Buzzards - an update

This morning I reported  that Natural England (NE) had issued licences to destroy buzzard nests and kill or capture adult birds.

Setting aside the serious impact of the licences for a moment, the way in which NE and DEFRA have acted is central to our concerns.

I want to offer a comment on the initial responses from DEFRA and NE.

A tweet from DEFRA said ‘NE is charged with determining applications for licences. Ministers did not make any decisions regarding this licence’.

That seems clear.  But let’s check this against the information we have received.

In the Environmental Information Request (EIR) documents it clearly states ‘Insofar as a moratorium was in place (following the decision of the department to review its proposed programme of research on buzzard predation in June 2012), there is now no impediment to Natural England assessing applications for bird of prey licences (conversation between [named Defra Deputy Director] and [named NE Director], 26 October 2012). This position has been confirmed in subsequent Ministerial correspondence (e.g. to National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, 21/11/2012).’

That’s clear too – the department (DEFRA) made an active decision to allow NE to continue with the licensing process.

The National Gamekeepers' Organisation was involved in correspondence.  This is probably fair enough as they have been an active stakeholder in discussions with DEFRA.  Yet, as another active stakeholder in the research programme we were not (and we have met with DEFRA as recently as last week) – and neither was the public. This is, to say the least, an inconsistent way of dealing with stakeholders.

DEFRA has diverted attention to Natural England who have now issued a myth-buster. In it, NE say that non-lethal deterrents didn’t work ‘despite their consistent application’, yet in one of the EIR documents, they say ‘Overall, there is a pattern of methods being employed inconsistently or not quite as recommended by Natural England’.  Why the inconsistency and which is correct?

This is a mess.

Buck-passing between DEFRA and Natural England is not serving any of us well. I do not want this to drag on and for details to emerge piecemeal.

It is time for the Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, to be clear and to stop this once and for all and issue a clear statement that the Government will not issue licenses to kill a native bird of prey to protect  commercial gamebirds. This is a simple step which could easily be taken, but it needs to be done to reassure stakeholders and the public that his department is acting in the public interest and standing up for wildlife.