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Saturday 30 December 2023
ARE THE HUNTERS CARELESS OR CALOUS? FROM THE HUNT SABS
A CLASS WAR WHERE THE EMBOLDEN & UNELECTED HAVE THEIR SWAY
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Is our government fit to protect wildlife? We take a look at two men with key ministerial roles in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra): Richard Benyon (on the left in the image above) and Robbie Douglas-Miller (on the right).
Defra has a number of tasks, perhaps the most important one being to protect the environment. You might think that ministers who have key interests that conflict with that task would be excluded from top positions in Defra. Think again.
Robbie Douglas-Miller
The public was shocked, and many outraged, when former prime minister David Cameron made a sudden return to government after seven years. He is no longer an elected MP of course, but was given the unelected role of foreign secretary by current prime minister Rishi Sunak and made a baron in the unelected House of Lords on 17 November. But just two weeks later, on 1 December, the lesser-known but equally unelected Robbie Douglas-Miller was also appointed a baron by the king. His new title allowed the Scottish shooting estate owner to become Defra's unelected Minister for Biosecurity, Animal Health and Welfare. His appointment flew under the radar in comparison to Cameron, but Douglas-Miller's obvious conflicts of interest should have made every national headline.
The Guardian did, however, highlight how problematic the appointment is. Douglas-Miller has a vital role: animal welfare. But The Guardian stated:
"Downing Street is facing calls to explain why it has appointed a wealthy, unelected shooting enthusiast as its animal welfare minister after it emerged he has backed the culling of seals and wild birds."
The newspaper noted that Douglas-Miller:
"owns a grouse moor in Scotland and has argued for the relaxation of rules on shooting wild birds that prey on salmon."
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Indeed, the animal welfare minister owns the Hopes Estate in the raptor-persecution hotspot of the Lammermuir Hills. The Guardian said:
"In September, he signed a letter with fellow grouse moor owners lobbying the Scottish government to water down new laws that bring in licences for grouse-shooting in an effort to address persecution of birds of prey."
Yes that's right: we have a British minister who, just a couple of months before his Defra appointment, actively lobbied the Scottish government against the protection of raptors (which should already be protected under British law, but are regularly found poisoned on or near shooting estates). Such conflicts of interest make a mockery of Britain's so-called democracy.
Back in 2005 Douglas-Miller bought a grouse shooting estate named Horseupcleugh. In 2007 The Scotsman described Douglas-Miller's motives for buying the land:
"The red grouse is unique to the UK and wealthy people will pay considerable sums for the privilege of indulging in what is the most demanding of all game-shooting disciplines. The right to shoot a brace of grouse can cost up to 300 plus VAT, so it was clear to Douglas Miller that if he and his keeper, Ian Elliot, could push the annual bag towards 300 brace then the finances of the estate would look much brighter."
On top of all this, a look at Companies House reveals that Douglas-Miller was director of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) from 2006 to 2013. The GWCT lobbies the government on bird shooting. Protect the Wild has already noted that "any efforts to strengthen legislation in favour of protecting birds (by shortening shooting seasons, for example) are met with fierce resistance" by lobbyists such as the GWCT.
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Cormorant, Shutterstock
Douglas-Miller not only profits from the murder of grouse, he is also responsible for the murder of other birds, and made an application to murder seals, too. The Guardian wrote:
"He is also on the board of a fishery which applied to obtain a licence to kill seals in 2021; last year he gained a licence to kill wild cormorants and sawbill ducks [fish-eating species including Goosanders and Red-breasted Mergansers]."
Incredibly, Natural England, the government’s adviser for the natural environment in England and which reports to Defra, has issued licences to fishery owners to kill more than 11000 Cormorants in the past decade.
Green MP Caroline Lucas summed up the absurdity of Douglas-Miller's appointment in a tweet on Dec 7th when she said:
"Great! Just the person for the job of new Environment Minister - an unelected landowner who has restricted public nature access & backed bird culls. Someone I’d definitely trust to prioritise animal protection, nature access & environmental restoration...”
Why, when Rishi Sunak has 349 other MPs to choose for the job, did he opt for an unelected landowner? It certainly wasn’t to protect wildlife…
Richard Benyon
Sunday Times Rich List millionaire Richard Benyon, also a baron, has held the Defra role of Minister of State for Climate, Environment and Energy since November 2023, although he has held other roles in Defra since 2021. His responsibilities include international nature and wildlife. Benyon's 14,000 acre Englefield shooting estate sits in both Berkshire and Hampshire.
Journalist Ben Webster recently revealed in openDemocracy that this summer Benyon:
"allowed gamebirds to be released into protected wildlife sites for hunting despite his own experts warning it could spread bird flu to at-risk species."
Webster continued:
"Lord Richard Benyon, who himself owns a shooting estate, overruled Natural England’s recommendations and approved licence applications from other estates to release pheasants and partridges in, or near to, Special Protection Areas (SPAs)."
Shooting estates must be granted licences from Defra before releasing birds in or close to SPAs. And this year Natural England had called for greater limits on the release of pheasants and partridges as avian flu ran rampant among wild bird populations.
Webster wrote:
"But documents obtained by openDemocracy from Defra – Benyon’s department – reveal he and [former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] Thérèse Coffey...repeatedly overruled Natural England’s recommendations. The two ministers made decisions on 36 licence applications during seven meetings this summer, with Benyon chairing five and Coffey two.
Natural England recommended 30 of the applications should be refused. The two ministers overruled the regulator by approving 15 of them."
The documents obtained by openDemocracy showed that all decisions to overrule Natural England were made in meetings attended by lobbyist GWCT, of which Benyon was previously a trustee.
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Walshaw Moor. Image Tim Melling
This is not Benyon's only stint in Defra. He also served as government minister in the department from May 2010 to October 2013, sparking controversy as he put shooting interests above conservation. Back in Spring 2012, Natural England attempted to prosecute the owners of Walshaw Moor for damaging an area of deep peat blanket bog. At the time, veteran environmental journalist Mike McCarthy wrote in The Independent:
"Defra – read Mr Benyon – forced it to drop the prosecution. That went largely unnoticed; perhaps it emboldened him. But his extraordinary decision to allow buzzards' nests to be destroyed with shotguns will be noticed, and resented, and challenged, all over Britain."
All birds of prey are fully protected by law (for details see our Protectors of the Wild page Birds of Prey and the Law), but The Independent was referring to plans - which were scrapped by Benyon in May 2012 after public outcry - to give shooting estates licences to trap buzzards and destroy their nests to protect pheasant shoots.
But a year later, in May 2013, The Guardian revealed that Natural England
"licensed the secret destruction of the eggs and nests of buzzards to protect a pheasant shoot, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act."
A government unfit to protect wildlife
Rishi Sunak shoots, and his constituency of Richmond is in North Yorkshire, the county consistently noted as having the worst record on the illegal persecution of birds of prey in the whole of the UK). Both men, appointed by him in November and December 2023, have clearly been put in these key roles to further shooting interests.
And so we have two trigger-happy ministers: one who will happily murder cormorants and goosanders for fishing industry profits, as well as lobby against the protection of raptors; and another who put wild birds at risk by approving the release of pheasant and partridges in SPAs.
Protect the Wild supporters will no doubt agree with us that such conflicts of interest show that this government can not be trusted to look after Britain's wildlife. They are putting their friends - and their own - shooting interests above all else. Through their shooting estates, both Douglas-Miller and Benyon are profiting from messing up the UK's ecosystem, and are causing untold suffering to countless wild animals in the process.
Friday 29 December 2023
FROM WILD JUSTICE - NEWSLETTER 173
Good morning! Today a few 'thank yous' and a few pieces of news.
A meeting with our lawyers: Just before Christmas we spent a day thinking about what we'll be doing in 2024. The morning was us talking amongst ourselves and the afternoon was discussion with our legal team. It was a great day, but quite tiring - we started at 10am, had a break for lunch, continued with our lawyers until nearly 6pm and then had a meal and some of us went to the pub afterwards! Great fun, very useful but a 12-hour day plus travel! We can't tell you much about what we discussed because it's either hush-hush, needs more work or is important but not very interesting! But, it was probably the best strategic planning day we've had, and you can rest assured that we'll be busy right through 2024.
A big thank you to our lawyers and all those we worked with in 2023!
Changes to the general licences in Wales: Natural Resources Wales has amended the details of its general licences GL001, GL002 and GL004 for 2024 - and in a good way (click here for the details). Magpies have been removed from GL001 and GL002, following their earlier omission from GL004. This is very sensible as Magpies are declining in Wales (so how can unmonitored and unregulated culling authorised by a general licence be justified?) and the evidence that Magpies cause much harm in the categories covered by these licences is somewhere between slim and non-existent. We welcome these changes, and repeat (see our blog of 22 March 2022 - click here) that Wales now has the best general licences of any UK nation (but they still aren't perfect).
Wild Justice's first legal challenge (successful) was of the English general licences in spring 2019 - since then all four UK nations have reformed and amended these licences and made them better. They are still not good enough because they are poorly enforced, do not set a cap on numbers of birds that can be killed and rely far too much on those who use them to be honest and knowledgable. We still regard general licences of this sort as the casual licensing of the casual killing of birds.
But, we've made much progress in a short period of time, despite strong and bitter opposition from some sectors, and although others have played important later parts in advocacy, none of this would have happened without Wild Justice's initial intervention and legal challenges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Cheques: thank you for sending us cheques! If you have sent us a cheque since 21 November you may not yet have seen it cashed - this is for a variety of reasons mostly to do with how the post works and availability of person power to process the cheques. But it's all in hand. Please keep sending them! And please remember that the year will soon be 2024.
An intervention on Wirral: this is an example of a relatively small piece of (ongoing) work. Maybe it will turn into a big case in time, maybe our early initial intervention has already secured a good outcome. At the moment, we can't tell. We were approached by some local campaigning conservationists in the northwest of England about threats to protected plants. The location is West Kirby Beach, the local authority aiming to carry out management that (we believe) would damage the site is Wirral Borough Council, an example of a plant which would be affected is the Shore Dock and the licensing authority is Natural England. The locals include the marvellous Joshua Styles who is an outstanding young botanist.
We pointed out to the council months ago that their licence to carry out work has expired and asked them to undertake not to contemplate any such management unless a further licence is issued, failing which we would seek an order for an interim injunction, but the council provided the assurance. We also wrote to Natural England making legal points about their licence and setting out some thoughts on any further licences.
We're on the case, we'll be prepared to take it further, we've spent a small amount of money on it and although we say this is a small piece of work there are over 120 emails about it in our system and a lot of legal verbiage!
Heroes and villains: the voting for the Birdwatch Conservation Heroes award and other awards closes on Sunday - click here. Thank you to many of you for telling us you voted for us - that's nice!
Lead ammunition consultation: over 600 of you told us that you responded to the public consultation on lead ammunition. The actual figure will be much higher. That is fantastic - thank you. Many of you said that you would have struggled to have the confidence without the help that we gave - that's great too. One of our aims is to empower you to be more active in nature conservation and this is a good example of us working together.
This is the last 'newsy' newsletter you'll get from us in 2023, but not the last newsletter. By the way, how many newsletters do you think we have sent you in 2023? Answer in the next newsletter. We'll send you a short review of 2023 before the year ends and another newsletter with something for you to think about.
That's it for now!
Thank you,
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).