Yesterday morning, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) conceded Wild Justice’s claim that the decision to issue three general licences on 10 September 2021 that permit the killing of birds in the province is unlawful. DAERA had failed to provide a substantive pre-action response (in breach of the Judicial Review Practice Direction) and made its concession shortly before formal proceedings were due to be commenced in the courts.
DAERA has now provided written assurance that its flawed general licences will be replaced by interim licences and that a full consultation will be launched in due course.
Biologically, the DAERA General Licences we challenged were awful - for some reason DAERA was the only statutary agency in the UK to consider that Feral Pigeons and Woodpigeons were a danger to nature conservation. Are these doves vicious predators in Northern Ireland, because they certainly aren't elsewhere in the UK? And why was the Rook listed as a species that could be killed for conservation reasons in Northern Ireland alone? For details of our legal challenge see these two blogs Challenging the Northern Ireland general licences and Northern Ireland general licences – our legal challenge in more detail.
DAERA shot itself in the foot by issuing a consultation and then abruptly ending it and not using its results.
More fundamentally as far as the law is concerned, DAERA did not set out the alternative, non-lethal actions, that should be taken before lethal control would be legal. This is just the error that led to the fall of the Natural England's general licences in 2019 in response to Wild Justice's legal action, as we repeatedly pointed out to DAERA.
There were other flaws but let's leave it there.
This success is the latest instalment of reform of UK general licences thanks to Wild Justice legal action. With your help we have greatly reduced the casual killing of birds, licensed by statutory agencies,
Following the concession, Wild Justice said:
"The DAERA General Licences we challenged were not fit for purpose and were unlawful to boot. DAERA seemed to think that Woodpigeons and Feral Pigeons threatened conservation interests in Northern Ireland – a totally bizarre idea. And yet it took a tiny organisation, supported by thousands of people, to raise the money and to hire brilliant lawyers to bring these flawed licences down. We look forward to seeing lawful replacement licences in the very near future. DAERA must do better and Wild Justice remains ready, willing and able to take further legal challenges on behalf of wildlife in the UK."
Leigh Day Associate Tom Short said:
“Our client welcomes DAERA’s belated concession that its 2021 general licences are not fit for purpose. DAERA had blatantly, as in previous years, failed to follow the process it is required to, and had issued the licences absent any evidence to support them. That is not how a licensing system permitting the killing of otherwise protected wild birds should operate, and it is astonishing that DAERA has failed to engage with the problem since it was first raised by Wild Justice in May 2019. Our client welcomes DAERA’s commitment now to reform its licensing and move to full consultation on the issue.”
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