Wild Justice 93 - Happy New Year and a general round up of news

 Wild Justice 93 - Happy New Year and a general round up of news

Happy New Year! We're nearly two weeks into 2022 and this is a general update on our projects and activities. There's nothing earth shattering to report, but there are several examples of progress being made.  We'll also give you a heads up on some future work, point you in the direction of a petition and let you know of a legal challenge being taken by others that you may wish to support.

 

And we wanted to say 'Hi!' to hundreds of new subscribers to this newsletter who have already arrived in 2022. You are very welcome and you've joined about 50,000 subscribers. Do feel free to forward this free newsletter to your friends so that they can get our news too - anyone can click here to subscribe. These newsletters are sent out periodically but not according to any particular timetable. Since our public launch in February 2019, Wild Justice newsletters have appeared roughly every 10 days and we send them out when we think we have enough news to be interesting. There is always an 'unsubscribe' option at the foot of these newsletters.

 

Schrodinger's Pheasants: we've been talking about the issue of when gamebirds such as Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges are classified as wild birds and when they are regarded as livestock for the last three years but it appeared in the national press last week and caused a bit of a stir. 

 

About 50 million Pheasants are reared and released into the countryside every year for recreational shooting. Yes, 50 million, and another 10 million or so Red-legged Partridges!  When those birds are being reared in captivity they are livestock - and they should benefit from the same welfare protection as, say, chickens kept in captivity.  In late summer, ahead of the opening of the shooting season, those birds are transferred to release pens to start to make the transition to being wild birds, finding their own food and trying to avoid being eaten by Foxes and other predators.  When the doors of the release pens are opened, those gamebirds, reared in captivity as livestock become wild birds. Or do they?

 

The authorities in England, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), have muddied the waters about when captive-reared gamebirds transition to being wild birds. They've suggested that if gamebirds are revisiting their release pens, perhaps to find food, then they are still livestock.  This is a bit like suggesting that Blue Tits visiting a garden bird feeder are livestock when they fly back into a local wood - daft isn't it?

 

The reasons for this muddying of the waters are all to do with whether land owners can kill native wildlife, such as Carrion Crows, under the terms of the general licences, to protect their 'livestock'. We wrote a blog about this ssue (click here) but the diagram below captures the idiocy of this position.

 

 

 

 

Silly isn't it? We are taking legal advice on this matter and would potentially support individuals who wanted to claim compensation for damage done by someone's gamebirds to their vegetable patch.  Pheasants are the cause of many road traffic accidents every year, occasionally fatal ones, and we would question whether shooting interests really want to run the risk of being liable for the impacts that their 'livestock' have on other country folk.

 

Of course, Erwin Schrodinger pondered about the fate of a cat but maybe he would have been interested in the status of Pheasants too.