Wild Justice | Wales : further success on general licences.
“Wild Justice would like to thank BASC for their intervention in this case. In our opinion, BASC’s presence did nothing to change the course of this court case, which hinged on the law, except that it made it abundantly clear that BASC wished the licences to be interpreted in a much broader way with none of the restrictions of time of year or location that NRW, Wild Justice and now the court understand them to have. We thank BASC for demonstrating the impacts of the vagueness of the current published NRW licences.”
In other words, by highlighting legal deficiencies in the way General Licences have been dished out like sweets in the past, BASC’s apparently frenetic lobbying for men with guns and their hirelings to be allowed to shoot anything they want whenever they want has backfired (as it has increasingly often recently, the result, it seems, of BASC’s apparent aversion to thinking through the implications of pushing already poorly-implemented to the limit) – and a classic ‘burn’ from Dr Mark Avery, who is incredibly good at gently letting you know that he is in fact more intelligent than you are (as we can personally attest!). We can just picture his studied innocence when BASC come back at him – as they will – as he explains yet again that if you want to kill wildlife you should at least do so within the terms of the law…
As we’ve said many times on his site, Wild Justice are not ‘anti-shooting’ per se (as their over-excited ‘critics’ – ie shooting and gamekeeping lobbyists – routinely claim), but are pro-wildlife. They have gone down a highly focussed route of targetting badly written and badly implemented laws that have huge impacts on that wildlife. If so many of those poorly executed laws appear to favour the cavalier approach to wildlife of the shooting industry, that’s the fault of Parliament – not of Wild Justice.
Wild Justice 48 – further success on general licences, this time in Wales
Earlier this morning, His Honour Justice Harman handed down his judgment on Wild Justice’s judicial review of Natural Resources Wales’s general licences. His judgment further limits the casual killing of birds under general licences and has implications for general licences in other parts of the UK. Wild Justice is delighted at the content of the judgment, and its implications, even though the judge did not go as far as saying that the current licences are unlawful.
Wild Justice,Excerpt, Further success on general licences – this time in Wales, 18 Jan 21
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