RaptorPersecutionUK

16 months (& waiting) for NatureScot to make decision on General Licence restriction relating to ‘shooting & killing’ of sleeping Golden Eagle called Merrick

Documents released under a Freedom of Information request show that the Scottish Government’s nature advisory agency, NatureScot, has been procrastinating for 16 months on whether to impose a sanction on an estate in relation to the ‘shooting and killing’ of a sleeping Golden Eagle called Merrick.

Merrick was a young satellite-tagged Golden Eagle, released in south Scotland in 2022 as part of the South Scotland Golden Eagle Project, a lottery-funded conservation initiative which translocated young Golden Eagles from various sites across north Scotland to boost the tiny remnants of the Golden Eagle breeding population in south Scotland that had previously been decimated by illegal persecution and had become isolated by geographic barriers.

*Camera trap photo of golden eagle Merrick in 2022, from South Scotland Golden Eagle Project*

A year after her release, which had seen her fly around south Scotland and down into northern England and back, on 12 October 2023 Merrick’s satellite tag suddenly and inexplicably stopped transmitting from a roost site in the Moorfoot Hills in the Scottish Borders where she’d been sleeping overnight.

A project officer from the South Scotland Golden Eagle Project went to her last known location where he found Merrick’s feathers and blood directly below her roost tree. Police Scotland later determined from the evidence that she’d been ‘shot and killed’ and that someone had then ‘removed her body and destroyed her satellite tag’ (see here).

Evidence from the crime scene – photo via South Scotland Golden Eagle Project

As with every single other case of satellite-tagged Golden Eagles whose transmitters had suddenly stopped sending data and who seemingly vanished in to thin air (a Scottish Government-commissioned report in 2017 showed that almost one third of 131 satellite-tagged Golden Eagles had disappeared in such circumstances, most of them on or close to driven grouse moors), the person(s) responsible for ‘shooting and killing’ Merrick and then disposing of her body and her satellite tag was not arrested, charged or prosecuted.

It was this lack of enforcement, largely due to the difficulties of identifying the actual individuals responsible and securing sufficient evidence to meet the threshold for a criminal prosecution, that led to the Scottish Parliament voting to pass the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024, which introduced grouse moor licences that could be withdrawn by NatureScot if gamekeepers and/or estates were found, based on the lower burden of civil proof (the balance of probability), to have been involved in the illegal killing of birds of prey.

Grouse moor licensing hadn’t been introduced at the time Merrick was ‘shot and killed’ and can’t be applied retrospectively so in the absence of a grouse shoot licence withdrawal, and the absence of a prosecution, that leaves a General Licence restriction as the only possible sanction that NatureScot could impose.

Not that I’d describe a GL restriction as an effective sanction, for reasons that have been explored previously on this blog (e.g. here and here). Nevertheless, it’s still something and, given the high-profile of Merrick’s death, you might think that making a decision on whether to impose a GL restriction would be a high priority for NatureScot.

But apparently, it’s not.

In June this year, I submitted an FoI to NatureScot to find out what was happening in relation to this potential GL restriction, as we head towards the two-year anniversary of Merrick’s killing. NatureScot replied in July with this:

‘We have received an information package from Police Scotland to this case, and it is currently under consideration‘ (see here for earlier blog).

I submitted another FoI in July and asked Naturescot:

‘Please can you advise the date on which NatureScot received the information package from Police Scotland?‘.

NatureScot responded this month, as follows:

‘We can confirm that we received an initial information package from Police Scotland on 18 April 2024, then additional information on 3 May 2024‘.

April 2024?? That’s 16 months (and counting) that NatureScot has been procrastinating on this. It hardly inspires confidence, does it?

And the shooting and killing of a sleeping Golden Eagle isn’t the only raptor persecution case that’s awaiting a potential GL restriction decision. There are at least two others that I’m aware of – I’ll write about those in a separate blog because the cause of the delays in those two cases appears to lie at the feet of Police Scotland.

UPDATE 30 September 2025: 17 months (&waiting) for NatureScot to make decision on General Licence restriction relating to ‘shooting & killing’ of a sleeping Golden Eagle called Merrick (here)

Gamekeeper v Conservationist perspectives on setting moorlands alight – good article in Sunday Times

The Sunday Times published a pretty good article today, written by Ben Spencer, Science Editor, presenting opposing views (grouse moor gamekeeper vs RSPB Senior Policy Officer for the Uplands) on setting the moorlands alight.

It’s based on the management of two neighbouring moors in the Peak District – one, the Stalybridge Estate managed for grouse shooting, and the other, the RSPB’s Dove Stone Nature Reserve managed for nature conservation.

From a distance, there is little to differentiate the two moors. High on the hills above Oldham, in the western reaches of the Peak District, they sit dark, brooding and imposing, running into each other at an invisible border that jags across the hillside.

Yet these two moors — the private Stalybridge estate, managed by gamekeepers to raise grouse for shooting, and Dove Stone nature reserve, run by the RSPB for the benefit of wildlife — represent two fundamentally different approaches to the countryside.

Deep divides, simmering for years, threaten to spiral into open culture wars as the government proposes new restrictions on the way the uplands are managed.

Next month, officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are expected to confirm new bans on the burning of grass and heather on swathes of English upland. Any area with peat more than 40cm deep will no longer be able to carry out controlled burns, a tool gamekeepers say is vital to manage the risk of wildfires. The new rule will affect 360,000 acres of moorland.

Jono Simmonds, 36, a gamekeeper who manages 3,000 acres of grousemoor at Stalybridge, said: “We’re getting pushed into a corner. It may work in a textbook or an office, but up here, every moor is different.”

On August 12 — the Glorious Twelfth — estates like this across the British uplands will open their shooting season and grouse will start to appear on the menus of high-end restaurants. Stalybridge only runs private shoots, but other estates charge more than £1,000 a person for a day of shooting.

Supporters of the grouse-shooting tradition, which dates to Victorian times, say the entire industry is at risk, escalating the wildfire risk at a time of worsening heatwaves. The National Farmers’ Union says the proposed changes lack evidence and the Moorland Association, which represents grousemoor owners, has accused ministers of being swayed by the “religion” of rewilding.

Simmonds, who manages the estate on behalf of the landowners, a family in the Midlands who have passed the estate down over generations, said: “By doing small, controlled burns in a patchwork, you reduce the fuel load on the ground. If we can’t do that, the wildfire risk becomes unmanageable. It could end up with people who manage thousands and thousands of acres walking away, because they can’t physically manage it.”

The row has exposed the deep gulf between two visions of how to manage the uplands. On the one side are the gamekeepers, who want to see a landscape carefully stewarded, with risks reduced through close management and regular cutting and burning of vegetation. On the other side are the nature charities who would rather see the moorlands returned to their natural state: deep, marshy bog.

Tom Aspinall, 40, senior policy officer for uplands at the RSPB, which has managed Dove Stone since 2011, is convinced there is no need for managed burning. Instead, he thinks peatlands should be “re-wetted”, returned to the state they were in before they were drained for grazing in the 1950s and 1960s. Re-wetting reduces fire risk, stores carbon and increases biodiversity, he said.

That process is well under way on Dove Stone. Whereas Stalybridge is mostly firm and flat underfoot, walking across Dove Stone moor is hard going — boots sink into marshy ground that is sopping wet despite the extraordinarily dry summer conditions.

Crucially, Aspinall pointed out, water does not burn. “We’re not saying all wildfires will be stopped here, but if they hit a wet gully you will at least have a chance to get them into control.”

He said that is exactly what happened in 2018, the year in which the Saddleworth fire — the largest wildfire in living memory — burnt across both moors. The blaze is thought to have been sparked by arsonists on Stalybridge, before spreading east to the wider Saddleworth area, covering seven square miles of moorland. More than 100 soldiers were drafted in to help tackle the fire, which was not fully extinguished for three weeks.

“It was like something out of a Vietnam film,” said Richard Bailey, 54, a gamekeeper who travelled from Buxton in Derbyshire to help tackle the fire. “There was thick smoke, helicopters buzzing around. It went on for days on end.”

It eventually came to a halt in a wet gully on Dove Stone, where firefighters, soldiers and volunteers from across the Peak District brought it under control.

Aspinall is convinced the grousemoor lobby wants to retain managed burning not to control the wildfire risk, as they claim, but to ensure a steady supply of the young heather shoots on which young grouse feed.

Widespread heather, which is rich in oils and abundant on grousemoors, increases the fire risk, he said. “By changing the hydrology, we have heather on the dryer bits but where it is wet we have more diversity,” he said. There is no need to repeatedly burn back the heather because it simply does not grow as well in the soggy terrain.

To retain moisture, channels called “grips”, which were dug into the moors in the postwar drainage blitz, have been blocked up, as have natural gullies. “We have installed 40,000 dams across the site,” said Aspinall. He said wildlife had responded positively to the wetter conditions, with increased numbers of golden plover, curlew and dunlin.

There are other benefits. Peat is an excellent store of carbon. Experts say a foot of the material underground stores as much carbon as a tropical rainforest does above ground. But as soon as peat dries out, it oxidises: stored carbon turns into carbon dioxide and floats into the atmosphere.

On Dove Stone moor work is under way to reverse that. Once the grips and gullies were blocked up with stone and peat, and pools formed above them, sphagnum moss was planted by hand. As the moss grows, the theory goes, only the top part will get light and air. The lower part of the moss, sitting in dark, wet, anaerobic acidic conditions, will in time transform into peat. “That will take a long time — peat accumulates at a rate of about a millimetre a year,” said Aspinall. “But we’re thinking about the ecosystem here. We are putting nature back in control.”

The approach of Aspinall and the RSPB is dismissed by critics as “rewilding”. Aspinall said: “If we hadn’t burnt, drained, overgrazed and had industrial pollution in these landscapes, then they would have continued to be rich, sphagnum-dominated bogs. And we’re just trying to undo the damage that’s been done over the last few centuries. So if that’s what people call rewilding, then fine. But restoring hydrology is the number one thing we can do to manage fire risk.”

Just a few miles away, on Stalybridge moor, Simmonds was discussing his plans for the shooting season. Unlike other parts of the country, this moor will wait until later in the season, giving the grouse a chance to mature and grow. “We may have a small day of shooting later on,” he said. “But it’s not what you might think. Last year we got 18 and a half brace — that’s 37 birds.” Grouse are traditionally counted in “brace” — two birds. “We might have another day like that. We go out and check the stock and if there’s an excess we might have a small day. But at the moment the numbers are small.”

As for the fire risk, he said he was not opposed to re-wetting — and was open to trying to pursue it on the damper parts of his estate, with deeper peat stores. “There’s a place for burning, there’s a place for cutting, there’s a place for re-wetting,” Simmonds said. “But if you leave us without these tools, somewhere, at some point, there will be another fire like Saddleworth.”

ENDS

Here’s an excellent short video from the RSPB featuring Tom Aspinall discussing the rewetting work undertaken on the Dove Stone Reserve to benefit an important local population of Dunlin. Well worth two minutes of your time.

Six more Bird Flu outbreaks in England, Scotland & Wales

A further six outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI, also known as Bird Flu) have been reported from across England, Wales and Scotland in the last week.

These will have implications for anyone planning to release gamebirds in the surrounding areas as we head towards the opening of the Red-legged Partridge and Pheasant shooting seasons.

*Captive-bred non-native Pheasant poults, in pretty poor condition, being transported for release in the UK countryside. Photo by Ruth Tingay*

Ten days ago I blogged about four new outbreaks in England, including one on a Pheasant shoot in Exmoor National Park (see here). Here are the latest six cases:

1 August 2025 – near Banff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland (ref: AIV2025/55). Centred on grid ref NJ6515959666.

6 August 2025 – another case near Attleborough, Breckland, Norfolk (ref: AIV2025/56). Centred on grid ref TL9879291572.

8 August 2025 – near Seaton, East Devon (AIV2025/58). Centred on grid ref SY2166189959.

8 August 2025 – suspected outbreak near Woodbridge, East Suffolk (ref: AIVSOS2025/03). Centred on grid ref TM1957250006.

8 August 2025 – near Lifton, West Devon (ref: AIV2025/59). Centred on grid ref SX4289487838.

8 August 2025 – near Dulas, Anglesey, Wales. Centred on grid ref SH4689987876.

Protection and Surveillance Zones have been imposed around these sites which restrict the movement of poultry and introduce strict biosecurity measures and monitoring. Gamebird releases are also banned in these areas, although whether there’s any monitoring of this is highly questionable, especially as the authorities haven’t been notified about the release locations of millions of Pheasants (see here).

As I’ve written previously, Defra had sensibly withdrawn General Licence 45 in March this year – this is the licence under which restricted numbers of gamebirds (Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges) can be released on or within 500m of Special Protection Areas – which was withdrawn due to Defra’s legitimate concerns about the spread of HPAI.

Instead of being able to use GL45 this year, Natural England said that gamebird shoots could apply for individual licences to release gamebirds on or close to SPAs, but that only some licences would be permitted and only with a delayed release date for the poults, whereas licences for many other SPAs would be unlikely to be issued at all (see earlier blog here).

BASC has started legal proceedings against Natural England’s interpretation of the law around individual licences and we await Natural England’s response to BASC’s Pre-Action Protocol (PAP) letter.

With an increasing number of Bird Flu outbreaks across the UK, Natural England’s caution looks to be justified.

Illegal persecution of birds of prey is again a major public concern in Yorkshire Dales National Park

Regular readers of this blog will know that the Yorkshire Dales National Park is a raptor persecution hotspot, and has been for many years.

Hen Harriers, in particular, have been prime targets for illegal killing on the grouse moors of the Yorkshire Dales.

For example, the following quotes are from the RSPB’s recent report, Hen Harriers in the Firing Line:

“Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park is statistically the worst location in England with three Hen Harriers confirmed to have been illegally killed and 14 more satellite-tagged birds suspiciously disappearing between 2016-2023“

and

“The most significant declines in Hen Harrier breeding in England in 2024 were observed in the North Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales, with decreases of 67% and 73% respectively, compared to 2023. Both regions are intensively managed for grouse shooting and have been linked to several confirmed and suspected Hen Harrier persecution incidents in recent years“.

Indeed, the forthcoming trial of a gamekeeper alleged to have been involved in the conspiracy to shoot and kill an untagged Hen Harrier relates to an incident filmed on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales last October (as featured on Channel 4 News, here).

And yet another satellite-tagged Hen Harrier ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales National Park earlier this year (here).

The Yorkshire Dales National Park was also where satellite-tagged Hen Harrier ‘Free’ was found dead. His post-mortem concluded that his ‘leg had been torn off while he was alive, and that the cause of death was the head being twisted and pulled off while the body was held tightly’ (see here).

Hen Harrier ‘Free’ during post-mortem examination. Photo via Natural England.

With all this recent history in mind, I’ve been following the progress of the development of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s latest five-year Management Plan (2025-2030), due to be published shortly.

As part of the Management Plan process, the Management Plan Partnership undertook a six-week public consultation process in January 2024 to find out what issues were important to residents and visitors.

A total of 1,106 responses were received, of which 50% were from people indicating they live and/or work in the National Park; 16% were from younger people (18-34); and 4% were from people identifying as being from non-white ethnic groups.

The online questionnaire identified 18 issues from which people were asked to
rank their top six.

The top two priorities selected by respondents were:

Help nature to recover by creating, restoring and connecting important
habitats;
Protect rare and threatened species, including ending illegal persecution of
birds of prey.

That’s quite a significant result! And this isn’t the first time that the public has identified illegal raptor persecution as a major concern in this National Park (see here).

A second Management Plan consultation ran in January 2025 based on 40 proposed draft objectives, which included:

C6. Support implementation of the national Wildlife Crime Strategy to end the illegal killing and disturbance of birds of prey and other wildlife by 2028.

This proposed draft objective for tackling the illegal killing of birds of prey in the Yorkshire Dales National Park is quite different from the objective listed in the previous Management Plan (2019-2024) which was this:

C5. Work with moorland managers and other key stakeholders to devise and implement a local approach to end illegal persecution of raptors, including independent and scientifically robust monitoring, and co-ordinated hen harrier
nest and winter roost site protection.

The latest draft objective for tackling illegal raptor persecution seems to have shifted significantly, away from the so-called ‘Bird of Prey Partnership’ approach, established in 2020 with representatives from the grouse-shooting industry, the raptor conservation community, RSPB, Natural England, Police, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and the Nidderdale AONB (now renamed Nidderdale National Landscape) Authority.

That ‘partnership’, just like the similar one set up in the Peak District National Park and on which the Yorkshire Dales/Nidderdale Partnership was based, has failed miserably (e.g. see here) and has seen two of the ‘partners’ walk away (RSPB here, Northern England Raptor Forum here), both citing familiar complaints about the behaviour of the grouse moor lobby group, The Moorland Association.

The latest draft objective in the 2025-2030 Management Plan doesn’t mention the ‘partnership’ at all and instead focuses on ‘supporting the implementation of the [Police] National Wildlife Crime Strategy‘, which includes the national wildlife crime priorities of which raptor persecution is a key focus.

Does that mean a formal end to the Yorkshire Dales/Nidderdale Bird of Prey Partnership?

Let’s see.

Disappearance of two tracked Pine Martens being treated as ‘suspicious’ – Cumbria Police appeals for information

This all sounds horribly familiar.

A short article appeared on the BBC News website on 5 August 2025 as follows:

The disappearance of two tracked pine martens is being treated as suspicious, police said.

Cumbria Police and South Cumbria Pine Marten Recovery Project are appealing for information to help trace the rare animals that were released near Grizedale Forest earlier this year.

It is believed one of the mammals has two dependent kits.

Tracking them is part of a University of Cumbria-led scheme to reintroduce the species to south Cumbria and the loss “could compromise their recovery”, Cumbria Police said.

Pine martens are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and it is an offence to intentionally or recklessly kill, injure or take them.

It is also an offence to damage their habitat.

Anyone with information has been urged to contact the force.

ENDS

The South Cumbria Pine Marten Recovery Project is a dynamic regional partnership led by the University of Cumbria and includes the Upper Duddon Landscape Recovery Project led by the University of Leeds, Natural England, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Lake District National Park Authority, Forestry England and the Graythwaite Estate.

The Project is translocating Pine Martens from Scotland to south Cumbria as part of a coordinated national recovery scheme for this species.

Released Pine Martens are fitted with VHF-radio collars for tracking, and the team also uses camera traps, den boxes and scat analysis for monitoring.

Stand by to read the usual excuses for these suspicious disappearances, from the usual suspects – windfarms, faulty tags, it’s all a set up by anti-game-shooting extremists, the Pine Martens never existed in the first place, tag data serve no other purpose than to entrap gamekeepers etc etc.

Rod Liddle to confront the Moorland Association on Times Radio this Saturday (9 Aug 2025)

Journalist, broadcaster and Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle will be hosting a 20 minute piece on grouse shooting during his Saturday morning show on Times Radio, from 12.05hrs.

Rod Liddle is no stranger to this topic – having previously written, “Every way you look at this industry…its existence is an absurdity” (see here).

About his forthcoming show this Saturday, he writes:

“This Saturday at 1205 on my Times Radio programme I’m devoting 20 mins to reclaiming the grouse moors, with contributions from rewilders and conservationists and a confrontation with the Moorland Association. Lots of opportunity to comment“.

His Saturday morning show airs from 10am – 1pm and can be listened to on DAB radio (channel 11A) or the Times Radio App, or through a smart speaker, or online (where catch-up is available).

UPDATE 12 August 2025: The grouse shooting industry’s grotesque distortion of reality laid bare on Rod Liddle’s radio show (here)

‘Yorkshire’s inglorious moors and the lies of the land’: article in Yorkshire Bylines by David Robson

An article criticising moorland mismanagement, including grouse moor management, has been published by Yorkshire Bylines.

It’s been authored by David Robson, a retired biology teacher and a member of Wharfedale Naturalists, who says the title was influenced by ‘two essential reads’ – Inglorious by Mark Avery and The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole.

To read the article in full, visit the Yorkshire Bylines website here.

Reclaim Our Moors – protest walk against grouse shooting, Peak District National Park, Sunday 10th August 2025

There’ll be an anti- grouse shooting protest walk taking place in the Peak District National Park this coming Sunday (10 August 2025), timed to coincide with the start of the grouse-shooting season on the Inglorious 12th.

Organised by the new campaign group Reclaim Our Moors (see here for earlier blog on them), the one-hour walk, followed by speeches, will take place on Moscar Estate, meeting at 10.30am, and is open to anyone who wants to join in.

Here are the details from Reclaim Our Moors:

If you want to contact the group directly, contact details can be found here.

Shooting estates failing to declare millions of Pheasants – could spell disaster in Avian Influenza epidemic

Shooting estates in England are failing to declare millions of Pheasants that are being bred, reared and released in to the countryside.

That’s the finding of new research published yesterday by environmental campaigner and best-selling author Guy Shrubsole (see here for his excellent blog).

According to official statistics that Guy obtained via FoI from the Animal Plant & Health Agency (APHA), only 25.9 million Pheasants are accounted for on the latest ‘Poultry Register’. We know (from the shooting industry itself) that approximately 50 million Pheasants are released annually, which means approximately 20 million Pheasants are currently unaccounted for.

Guy didn’t ask for the equivalent data on Red-legged Partridges or Mallards.

It’s a legal requirement for anyone who keeps 50 or more birds, including Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges, to register with APHA.

Registration is mandatory because it helps APHA to manage the spread of diseases such as Avian Influenza. For example, during disease outbreaks APHA can quickly contact registered keepers to provide information and guidance on biosecurity updates. By knowing where birds are kept, APHA can also implement targeted surveillance and control measures to prevent the spread of diseases, especially Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

Pheasant feeder (with spilled food = massive biosecurity hazard) at a Pheasant release pen in Worcestershire. Photo by Ruth Tingay

Failure to register with APHA is an offence, but it’s been going on for years. In a Natural England and BASC-commissioned report published in 2020, registration compliance (for Pheasant keepers) was estimated to be less than 25%.

This low level of compliance on registering Pheasants will come as no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the behaviour of the UK gamebird shooting industry. It’s not an industry celebrated for adherence to the law on many issues, including the illegal killing of birds of prey, the illegal setting and use of traps, the illegal possession, storage and use of pesticides and poisons, the illegal burning of deep peat moorland, the illegal use of toxic lead ammunition to kill waterfowl etc etc.

Given the current high risk of Avian Flu in England (another case was reported yesterday nr Yeovil, Somerset (ref AIV 2025/54), and BASC’s idiotic legal challenge against the Government’s restrictions on gamebird releases on or close to Special Protection Areas, restrictions that were imposed specifically to help prevent the spread of HPAI to these important conservation sites (see here for yesterday’s blog on this), this level of non-compliance, with millions of unregistered ‘Ghost Pheasants’ roaming the countryside, could lead to a catastrophic HPAI epidemic as we head into the shooting season.

Four more bird flu outbreaks confirmed, including on a Pheasant shoot – yet selfish BASC starts another legal challenge against Govt restrictions on gamebird releases

Four more outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI, also known colloquially as Bird Flu) have been confirmed across the UK in recent days, including on a pheasant shoot in Exmoor National Park.

And yet in a staggering display of arrogance and selfishness, the British Association for Shooting & Conservation (BASC) has now launched yet another legal challenge against the Government’s restrictions on gamebird releases; restrictions that have been put in place precisely to protect wild birds of high conservation value from the risk of being exposed to highly contagious HPAI.

You may remember earlier this month I blogged about how Defra had sensibly withdrawn General Licence 45 in March this year – this is the licence under which restricted numbers of gamebirds (Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges) can be released on or within 500m of Special Protection Areas – which was withdrawn due to Defra’s legitimate concerns about the spread of HPAI.

BASC reacted with predictable fury and self-righteousness and said it had started legal proceedings against Defra’s decision to withdraw GL45, claiming that Defra had “not provided the formal reason behind it or published a detailed decision-making document“.

However, after some investigative work by Wild Justice’s legal team at Leigh Day, it turns out that BASC has apparently dropped that legal challenge, presumably because it didn’t have a hope in hell of going anywhere given the current high risk of HPAI.

At the time of that legal challenge, there were at least five outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in West Yorkshire, County Durham, North Yorkshire, Wrexham, and Pembrokeshire.

Since then, four more outbreaks of HPAI have been confirmed in July 2025, resulting in the mass culling of captive poultry and in one case, 2,500 Pheasant poults on a Pheasant shoot near Winsford in Exmoor National Park, with subsequent 3km Protection Zones and 10km Surveillance Zones being put in place which prevents, amongst other things, the release of gamebirds for shooting. The locations of the latest outbreaks are:

25 July 2025 – near Tow Law, Bishop Auckland, County Durham (ref: AIV2025/50).

28 July 2025 – near Winsford, Somerset (Exmoor National Park) (ref: AV2025/51). Centred on grid ref: SS9162536026.

30 July 2025 – near Bampton, Devon (ref: AIV2025/52). Centred on grid ref: SS9793221915.

30 July 2025 – Snetterton, near Breckland, Norfolk (ref: AIV2025/53). Centred on grid ref: TM0069490799.

Against this backdrop of disease outbreaks, it’s really hard to comprehend BASC’s decision to start legal proceedings for a second challenge against gamebird restrictions, but that is exactly what it’s done.

This time the challenge is against Natural England and here is BASC’s reasoning, published on its website yesterday:

BASC hasn’t published the contents of its Pre-Action Protocol (PAP) letter to Natural England so it’s difficult to evaluate the strength/weakness of its legal arguments at this stage. Although any focus on the ridiculous ever-changing status of ‘wild/captive’ Pheasants (see the conundrum of Schrodinger’s Pheasant) is welcome as far as I’m concerned, and especially the interpretation of ‘released’, because even if it’s judged that gamebirds aren’t considered ‘released’ until they’re formally set free from the release pens, they still pose a considerable risk to spreading HPAI when vast release pens aren’t covered off to prevent wild birds flying in and out of them (nor Pheasants for that matter).

A large pheasant release pen on the left of the picture, with a low boundary fence providing full access for wild birds and/or Pheasants to enter and leave the pen at will. Photo: Ruth Tingay

Whatever the technical legal arguments though, it seems that the ‘rights’ of BASC members to release millions of non-native gamebirds for so-called ‘sport’ shooting is of more importance to BASC than reducing the risk of spreading a highly contagious disease and protecting the health of wild birds of high conservation value. It doesn’t look good, does it?

Wild Justice has today written to BASC and BASC’s lawyers to state its intention to apply to be an ‘interested party’ in this case if it proceeds to an application for judicial review. General Licences 43 and 45 were introduced by Defra as a direct consequence of a legal challenge by Wild Justice between 2019 and 2021 to regulate the previously uncontrolled annual release of approximately 60 million non-native gamebirds (Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges) into the countryside, so any potential new legal challenge against those General Licences is of significant interest to Wild Justice. Sign up for Wild Justice’s free newsletter to keep updated.

UPDATE 1 August 2025: Shooting estates failing to declare millions of Pheasants – could spell disaster in Avian Influenza epidemic (here).

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