The pheasant, native or not?

THERE is currently a strong push against the poor old pheasant on the basis that he’s a foreigner and shouldn’t be on this sceptred isle. Its latest manifestation is in the form of a threatened legal action by Wild Justice against Defra, for allowing the release of ‘non-native’ gamebirds on or near to protected sites without first carrying out an ecological assessment under the Habitats Regulations. Defra intends to fight off this mischievous challenge but, alarmingly, has already fallen into the trap of accepting Wild Justice’s categorisation of pheasants as being