By Rory Kennedy, Head of Rural Estates at Chiene + Tait
BBC presenter Chris Packham is a key force behind Wild Justice, a campaign group whose sole purpose has been to implement a judicial review of how Natural England licences bird culling. The group’s actions may also impact on parallel schemes administered by Scottish Natural Heritage.
While such policy matters tend to be dry and accompanied by a process of measured consultation with stakeholders and experts, Wild Justice’s well-orchestrated campaign has resulted in Natural England’s rushing into poorly-planned restrictions for the controlling of certain pest species. This has a created its own media storm, including alleged death threats made against the Springwatch presenter, but sadly very little in terms of balanced or rational debate.
As a legal default, birds are protected but with licences granted for culling based on legitimate reasons. A “general licence” can however be granted to allow practical management of certain over-abundant pest species with the environment agencies accepting the need for human intervention without individual applications. Wild Justice’s judicial review prompted Natural England to withdraw its general licences for carrion crows and wood pigeons, with virtually no notice period, consultation or adequate facility to address the immediate needs of licensing the controlling of destructive species. Alternative arrangements have been rushed in but are marred by confusion, legal subjectivity and cumbersome bureaucracy.
To represent the scale of the issue, every week an army of sports shooters cull tens of thousands of wood pigeons. Despite these ongoing actions, the population keeps rising, increasing by 79 per cent over the past 25 years. The UK’s mild conditions allow this species to breed for much of the year so any cessation in culling could see an exponential population rise, significantly impacting on arable farmers.
Similarly, our crow population has doubled since the late 1970s, coinciding with a startling decline across most songbird species. Crows are also renowned for their savage attacks on new-born lambs, often ripping out their eyes and tongue, and are the largest predator of young hare, another UK species in rapid decline. Consequently, keepers, land managers and conservation groups, including the RSPB, work tirelessly to control crows under the general licence.
There are key questions over the motivations behind Wild Justice in achieving something that appears to have no desirable outcome. While the group claims to be conservation-motivated, the resulting predicament is either a clumsy own goal or purely driven by animal rights ideology.
Chris Packham was previously investigated by the BBC Trust for referring to shooters as the “nasty brigade”. He also informed his significant Twitter following that shooting was the cause of the worrying decline in the lapwing population, failing to grasp that the species is protected and therefore never shot. There is also a huge body of peer-reviewed evidence to demonstrate they thrive on shooting land, where predators of ground nesting birds are controlled – especially crows. Even RSPB’s own studies revealed upland lapwing populations fared better on areas with more intensive grouse moor management.
While Mr Packham is entitled to his views, it is concerning when such outbursts come from a high-profile wildlife presenter and vice-president of the RSPB.
For the conservation movement to succeed it must not solely focus on a narrow animal rights activism agenda. Nature can be cruel, red in tooth and claw, and human intervention for wild population control is often entirely necessary for biodiversity. We therefore need a calm and measured approach in addressing any required amendments to our licensing system, rather than knee-jerk reactions to the views of media personalities.
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