I was on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today programme this morning, discussing Wild Justice’s successful legal challenge against DEFRA’s unlawful gamebird release licences.
DEFRA conceded that Ministers Therese Coffey and Richard Benyon had unlawfully authorised gamebird release licences for the Deben Estuary and Breckland Special Protection Areas but refutes Wild Justice’s claim that those decisions were tainted by the appearance of bias.
The thing is, it wasn’t just Wild Justice that had those suspicions of bias – the Ministers’ own civil servants had warned of the perception of bias and had urged the Ministers to take additional advice from organisations such as the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) instead of just relying on the advice of the pro-game-shooting Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT).
The Ministers chose to ignore that advice.
You can listen to the interview here (starts at 08.29 mins), available on BBC Sounds for 29 days.
Wild Justice will be releasing some of the documents released in this case over the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the Wild Justice blog or better still, sign up to their free newsletter (here) delivered straight to your inbox.
Raptor Persecution UK 
I didn’t think that this XXXXX woman is still in DEFRA. Richard Benyon owns shooting estates – what a ghastly pair !
Sharon
[Ed: Thanks, Sharon. Therese Coffey is no longer at DEFRA but this case relates to decisions she made last summer when she was still Secretary of State for the Environment]
I will no doubt be slated for saying it but it seems a great shame to me that these rissoles who enjoy killing things never seem to suffer for being so dispicable well not in this life anyway so I just hope with all my heart they will suffer further down the line and unfortunately I somehow doubt that the next lot will be any better.
What they dont seem to realise is that it is the future generations who will have to pay the price for their behaviour. Tally ho and all that illegal shite. The police are the biggest let downs of all time doffing their caps to all this organised crime and then expecting the help and respect of the law abiding public.
Quite simply shameless.
Sums it up nicely.
Whole SPA project needs a complete and fundamental reboot. In real terms the SPA’s are little more than interesting looking hatched lines on governments Magic Maps app, seemingly just for show imo. Well done Wild Justice!
[Ed: comment deleted as libellous]