As regular readers to this blog will know, earlier this year NE issued licences to control buzzards at a chicken farm and a pheasant shoot. I summarised our concerns and opposition at the time. In the interests of transparency, we published the (heavily redacted) papers we had obtained through an Environment Information Regulations (EIR) request at that stage.
We only learned of these licences after they were issued and enacted in the spring and, unfortunately, there was nothing we could do to turn the clock back. Since then we have made further EIR requests and met with Natural England to discuss our concerns in detail. In view of the very high level of public interest in this issue I am attaching the documents we received from our further information requests and I will summarise the current state of play below.
On 5 July, the pheasant shoot applicant, not satisfied with having destroyed several buzzard nests under NE licence in the spring, submitted further licence requests to kill a total of 16 buzzards and 3 sparrowhawks around four shoots that he manages between August and October this year. This was on the basis that, according to the applicant, nest destruction had no noticeable effect on the numbers of buzzards in the area. No new evidence of damage to the pheasant shoots was provided and Natural England, to their credit, rejected all four licence applications.
Birds of prey are long lived species (or at least they should be!) which have a relatively slow reproductive rate. They are therefore particularly susceptible to the impact of removing adult birds and have a history of being persecuted. So I believe that birds of prey do require special treatment and if a commercial enterprise can only be viable through the routine removal birds of prey then this is neither acceptable nor sustainable. The onus must be on shooting enterprises to find non destructive management measures that reduce levels of predation rather than denying some of our magnificent birds their rightful place in the countryside.
[As far as the chicken farm is concerned we understand that no further licence applications have been made neither are they anticipated. This appears to have been a very unusual and, hopefully, one off case.]
Whilst encouraged by NE’s decision on these subsequent applications I remain concerned at the lack of openness and publicly available information over this issue. For example, most of the relevant background information on shoot returns presented as evidence of alleged serious damage has been withheld. I believe there is an issue of public interest here in a novel, controversial case that potentially sets a precedent for the future. We acknowledge that NE is tasked with the job of considering licence applications within a framework set out by Defra and they do this to the best of their ability. However, in cases such as this I think the public interest and trust in the decision making process would be best served by much greater transparency.
We have repeatedly argued that Defra should change it's policy so that licenses cannot be granted to control/kill birds of prey. The sad reality is that Defra have not budged. We believe that Defra should not have allowed licenses to be granted whilst new research (to reduce conflict between pheasants and buzzards through non-interventionist means) was being explored with us and other stakeholders. But, last year whilst we thought the focus was on research, Defra was telling NE to get on with licensing. Natural England were therefore obliged to respect the Defra direction and follow due process. Meanwhile, there has been no progress on research into reducing conflicts or on assessing the ecological impacts of 40 million pheasants being released into the countryside.
We will continue to monitor bird of prey licensing like a... well, a hawk.
PS It goes without saying that, several lengthy sections of these papers have been heavily redacted by NE. In some cases this makes it impossible to fully understand the justification for licensed control. If you can piece the story together, please do let me know!
Further pheasant shoot licence application 5 July7635.2105_response on further licence applications.pdf8473.Acknowledgement of Wildlife Licence applications_RD..pdf7536.Further Licence Application_RD.pdfWLM 2013 1750-1752 report_RD.pdfRejection letter, Release site recommendations and Site map, references WLM_2013_1750 to 1752 and WLM_2013_1883 to 1886_RD..pdfBackground NE correspondence relating to original licence applications1996_response[1] correspondence request.pdf
Pheasant shootFile A (1).pdfFile A (2).pdfFile A (3).pdfFile A (4).pdfFile A (5).pdfFile A (6).pdfFile A (7).pdfFile A (8).pdfFile A (9).pdfFile A (10).pdfFile A (11).pdfFile A (12).pdfChicken farmFile B (1).pdfFile B (2).pdfFile B (3).pdfFile B (4).pdfFile B (5).pdfFile B (6).pdfFile B (7).pdfFile B (8).pdfFile B (9).pdfFile B (10).pdfFile B (11).pdfFile B (12).pdfFile B (13).pdfFile B (14).pdfFile B (15).pdf
It is good to see Natural England rejecting these applications but this is simply the latest skirmish in what will unquestionably be a long fight. The redaction of shoot returns is an interesting development given that there has been criticism of NE for using these as a benchmark to determine licences. This is the area where the licence process is fundamentally flawed and biased against recovering wildlife populations. How can it be reasonable to use historical shoot returns from decades past when raptor populations were much reduced through huge levels of persecution to judge what shooting businesses should be returning now? Expecting returns to remain the same in the face of both healthy raptor populations and increases in traffic (and surely therefore increases in numbers involved in road casualties also?)Surely what is needed is some common sense from NE and NGO, shooting returns may be lower than those historically achieved and this may in a small part be linked with a healthy Buzzard population but they need to focus on mitigation techniques that do not involve the removal of predators including Buzzards from areas around shoots.
If shooting businesses cannot sustain themselves and co-exist with healthy raptor populations and traffic levels in modern Britain, do they have a future?