WILD JUSTICE NEWSLETTER

Wild Justice - gamebirds in Wales, SSSIs and some reminders

Good morning! News today on positive moves in Wales to regulate gamebird releases, a quick update on SSSIs, news on petitions and a reminder to fill in our survey (today is the last day).

 

Gamebirds in Wales: Natural Resources Wales is consulting on licensing the release of gamebirds in Wales.  This follows (after quite a delay!) Wild Justice's legal victory against Defra which resulted in licensing, rather poor licensing, being introduced in England.  We're not at all satisfied with the situation in England and hope that Wales can do better. We will be giving you some hints as to how you could respond to the consultation (which closes on 20 June) further down the track but if you feel you'd like to get stuck in right now here is the link - click here.

 

Wild Justice's Mark Avery was interviewed (as was BASC) on Farming Today last week. You can decide who was the more convincing and with whom you agreed most - listen here.

 

SSSIs: there is a long way to go on this important subject. Thank you to those in England who asked Natural England questions on the condition assessments of SSSIs. The answers that you, and we, received confirm that the data on the Natural England website are up to date - that's good. But the data show that many SSSI units have not had their condition assessed for a very long time - that's bad. We're following that up because it indicates that the protected area network in England is in a state of serious neglect.

 

Thank you: to all who signed the neonicotinoid petition after the last newsletter. As we thought, your signatures took the petition from 9000 signatures passed 14,000 signatures, and in passing 10,000 will trigger a government response (for what that's worth). 

 

Another petition - achingly close and achingly far away: we've promoted the petition in favour of making it compulsory to install bird bricks, used by Swifts and other species for nesting, when new houses are built. That is a very modest proposal and the petition has another 24,000 signatures to find to get to the magic figure of 100,000 signatures which will trigger a debate. The trouble is, there are only 27 days to go. That is do-able but very difficult. Please sign if you haven't already (and if you think it is a good idea) and please share the petition link far and wide. It might be very close. It might be your help that makes the difference. Here is the link - click here.

 

And a reminder: thank you to over 6000 of you who have completed our survey. The results are fascinating and we will reveal the results as soon as we can - maybe over Easter. Today is the last day the survey will be open so if you'd like to have your say (it takes about 3 minutes) you'd better be quick - here is the link, click here.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).   This is the 143rd Wild Justice newsletter.