Wild Justice starts new legal challenge of gamebird release regulations
Today Wild Justice sent a Pre-Action Protocol letter to Dr Therese Coffey, the Secretary of State at Defra, and named Natural England, and Alexander and Diana Darwall (owners of the Blachford Estate) as interested parties. Our claim is that Defra has failed to monitor compliance with GL43 which regulates gamebird releases in England and with the lawfulness of the reissue of GL43 a few days ago.
GL43 came into existence when Wild Justice caused Defra to back down rather than face us in court over the issue of whether unlimited releases of tens of millions of non-native gamebirds (Red-legged Partridges and Pheasants)(click here) damage sites of high nature conservation value. We have never been happy with the provisions of GL43 but recent events have increased our concerns.
We wrote to Natural England (on 7 February) about Pheasant releases and received a response in early March (click here). We asked about enforcement of GL43 and wrote this about their response;
When it comes to regulation of shooting, it is interesting that Natural England confirms what we thought, that there has been no notification to them of any releases of gamebirds within 500m of the Dartmoor Special Area of Conservation in either 2021 or 2022. We believe that such releases have taken place and failure to notify Natural England is a serious matter.
However, Natural England don’t regard it as their job to ask about this and instead point the finger at their government department sponsor, Defra, by metaphorically shrugging and saying ‘GL43 is a DEFRA licence and though the conditions of the licence require information on the use of the licence to be submitted to Natural England, monitoring compliance with the licence is DEFRA’s responsibility. Responsibilities around the investigation and enforcement of suspected breaches of GL43 rest with the Police and the CPS. Outside the scope of GL43, NE is in contact with landowners and estate managers of SSSIs to ensure any conditions relating to SSSI consents are being met.’. Natural England’s jobsworth view is that it is everyone else’s job to look at these matters, but not theirs.
We suspect that Defra will be less than thrilled to have been fingered by the statutory body they sponsor as being the body failing on this matter. We’ll find out – we’ve written to Defra to ask them whether a bowler-hatted person from the ministry, in pin-stripe suit and with a rolled up brolly under their arm has taken the train down to Devon to have a poke around on this issue. We’ve also written back to Natural England.
https://wildjustice.org.uk/gamebird-releases/dendles-wood-a-sorry-tale/
We did write to Defra and this is what we got back from them:
We asked three questions of DEFRA in our letter of 16 March 2023. Our questions and
DEFRA’s responses (16 May 2023) are set out below:
“What steps if any Defra takes to monitor compliance with GL43 in general?
Defra does not carry out proactive compliance monitoring in relation to the general licences
that it issues. The reporting requirement under condition 3 of the licence is used to build
an evidence base for the location and extent of relevant release activity only.What steps Defra will take in light of the apparent contravention of GL43 identified
in this letter?
Thank you for drawing this matter to our attention. We will consider your representations
and what if any further action is required to ensure compliance with the conditions of the
GL43.If Defra does not intend to take any action, the reasons for that decision
The steps Defra intends to take are set out above.”
Natural England is quite clear that it regards it as their parent department’s job to monitor compliance with GL43 – it’s as though Natural England is simply a passive letterbox on this subject. And Defra is quite clear it doesn’t monitor compliance with GL43. So, it seems that no-one does. We might ask you to help them out…
But if nobody does, then these regulations which were brought in so that they would give better protection to sites of high nature conservation value aren’t really working are they?
Wild Justice has asked for the following;
In order to remedy the legal errors, we request that the Secretary of State:
Wild Justice PAP letter to Defra sent today, 6 June 2023
a. commits to a review of the approach to monitoring and enforcement of GL43,
taking advice from Natural England as to the compliance of such approach with
the Habitats Directive; and
b. revokes the current iteration of GL43 while such review is ongoing.
These matters are relevant to BASC’s huffing and puffing about GL43 – click here – and also to the consultation in Wales on proper regulation of gamebird releases. It’s not clear that BASC has actually started a legal challenge – be in no doubt, we have!
More on this over the next few days – the quickest way to find out about all of our work is to sign up to our free newsletter – click here.