General Licence debacle
IF you had to pick seven weeks of the year during which stopping the control of pest birds would cause maximum harm, 25 April to 14 June would be a good choice. Natural England’s revocation this spring of three General Licences for killing crows, magpies, woodpigeons and other common species caused mayhem. Nesting birds, young livestock and newly-sown crops were all hammered. Gamekeepers, farmers and commercial pest controllers could only stand back and watch. It was a disaster.
Natural England (NE) blamed everyone but themselves, claiming their hand had been forced by a legal challenge from Wild Justice, a trouble-making triumvirate headed up by populist TV presenter Chris Packham. Countryside organisations, meanwhile, insisted they had not been caught napping and that the crisis had come ‘out of the blue’. Unpredicted it may have been but to understand its true origins we have to go back 65 years.
The Protection of Birds Act 1954 set the course for bird conservation, not just in the UK but throughout Europe. Its key principle was that all birds were protected, with
