Good afternoon!
It's unusual for us to send a newsletter out at any time other than the early morning. But this is hot news - today we have started a new legal challenge of Defra's lack of monitoring of compliance with regulations on gamebird releases (General Licence 43 (GL43)).
GL43 came into being when Wild Justice caused Defra to back down rather than face us in court over the issue of whether unlimited releases of tens of millions of non-native gamebirds (Red-legged Partridges and Pheasants) damage sites of high nature conservation value (click here) . We have never been happy with the provisions of GL43 but recent events have increased our concerns.
Natural England tells us that it doesn't monitor compliance with GL43 - it says it's Defra's responsibility. Defra tells us it doesn't monitor compliance either. So, no-one does and we have no way of knowing whether the regulations, which are a half-hearted attempt to protect sites from damage, are working or not - even in terms of whether the game-shooting industry is complying with the regulations.
That's the essence of our concern - click here for more details in our blog - and stay subscribed to this newsletter for more information.
This challenge is relevant to the consultation in Wales over the introduction of regulations to limit gamebird releases there - we'll be sending out another newsletter, probably tomorrow, on that subject and to help you respond to the consultation.
We see that BASC has been huffing and puffing about GL43. It's not clear that BASC has actually started a legal challenge – be in no doubt, we have!
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That's it for now. We couldn't do any of this without you.
Thank you,
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