Wild Justice 91 - details of the interim NI general licences

 Today, we can bring you news of progress on general licences in both Northern Ireland and in Wales.

New Northern Ireland interim general licences: following the news the week before last that the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs had conceded that they had to replace their flawed and unlawful general licences, new interim licences were issued late on Friday afternoon(anyone would think that DAERA didn't want anyone to notice).

There are three general licences covering lethal control of wild birds in Northern Ireland; to protect public health or safety, to protect livestock or crops from serious damage and to protect the conservation of wild birds.

The licences aren't great, they retain many of the legal flaws of their predecessors but there are a significant number of species/licence combinations removed. No longer do the Northern Ireland authorities seem to think that Woodpigeon and Feral Pigeon are threats to the conservation of other wild birds. That's some progress.  The three gull species are all removed - that's progress too. And the Rook has disappeared from the conservation and health licences - more progress.

This is the table that DAERA sent us earlier in the week, where the blacked out cells of the table are species that have been removed following our legal challenge.

 

 

We have compared the general licences across the four UK nations on our blog - click here.  Northern Ireland is arguably the least friendly UK regime towards our native birds as far as general licences are concerned.

An update on general licences in Wales:  we recently received, as perhaps did some of you, the following update from NRW.  'We would like to provide a quick update following the email we sent in November after the close of our consultation on NRW’s approach to regulating the shooting and trapping of wild birds and the destruction of eggs and nests.

Given the scale of the response we had to the consultation, we have taken the decision that when the four current general licences which authorise lethal control (GL001, GL002, GL004 and GL005) expire on the 31st December 2021, we would reissue them for a short period into 2022. This is to give us time to consider the best way forward in relation to the proposals in the consultation paper.

We recognise the need for certainty for general licence users and the need for a period of time to enable a lead in before any changes are made. As a result we can now confirm that we will be reissuing GL001, GL002, GL004 and GL005 unchanged to run from the 1st January to the 30th June 2022. These licences will be available from our website shortly. We are then aiming to publish the outcome of our review, including any changes to general licences, at least two months before the reissued general licences expire.'.

This is very slow... We think NRW should be moving much more quickly. We will continue to monitor events. 

However, slow though it is, there is progress across the UK on general licences: in clarifying them, restricting their scope and reducing the number of species covered by such licences.  This progress is quite remarkable over less than three years and has been driven by Wild Justice with the backing of our supporters.  Thank you!  

 

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Thanks - that's it for now and it's nearly Christmas.

 

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