birds across almost half of England.

“As many shoots are already in the planning stages for next season the news is reassuring that there is no immediate threat ahead whilst the review is undertaken.

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Defra to review release of game birds after legal threat

Government agrees to examine impact of shooting industry’s release of 50m non-native birds

Patrick Barkham

Thu 12 Sep 2019 10.20 BST Last modified on Thu 12 Sep 2019 11.56 BST

The annual release of more than 50 million non-native game birds into the countryside with no environmental assessment is to be reviewed by the government after campaigners announced a legal challenge.

Chris Packham, Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, of the campaign group Wild Justice, argued that the massive and unregulated increase in the number of pheasants and red-legged partridges put into the British countryside for shooting each year – up from 4 million in the early 1970s – contravened the EU habitats directive.

Under these laws, the impact of game birds on the biodiversity of protected areas must first be assessed. Pheasants and partridges can prey on native reptiles and amphibians, while recent scientific evidence has shown an association between game birds and higher numbers of foxes and avian predators such as crows, which in turn prey on rare species such as curlew.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has confirmed there will be a review of the way game birds are released on or near protected areas such as special areas of conservation in England.

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Wild Justice challenges DEFRA over mass release of gamebirds

18/07/2019

Wild Justice has launched a new legal challenge, this time of DEFRA and its failure to assess the impacts on sites of conservation interest of releasing 50 million non-native gamebirds into the countryside.

The non-profit company, set up by Chris Packham CBE, Dr Ruth Tingay and Dr Mark Avery, sent a Pre Action Protocol letter to Michael Gove on 10 July. The team is launching a crowdfunder on Thursday 18 July at 10 am to raise £44,500 to cover legal costs. The aim is to force Michael Gove and DEFRA to assess the impacts of non-native gamebirds on native wildlife.

Every year 43 million captive-reared Common Pheasants (and 9 million Red-legged Partridges) are released into the countryside. The numbers released have increased tenfold in the last 45 years and, like most of the rest of the shooting industry's activities, are not regulated by government. More paperwork is needed to reintroduce native UK species into the countryside for conservation purposes than to release non-native omnivorous birds on a vast scale to fuel recreational shooting.

Chris Packham said: "The UK's shooting industry is one of the least regulated in Europe with no centralised collection of any data. No one knows how many birds are released or shot, whether wild or captive bred. So how on earth can that shooting industry claim to be making informed decisions about sustainable harvesting, stocking or conservation?

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Wild Justice mulls fresh legal action over new DEFRA bird kill licences

James Agyepong-Parsons

25 Jun 2019

DEFRA’s new general bird kill licence scheme allows licence holders to return to a business-as-usual approach, according to countryside groups

The department issued the new licences in mid-June, two months after Natural England axed the old regime in the face of legal action from legal outfit Wild Justice, which said the licences were unlawful.

Conservationist and Wild Justice co-founder Mark Avery told ENDS that licence holders will have returned to the methods they were using prior to Natural England’s revocation, and questioned whether DEFRA and Natural England, “have actually got around the legal problems the regulator admitted they had when they revoked the licences in the first place.''

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Bad news for farmland birds, says RSPB

First published Thursday 30 October 2014 in News

The RSPB has called on Defra to make “every pound count” in a new wildlife-friendly farm scheme as official figures reveal another huge drop in the number of bird species, such as turtle dove, skylark and yellowhammer, reliant on farmed landscapes.

The Government’s Farmland Bird Indicator published today has revealed another significant fall in numbers. This indicator has been tracking the fortunes of 19 bird species that are dependent entirely on farmland.

Although partly driven by exceptionally bad weather in 2012, the underlying steady decline of the UK Farmland Bird Indicator has continued, with a 10 per cent decline in the last five years. The UK Farmland Bird Indicator has declined by more than half (55 per cent) since 1970.

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Gamekeepers are spared mandatory licences as petition to Defra fails

By Western Morning News | Posted: April 23, 2014

A call for gamekeepers to be licensed as a means of protecting birds of prey has been rejected, with the “economic and environmental benefits” of sport shooting reason enough not to restrict it.

An adult male hen harrier. The RSPB believes

the intensify management of upland areas for

 grouse shooting has contributed to their decline

The petition to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which gathered 10,426 signatures, proposed licenses for gamekeeper and shoots, with each forfeiting them for breaches of conditions to include the illegal persecution of raptors.

Though the focus was primarily on upland grouse moors, managers of the Westcountry’s prime pheasant shoots will be relieved at the Governments refusal – and recognition of their contribution to the rural economy.

The RSPB says the persecution of birds of prey – nearly all of which have been protected since 1954, remains “unacceptably high”, though much progress has been made in lowland areas. Upland areas, however, remain a problem, the charity says.

John Squire Armitage, who started the petition, wrote: “Following any proven offence of persecution on the shoot concerned, i.e. illegal trapping, use of poisons, shooting or the interference with or destruction of nests, the licence would be revoked for a period of not less than two years and commercial shooting activity cease.”

Read more

What have Defra and the RSPB got against us?

By Western Daily Press | Posted: January 18, 2014

Yet again we hear that bird populations, particularly songbirds, are in decline.

Yet again we hear that it's all the fault of farmers. By farming more and more intensively, it appears, we are steadily driving certain species to extinction.

We know that must be true because the RSPB has told Defra it is.

And Defra, as it is currently composed – largely of civil servants who appear to have been hand-picked for their ignorance of the countryside and their dislike, if not hate of farmers – believes implicitly everything that it is told by the RSPB.

Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Defra-RSPB-got/story-20461284-detail/story.html#ixzz2rWhyvGGo

Bird of prey poisonings highlighted by MPs

Hundreds of birds of prey are deliberately killed each year with poisons that have no legal use, according to MPs.

The Environmental Audit Committee says confusion over wildlife laws means criminals often escape unpunished.

It is particularly worried about carbofuran, a chemical used by rogue gamekeepers to kill raptors.

A Defra spokesman said it had banned possession of the chemical, but the MPs insist that it has not.

The chemical is devastatingly toxic to birds. A gamekeeper in Skibo, Scotland, convicted of poisoning birds in 2011, was found to have possessed 10kg of the chemical - enough to kill every raptor in the UK by breaking down its nervous system.

The committee learned that there had been 633 reported cases of poisoning of birds of prey, of which half involved carbofuran.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19982884