Thank you for your responses (3)

Many hundreds of you are responding to the DEFRA gamebird consultation and telling us that you have done so – here are some more examples from your emails to us (see earlier selections – click here and here.

Thank you for responding – every response is valuable, whether you basically cut-and-paste our suggestions, shorten or lengthen them, correct the typos or introduce some of your own, refine or embellish them, or indeed start from scratch and produce your own perfect consultation response.

The closing date for consultations is Monday so we expect many more people to have a look at this at the weekend and send off a response then. Here are our suggestions for how to respond – click here.

Here are some more quotes from what you have sent us:

Just wanted to say a huge thank you for this email. I was able to respond easily with your suggested responses (on my phone with my thumb while feeding my 10 day old son!). I’ll also forward on to family and friends.

For the first time in my life (65 years and counting) I have sat down and completed a government consultation. This is thanks to you for taking the time to provide me with the tools and information (and inspiration) to do so. I live in the countryside surrounded by trees and, it seems to me a lot of people who do appear to care about nature. Sadly, we seem to also have a number or people, generally wealthy landowners, who care more about exploiting nature to fill their coffers and to hell with everything else.

I therefore really appreciate all you are doing and the inspiration you give.

Thank you for providing all the information to fill in the DEFRA consultation on gamebirds. I’ve submitted mine and forwarded your email to birdwatching friends. Fingers crossed!

Just to let you know I have just filled in the DEFRA consultation it was much easier with your guide points that you posted on Twitter earlier, I don’t think I would have bothered wading through the mire otherwise.

We have some land which we are rewilding which has glow worms, slow worms and grass snakes (as well as pole cats and dormice) and our next-door neighbours release some pheasants and they just come straight on into ours and hoover everything up. It’s very disheartening.

Thanks ever so much for everything you guys are doing for nature, you inspire me to get up and go out and do my bit…

Thank you for emailing me about the government consultation document, which otherwise I would have known nothing about. I have filled it in using your own comments and hope this will be okay. I’m not skilled or knowledgeable enough to compile such answers myself, but i have read them and understand the replies. I will now share your newsletter. It did take a bit of reading, but worth it. Thank you ,

Just to let you know that I have completed the DEFRA consultation form…thank you for the guidance, it was very helpful.

It does seem very bizarre that a small minority can release such huge numbers of non native animals into the countryside with no assessment of the environmental impact just because they plan to shoot them…but try and reintroduce a beaver…..!!!

Following your email this morning I’ve just submitted my response to the game bird consultation – phew!  Hopefully some of what I said even made sense.  Please keep up the work that you do – I think it is amazing and so vitally important. I’m not quite sure how you do it – I definitely need some time to recover from the DEFRA consultation experience!

Hi thank you for sending out the structured response to the DEFRA gamebird consultation. I have just finished filling it out. No small task even with your excellent structured response. Thank you for being our voice and saying no to this ridiculous activity. Well done for your work in getting DEFRA to evaluate the situation as it stands. Fingers crossed at the very minimum it does mean Buffer Zones will be introduced even if they are not adequate, once the concept is in place it is easier to build from.

Job done – response sent.

Well done Chris, Ruth & Mark with taking on the Dinosaurs.

I have completed the questionnaire. I got more and more angry as I did so. Releasing birds so that humans can practice their shooting skills.  Thank you for bringing this to my attention. 

Given the scale of unregulated large game birds being released DEFRA should have never allowed the situation to get as bad as it has

I have just filled in the form and responded.

I would just like to add my gratitude and admiration for the work you have done in making this possible and also in making a difficult form easier for those of us who are on the side of the environment!

There was FAR too  much on the form about monetary losses which gamebird releasers might suffer – they are a business – we should not kowtow to their profit margins in looking to save the environment.