WILD JUSTICE

Wild Justice newsletter 2

Welcome to our second newsletter. Here we can tell you a little about our first legal challenge and a bit more about how Wild Justice has been received by the world.

First project

We can't tell you too much right now but we will soon be able to tell you much more.  On the day of our launch a couple of weeks ago our lawyers sent a formal letter (a Pre Action Protocol letter) to a public body challenging the legality of a recent decision they had made.  This is the first step towards a judicial review of the decision where a judge hears the evidence and decides whether the public body has behaved lawfully or unlawfully.  The public body had two weeks to respond with their answers to our points. They did respond after 13 days asking for another 14 days in order to respond properly. That was on Tuesday this week and on Wednesday our lawyers at Leigh Day replied on our behalf saying that we expected a response in seven days otherwise we would push ahead with legal action. So we should know where we are with this challenge late next week and we are likely to have decided our approach at the beginning of the week commencing Monday 11 March.

There has been lots of speculation, and some helpful suggestions, about cases we should pursue and we've been amused by some of the former and intrigued by some of the latter but we know we can't do everything at once. These legal challenges take a lot of background research and discussions with lawyers and we won't be able to handle lots of them at once. We will also have to raise money to fight each one.  We think that you, our supporters, will agree with our first challenge and we are looking forward to telling you all about it. At this stage we feel it is fairer to the public body concerned to give them the space to consider our legal points without being named and without the subject being revealed, but we will tell you all about it, and ask for your help, as soon as we can.

Your responses to Wild Justice

We've been overwhelmed by the messages of support, donations, offers of help and suggestions that we have received in the last couple of weeks.  Thank you!  We'll try to reply to all of them but it will take a while - and there are only three of us at Wild Justice.

We've had offers of support from legal firms and from trainee lawyers who want to use their skills to help us.  We'll be looking at all of these carefully.

We were touched that Richard Mabey, the author and naturalist, sent us a messsage of support and encouragement which also drew attention, as a former council member of the Nature Conservancy Council, to the licensing of widespread killing of birds by its successor body Natural England.  It's wonderful to get such messages.

Gill Lewis, the writer of many wildlife books for young people, has pledged the Public Lending Right income from three of her current books (Sky Hawk, Sky Dancer and Run Wild) and from Eagle Warrior which is published this summer, to Wild Justice.  That's very generous - thank you Gill!

And there is a group of fell runners who are planning to run 200km over the moorlands of northern England, passing through areas of high wildlife crime, to highlight the illegal perecution of birds of prey and to raise money.  This is a very exciting project and we'll be giving them lots of support.

Some technical and administrative things

Our website will be evolving over time and so may have to go off-line for updates now and again.

Donations can be made by PayPal through the website, by bank transfer (see website for details) or by sending a cheque made out to Wild Justice to our registered office at 9 Lawson Street, Raunds, Northants NN9 6NG (and please write a postal or email address on the back of the cheque so that we can thank you). If you have sent us a cheque - thank you!  It may take a while for us to cash it.  We are looking in to how to make regular giving easier.

That's it for now. Thank you for your support - we'll keep you informed of what is happening.  The next newsletter is likely to arrive in the week commencing 11 March and will contain information about our first legal challenge.

Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).