It’s helpful to remember that all wild birds are protected by law in the UK. There are few exemptions and even those exemptions are carefully prescribed. So, you can shoot gamebirds but only in season (apart from that there aren’t many constraints on shooting wildlife for fun, unlike in many European countries).
If you want to kill any other wild bird that activity needs to be licensed. For most species you have to fill in a licence application and it should be carefully considered by the licensing authority and issued subject to strict conditions: when, where, how many birds, how? You will also have to answer the questions ‘Why?’ and you can’t just say that you don’t like Robins and want to kill some, your reason must fall into certain particular categories. For example, if the species, let’s say Woodpigeon, is causing serious damage to crops AND you have tried non-lethal means (or at least properly considered them) then you may get a licence to kill Woodpigeons. Although, in that case, the Woodpigeon is one of a small number of species, many of which have been traditionally killed in the English countryside, whose killing is authorised under something called a general licence. The general licences that have existed (they are much the same but slightly different in all four UK nations) have allowed you, and others, to kill listed bird species IF you have considered properly non-lethal means and IF your reason falls into a category such as serious damage to crops or livestock, public health/safety or nature conservation. And you don’t have to apply for a piece of paper, you can rely on the text on the internet as your licence.
Personally, I am most interested in the nature conservation category because I am a nature conservationist and I have, while working for RSPB both advocated successfully for House Sparrow and Starling to be removed from the general licence and authorised very limited use of the general licences on a small proportion of RSPB nature reserves.
Last year, Wild Justice challenged the existing general licences in England and won a significant victory when Natural England admitted that their licences were unlawful and that meant that they had probably been unlawful for many years. Natural England handled this very badly, as did DEFRA, and the unlawful licences were revoked and a new system of licensing rapidly introduced where you had to apply for a licence to kill the species formerly on the general licences.
Thanks to some very determined questioning from Bob Berzins, and a bit of follow up from me, we now know that Natural England issued 1156 conservation licences last year – most of them in a very short period of about 12 working days in early May last year. These licences applied to the whole of England (except designated sites) and thus were not limited to a particular site with some particular problem. When we see some of the purported cases which are supposed to prove the conservation need they are laughable. They amount to ‘This species I want to kill eats this other species’. This is the same level of evidence which would allow Natural England to think that it would be OK to issue unlimited killing licences to kill Blue Tits because they eat caterpillars, Blackbirds because they eat earthworms and every other species of bird because it eats some animal or plant. It is the level of evidence that would allow Natural England to licence the killing of Cheetahs because they eat antelope and it is the level of evidence that would lead to the banning of all fieldsports because they involve the killing of some individual birds or mammals. This probably isn’t an area where many people would want to get and, let’s be clear, is simply ridiculous.
DEFRA is now revising the general licences for England and we should see their homework within a few weeks, maybe days. Let us hope they have taken a more sensible approach than that of their agency last spring. Wild Justice stands ready to challenge any definiciencies in the new proposed general licences for England and we have been given permission for judicial review of the similar existing licences in place in Wales.
More on this at 12:45 today.
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As mentioned a number of times, how Juniper and Spain can remain in office when they have been presiding over this Natural England very biased mess, defies credibility. They should have resigned months ago.
You really should shine a light on nAturesCot too, they have an apalling record in respect of licensing,
It is hard to conceive of any revision DEFRA can make to the General Licences that would make them acceptable. The laughable reasoning given on the applications for individual licences makes it abundantly clear that there is not a snowball’s hope in Hell of these people using the General Licence in accordance with the conditions laid down. To ensure compliance would require a massive policing effort which seems very unlikely to happen.
If the General Licences were ruled illegal, aren’t the licences you have shown also illegal, as they are issued on the same basis in practice? Would the court accept that NE are just doing exactly what they were before, but just changing the names of things? Surely it would.
HUGE thanks to Bob Berzins and you for uncovering this scandal. I simply can’t understand why the nationals haven’t picked up on this story. It’s an utter outrage.
This ‘new’ NE system where people write in to NE and ask “Can you let me kill anything I want?” and NE Replying “Sure” seems to be worse than the original general licences that WIld Justice asked for judicial review over in the first place.Can anything NE say, particularly to conservation organisations, be trusted anymore?
Let’s flood NE with license applications even though we have no intention of killing anything. That will slow them down issuing real ones.
It could certainly be fun to see how outrageous an application can still successfully secure a licence: “I want to kill wood pigeons to stop them dessimating the squirrills”