Month: July 2020

Last October the RSPB announced at its AGM that it was to undertake a policy review of gamebird shooting (see here).

It launched a consultation earlier this year, taking views from RSPB members, conservation partners and the shooting industry (e.g. see here, here and here).

This morning Martin Harper has published a blog providing an update on the consultation (read his blog here) and giving us some ‘headline findings’, as follows:

• RSPB members, staff and volunteers are broadly aligned in their views, specifically: the majority are knowledgeable about the issues associated with intensive gamebird shooting, the majority support the conservation principles; any opposition to the approach proposed is more likely to come from the shooting (1%) or landowning (5%) part of the membership; a minimum of 14% support some sort of ban on shooting (intensive or otherwise).
• Given the size of the samples, we have high confidence in concluding the views we received provide a good reflection of the whole membership, staff and volunteers
• The views expressed by the other organisations (conservation, animal welfare and shooting groups) and individuals reflected different values, motivations and long held positions. At one end of the spectrum were respondents who valued shooting as an activity with social, environmental and economic benefits. Conversely, at the other end of the spectrum were responses with animal welfare interests who expressed little value of shooting, considering it unnecessary and harmful.  Other responses ranged in between, from seeking sustainable shooting and highlighting concerns over environmental impacts of current practices, to supporting a total or partial ban.
• The confidential interviews provided a few additional insights, specifically: the pride in conservation associated with shooting; the observed increased interest in the environmental impacts of the industry, particularly more intensive forms; and dismay at the state of the relationship between the shooting community and the RSPB

Martin also published three documents summarising the main findings:

Gamebird shooting review_RSPB Members Infographic

Gamebird shooting review_ External Consultation – Exec summary

Gamebird shooting review_shooting community (confidential interviews) – Exec Summary

These are well worth a read. You’ll probably not learn anything new about the shooting industry’s views (‘it’s not as bad as you all make out, we’re great at self-regulation, don’t tell us what to do, we’ll do as we please, you risk damaging partnerships if you continue to challenge us, let’s all sit around a table together and sip coffee, eat soft biscuits and have a lovely chat’) but the views of the RSPB members were quite revealing, as demonstrated in these two infographics:

Clearly some messages are getting through but there needs to be a lot more work (by all of us) to improve the general understanding of what goes on and why these issues are of concern.

Martin’s blog closed by giving an explanation of what will happen next during the policy review and that the revised policy is expected to be announced at the AGM in October.

Here’s a link to Martin’s blog again (here).

Last week wildlife campaign group Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder to raise money to support a proposed legal challenge against the Government’s ongoing badger cull (see here).

A phenomenal public response resulted in £48,500 being raised in just three days (see here).

[Badger photo by Chris Packham]

Yesterday, Wild Justice lodged legal papers at the High Court seeking permission for a judicial review of Natural England’s decision to issue licences to ‘free shoot’ badgers, which Wild Justice argues is a failure to ensure the badger cull is humane.

This was the culmination of over ten months of consideration of this issue, which included research, discussion and debate, and was based not only on extensive legal advice but also on the specialist advice of a number of prominent scientists and vets whose immense expertise was invaluable in building the case. Wild Justice’s lawyers, Leigh Day, have issued a press release with further detail here.

One of the three Wild Justice Directors, Mark Avery, has also written a series of blogs clarifying his thoughts on the legal challenge (here, here and here).

A separate legal challenge against the badger cull is also on the cards, this one by long-term badger campaigner and ecologist Tom Langton and supported by the Badger Trust.

Details of Tom’s proposed challenge can be found in this press release (here) and a link to his crowdfunder site can be found here.

Wild Justice is now waiting to hear whether the court will grant permission for a judicial review to go ahead.

Just three days ago Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder to raise £48.5K to support a legal challenge against the badger cull (see here).

Today, incredibly, thanks to an outpouring of public support the target has been reached and the crowdfunder has now been closed!

£38.5K was raised directly by generous supporters and then another £10K was pledged this afternoon from an organisation whose identity will be revealed in due course.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this appeal – the response has been phenomenal.

For more information on this case and other Wild Justice legal challenges, both current and forthcoming, check out the Wild Justice blog (here) and subscribe to the free Wild Justice newsletter (here).

Last summer campaign group Wild Justice (Chris Packham, Mark Avery, Ruth Tingay) lodged a petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting (here).

Within just a few hours of going public the petition had attracted 10,000 signatures, triggering the usual pathetic response from DEFRA (here).

Less than three weeks after the launch the petition had attracted 100,000 signatures (here), triggering what we hoped would be another Parliamentary debate, especially as many of the dishonourable members whose self-interested posturing had defiled the 2016 debate (here) had since left the building.

The 2019 General Election brought an abrupt end to the petition and to the prospect of a prompt debate but in early March 2020, Wild Justice was informed that a Parliamentary debate was due to be scheduled, probably within a month (see here).

Shortly afterwards the UK went in to Corona virus lockdown and obviously other priorities took hold. But several weeks ago the Parliamentary Petitions Committee got in touch and asked whether Wild Justice would like an opportunity to have an online discussion with a Committee member about the issues raised in the petition.

Many thanks to Petitions Committee member Kerry McCarthy MP who hosted a video conference call with Chris Packham, which was published yesterday (see links below).

It’s interesting to note that at the end of the discussion Kerry told Chris the Committee would be contacting the DEFRA Minister to try and extract another response and she also suggested that once Parliament is sitting again, there might be an opportunity to have what she called ‘a proper debate’. That’d be good. And as Chris said, this issue isn’t going away and campaigners will be continuing to raise awareness and mobilise more and more supporters to bring about a ban on driven grouse shooting.

Download the full transcript here: WildJustice petition videocall transcipt Kerry_Chris

Watch the video here:

Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder yesterday (here) to support a legal challenge against the badger cull.

It’s already attracted a large sum of support but still has a long way to go to reach the target.

Here is the background information from Wild Justice’s crowdfunder page:

Wild Justice opposes DEFRA’s highly controversial Badger cull, licensed by Natural England. Amongst a plethora of reasons we regard it as an unwarranted assault on wildlife which will not eliminate bovine Tb from dairy herds and which operates at appallingly low standards of animal welfare.

We contend that DEFRA and Natural England have failed to define humane practices and that unacceptably high number of badgers, killed by free shooting, die slowly and painfully every year.

In 2014 an expert panel advising Government on animal welfare standards for Badger culls recommended that “in the context of controlled shooting of badgers by trained and licensed contractors, the percentage of animals surviving for more than 5 min after being shot, and the percentage being wounded but not retrieved, should not together exceed 5%”. 

Natural England’s own annual reports show that this standard is never met in practice and that the number of Badgers taking longer than 5 minutes to die or failing to be recovered is consistently about 10% – twice as high as recommended.

So DEFRA appears to us to be pursuing an inhumane Badger cull, NE is licensing it and Badgers are suffering cruelly. Why? Because a humane cull would be even more expensive and would draw even greater attention to the large sums of public money being spent on an unsuccessful control measure.

Wild Justice is raising money to challenge the legality of free shooting under current circumstances and we are seeking a judicial review of Natural England’s licensing decisions.

We want to initiate a debate on the inappropriate methods employed to facilitate the cull and challenge their legality.

This is a costly challenge – we have already spent a lot of time in correspondence with DEFRA and Natural England.  We need to raise £48,500 to pay our lawyers, court costs, costs of research, Crowdjustice fees and Natural England’s costs if we fail to win the legal argument.

Please help with a donation to enable us take this challenge on behalf of Badgers, those charismatic and ecologically essential members of our fauna.

Thank you for any help you can give.

Chris Packham, Ruth Tingay and Mark Avery (co-founders of Wild Justice)

If, for any unexpected reason, we raise more money than we need to fund this challenge then unspent funds will be retained by Crowdjustice and will be available for Wild Justice to use for other similar legal cases on behalf of UK wildlife.

ENDS

If you’re able to help please click here

Thank you