Last year you may remember that there was a furore over Natural England issuing licences for falconers to take a small number of Wild Peregrine chicks into captivity for captive breeding; See: 16 April: Natural England issues licences to take Peregrines from the wild where this blog broke the news that Natural England had issued…
Category: THE STATUTORY AGENCIES: NE, EA, FE etc
Cotswold Water Park SSSI
Natural England recently announced that the 177 lakes of the Cotswold Water Park have been ‘granted’ SSSI status, although this decision is out to the standard consultation with owners, occupiers and other notified parties. This must be good news because it is a very rare event that new areas are protected. It’s worth reading the…
HS2 massive climbdown (or up?) and chance for NE to do its job properly.
Here is a press release from the Woodland Trust: In November, the Woodland Trust and a group of independent ecologists raised concerns about the potential for unlawful felling of ancient woodlands by HS2 Ltd. This was because there are a number of ancient woodlands on the Phase Route 1 of HS2 (between London and Birmingham)…
It’s a hat-trick for the Jay!
Yesterday afternoon Natural Resources Wales answered my questions about Jay culling on NRW land as follows: Our response to your questions is as follows – 1. Does NRW cull Jays under the provisions of the general licences on its land? NRW does not currently cull jay on land it owns or manages. 2. Does NRW…
Just a reminder on Jays
Comments Off on Just a reminder on Jays
If you go back to May 2019 you will find that I quoted from the BTO’s Andy Clement’s blog at the time as follows; … there may be insufficient scientific evidence to merit the inclusion of Jay on the licence list in order to conserve birds … https://www.bto.org/community/blog/2019/general-licences-and-bto And yet, the Jay is still listed…
Natural England blog makes Wild Justice’s point
In a recent blog, Natural England sets out its approach to issuing specific licences for lethal control. You could be completely forgiven for not quite understanding how the licensing system works in England at the moment but I think it is like this: all wild birds are protected by law you can kill any species…
Forestry and Land Scotland – also Jay friendly
Forestry England don’t kill Jays themselves on their 250,000 ha and it’s clear they don’t let many others do it either. When I asked Forestry and Land Scotland about their policy they replied very quickly with; Hi Mark FLS does not cull jays on Scotland’s national forests and land – and our records indicate that…
Forestry England – friendly to Jays
Forestry England manages 1500 forests for us in England covering 250,000 ha of land. that’s a lot of forest, managed for timber, access, recreation and wildlife. So, I wondered how much Jay-killing goes on by Forestry England under the terms of the general licences (particularly as DEFRA has failed to remove Jay from the English…
For peat’s sake
I was pleased to read in the Guardian that my old stomping grounds of the Flow Country (see Fighting for Birds, Chapter 2) might be edging towards World Heritage Site status. It’s a bit like when an old friend gets a gong in an honours list – it’s not necessarily that one thinks the gong…
More on the new general licences for England
Farming Today has just covered the new general licences (9mins into programme). Heather Simons gave a good overview of the history and issues. BASC were interviewed and apparently they love dialogue. This is quite a turnaround. In 2019 BASC welcomed the decision (of which we believe they were a part) to rescind the invitations to…