The biggest problem with the Defra response is that it still ducks the issue of wildlife crime – and how can a government turn its back on crime? I’ll come back to that tomorrow morning.
But for now, let us thank Gavin Gamble (and 9,999 others) for flushing out these comments. It’s always enlightening to see what is rattling around in people’s heads and now we can see a bit more clearly what Defra is ‘thinking’.
- ‘Defra is working with interested parties’ – yes, that is part of the problem, you are ‘working’ with (or should that be ‘for’ ?) those parties who want nothing more than everything to stay as it is now with unsustainable burning, increased flood risk and wildlife crime.
- ‘All wild birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act’ – indeed they are (on paper), and by the EU Directive on Wild Birds. Interesting that you don’t mention the Birds Directive and don’t commit to maintaining that protection post-Brexit…
- The Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group – interesting that you have dragged this lot into the discussion. A body which can’t even produce an up-to-date map of persecution incidents after years of trying! And whose minutes are secret. And on which those organisation in which wildlife criminals are most obviously embedded are represented. You must be having a laugh!
- The Hen Harrier Action Plan – not working is it? Two seasons into it and there were 7 pairs of Hen Harriers nesting in England this last summer – none on grouse moors. Defra didn’t have our respect before you responded to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition – but you are just digging yourselves into a deeper hole.
- Peregrines, Red Kites, Goshawks, Buzzards and Golden Eagles (and even a Marsh Harrier)? How will your Hen Harrier Inaction Plan, which isn’t helping Hen Harriers, help these species? You are having a laugh aren’t you?
- Subsidies to grouse moor estates – you know perfectly well that grouse moors receive large amounts of public subsidy despite their tiny agricultural production. That money would be better spent going to proper farmers. Defra minister George Eustice attracted attention and praise for suggesting that this government would remove subsidies from grouse moors – why did your response avoid this issue? Was Mr Eustice lying or has government changed its mind under pressure from grouse moor managers? And why?
- Floods – you didn’t mention floods. That’s because you can’t argue publicly against the science that shows that burning and drainage on grouse moors increases flood risk for thousands of people. And even Defra is a bit embarrassed about this given its recent support for grouse shooting.
- Costs of removing dissolved organic carbon from water supplies – you don’t mention these either, because you know they are massive and increased by the impacts of heather burning.
- Walshaw Moor and the RSPB case which has been taken up by the EU Commission – when will Defra come clean on this issue which has been dragging on for over five years. The UK is in breach of the Nature Directives isn’t it?
- It’s good that Defra no longer relies on the discredited figures in the PACEC report – but what figures does it now rely upon? Why hasn’t Defra commissioned research like that about to start in Scotland to look at the environmental costs of intensive grouse shooting in proper detail? I guess it’s because Defra is scared of the answers which would expose the scale of the economic damage of grouse shooting to society as a whole.
Defra has toned down its support for driven grouse shooting a bit, just a bit. This is because it knows that its statements will be picked to pieces if it talks rubbish – for example it makes much less about the economic case fro grouse shooting because it knows that the case is very weak if carried out properly. And it has turned up its mention of needing sustainable blanket bog management because it feels that it has been backed into a corner by the RSPB, the Walshaw Moor case, the EU Commission, the EMBER study and by 123,077 signatures on an e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. Defra is preparing the ground for a retreat from its pro-burning position.
But on wildlife crime Defra has not budged very much. And that is because it has to misrepresent the situation because otherwise it would have to own it, and do something about it. This is the massively exposed weakness in the Defra position – I’ll come back to it tomorrow, but for now please sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting and that will show Dr Coffey how out of touch she is.
[registration_form]
If the petition achieves nothing other than this response it will have suceeded. Defra seem to have thrown everything into it and quite apart from the extraordinary comment on ‘problem species’, it reveals the comlete disvonnectedness of upland policy. As a young civil servant I was taught by a canny senior never to say more than you have to – Defra have broken that rule 10 times over here, and provided exactly the sort of ammunition over-long responses risk.
I wonder whether we may be heading for a change of advisor now Basc has stuck its head above the parapet ? I can’t imagine Michael Gove will be too impressed by all this – he won’t make Caroline Spelmans mistake of picking up responsibility for his junior ministers ,istakes, but he may well prod rather hard from the sidelines – he certainly will not be wanting this sort of mess to compromise his vote winning drive in his new job.
I presume I’m right in assuming the overall DEFRA response was cobbled together by largely cutting and pasting from individual responses from various separate areas of responsibility within DEFRA (that’s how it appears to me anyway). It looks like the final edit was rather lax. In my experience, these documents do extensive repeated rounds of all major players before they agree on the final draft. Did someone forgot the protocol?
‘Floods – you didn’t mention floods. That’s because you can’t argue publicly against the science that shows that burning and drainage on grouse moors increases flood risk for thousands of people.’
Burning and drainage on the moors greatly impact the other facet of climate change too – drought. Burning damage to sphagnum, bogs etc also affect the moorland’s ability to hold water for longer, thus allowing it to be more resilient to periods of drought. The whole moorland management issue is critical to carbon storage (or loss) and by extension AGW.
Mike – yes it was either very sloppy or very intended – difficult for us to tell really! More on this tomorrow (or maybe today).
This blog is the type of detailed critical analysis we need – thank you Mark.
You can bet that Defra and NE avidly read your blog and your many criticisms.
Their response this time was noticeably different in tone and more detailed than last time. I think that very, very slowly the edifice is starting to crumble. Clear statements in the last couple of weeks from the Yorkshire Dales NP, Peak District NP, Nidderdale AONB and Bowland AONB, who are all funded through Defra, coupled with a change in stance from BASC demonstrates this clearly.
None of this will count for owt until we can actually count increased numbers (or indeed any numbers at all) of actual Hen Harriers and other raptors on our moorland.
With satellite tagging, increased awareness from the general public and the sterling efforts of the RSPB investigations team and other dedicated raptor workers the shooting industry must realise that this issue is not going away until and unless they put their house in order.
Probably the fact that every vote is now precious when an election materialises will help the Hen Harrier cause.