Reading NE’s reponse to me (a response after over a year) it looked like there might not have been any consent to kill Lesser Black-backed Gull in the Bowland Fells SPA that was partly notified to protect them.
But the next place to look seemed to be the MoU that NE sent me and which appeared to be something which might have interesting detail in it.
It does have some interesting things in its 7 pages but it actually makes very little mention of Lesser Black-backed Gulls.
Here are large chunks of it:
Oi! Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t you wish you worked in the statutory nature conservation sector?
Did you notice I skipped section 4? It’s not very interesting…
But 5.1.1 is rather optimistic about Hen Harriers isn’t it?! There were three pairs this year – the first since 2015? And the signatories (except it wasn’t signed) were going to try very hard to maintain at least 6,768 pairs of LBBGs (the colony used to comprise 13,900 pairs, remember).
Here’s the rest of Section 5.
Ah ha! Section 9.4 tells us that there is an existing consent to manage (I think we can take that to include killing – but that’s a guess) LBBGs held by Abbeystead Estate.
I wonder whether NE sent me that extant consent – I’ll have a look.
And I’ll have a look at the Bowland Fells SSSI/SPA Management Plan too. That sounds very interesting.
Back soon! In fact, at midday.
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