Natural England has a range of memoranda of understanding and partnership agreements with a range of organisations. That’s not unusual (although my experience is that it is only the shakiest of professional relationships that need such generalised written agreements).
I’ve asked Natural England about some of these and heard back from them about their agreement with BASC.
The review of gamebirds mentioned here is part of DEFRA’s response to the Wild Justice legal challenge for which Wild Justice has been granted permission for judicial review and which will be heard on 3 and 4 November.
I have seen a draft of that review as a Wild Justice Director in legal papers and will not comment on it until it is published, and then Wild Justice will undoubtedly comment on it on the Wild Justice blog.
However, DEFRA said that this review would be completed in March so that is now a long time ago. It’ll be interesting to see whether it has a BASC logo on it.
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This is all very “smelly”indeed. Why should BASC give Natural England £10,000 if it isn’t to influence the result of the Game Bird review. Surely it is up to Natural England and hence the Government to fund the review not one of the interested parties.
As you say Mark I think Wild Justice must have a lot to say about this. What an apparent disgrace Natural England are for accepting this money.