It will be very interesting to view the new English general licences which are to be published later today. I honestly have no idea what they will look like. Last week we had a flurry of activity with our lawyers over the Wild Justice legal challenge of the Welsh general licences which goes to court…
Category: THE STATUTORY AGENCIES: NE, EA, FE etc
New General Licences coming soon?
Last year DEFRA carried out a consultation on general licences in England – this was forced by the successful Wild Justice legal challenge of the Natural England general licences. Over 4,000 responses were received , which is quite a lot, but not so many as to justify such a long wait for any decisions from…
Dear Marian Spain, CEO of Natural England
Dear Marian I am writing to you to ask that you carry out an urgent, independent review of the functioning of Natural England’s wildlife licensing work. I believe that is clearly underperforming and in some very serious ways. Since the bits of your licensing system that I can see are only a few, and since…
The 2019 Natural England licensing scandal – a few bits of context.
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…
Revealing more details of the 2019 Natural England licensing scandal (2)
We know that last year Natural England was shovelling licences out of the building authorising all and sundry to kill unlimited numbers of any of the species formerly listed on the general licences anywhere in the UK (see earlier blog today and links therein). Is this because the applications described in detail and clearly the…
Revealing more details of the 2019 Natural England licensing scandal (1)
Recap: Bob Berzins discovered that Natural England had issued what amounted to a general licence for conservation purposes after they had stopped issuing general licences for conservation purposes (sounds odd doesn’t it – see Bob’s guest blogs Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 1 and Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 2). And…
Mr Slater of Natural England – a star blogger
Natural England has been forced into some wise back-tracking which they call clarification and some unconvincing verbal contortions through the pressure put on them by blogs such as this and the social media storm into which they often blunder. They are, after all, No-Mates Natural England. Their attempt to shore up their reputation came in…
Just a taster
I requested some stuff from Natural England – a sample of the application forms for successful applications for conservation licences made last year – see here for a quck update. I got a pile of stuff the other day and I will work my way through it this weekend. But here is a taster of…
Just for the record…
Natural England (yes, them again) have behaved very peculiarly in not releasing a report by the BTO on impacts of Badgers on birds (see here, here, here and here). Natural England say I can’t see the report which they cited in another document, and I complained, which meant they had to carry out an internal…
Natural England Hen Harrier debacle
The story so far: The NE/DEFRA/Moorland Association/GWCT press release and this blog’s generous first take on it – 3 September RPUK’s take on it – 3 September A short RSPB statement – 3 September I try to make sense of things – 3 September How NE let the shooters talk nonsense because they don’t have…