Tag: wild justice

Wild Justice | Wales : further success on general licences.

Posted on January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 by Charlie

“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.” 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…

Wild Justice | ‘Wilful Blindness’ petition in court soon

Posted on January 7, 2021January 11, 2021 by Charlie

Wild Justice themselves put it perfectly on their blog: “This is a surprise…”. Not because the cause doesn’t deserve its day in court, but because a VERY long time has passed since this petition elapsed. Never mind that, though, on January 25th Wild Justice will be fighting for wildlife again – and no doubt (sadly) running headlong into the same selfish lobbyists who would stand up for shooting wildlife even if the country was on its knees and almost shut down entirely by a pandemic…

Wild Justice | ‘What gamekeepers do’

Posted on January 4, 2021January 4, 2021 by Charlie

Wild Justice, the campaigning organisation that stands up for wildlife using the legal system and seeking changes to existing laws, have just mailed a hugely important press-release which looks at changes to the law impacting the role of gamekeepers which take effect in 2021. The primary role of gamekeepers is not – as lobbyists like to tell us – ‘conservation’, it is killing any wildlife that their employers (the shooting industry) claim will impact their profits. This killing, which if you or I were to do it would see us breaking the law, has been allowed under the ‘barely-there’ terms of the government-issued General Licences. The terms of these licences have always been heavily loaded in favour of shooting, and heavily against native wildlife – especially foxes, mustelids (particularly stoats and weasels), Mountain Hares, and corvids (members of the crow family: Jay, Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Hooded Crow, Rook, and Raven – the very rare Chough is still fully protected).

Wild Justice | General Licence Reforms

Posted on November 10, 2020January 18, 2021 by Charlie

The General Licence system is essentially a way for industries (especially agriculture and shooting) to get ‘permission’ from the government to step around the laws that protect birds in England. Nominally, all wild birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended). You and I can’t simply go out and shoot or trap birds. It’s illegal. Unless of course you and I claim that the birds we want to kill are ‘pests’ or causing us economic harm, in which case Defra will let you wave a metaphoric piece of paper around and off you go. And these ‘licences’ are unbelievably easy to get hold of: in legislative terms they’re pretty much the complimentary peanuts on Natural England’s bar, and Defra the bartender who couldn’t really give a toss how many you take or what you do with them because peanuts are cheap and anyway they have better things to do like kill badgers for the dairy industry or defend fox hunters and ‘trail hunting’.

Wild Justice | Historic environmental legal victory on licencing bird releases

Posted on October 30, 2020 by Charlie

What an achievement! Wild Justice has just announced via their blog that they have secured a remarkable legal victory. After challenging Defra (the government department responsible for the environment) in court over the potential threat to protected sites and species from the unregulated releases of around 60 MILLION pheasant and red-legged partridges by the shooting industry, Wild Justice have secured a long overdue review and a future licencing scheme. On top of that, pheasants and red-legged partridges (both beautiful but non-native birds, so only found here because of shooting releases), have been added to Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which places them alongside Japanese Knotweed and other species “which cause ecological, environmental or socio-economic harm”…

Wild Justice | Raptor Forensics Fund opens with £10K

Posted on October 12, 2020 by Charlie

How much can you achieve in eighteen months if you’re focussed enough and sharp enough? If you’re ‘Wild Justice’, our absolute favourite trio of wildlife crime fighters (ie Drs Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham MBE), one heck of a lot – from judicial reviews to speaking at national events to (now) launching a fund to help tackle an issue close to the hearts of all concerned: forensic testing in wild raptor crime investigations…Fantastic organisation, fantastic initiative. And if the shooting industry start squawking, they should bear in mind that it’s partly their own ‘wilful blindness’ on raptor persecution that will have led to this fund being set up…

E-petitions | Why sign them?

Posted on September 27, 2020September 28, 2020 by Charlie

Dr Mark Avery tweeted this morning about Wild Justice’s petition asking the government to ‘Ban the shooting of badgers immediately’. Mark is a founder of Wild Justice of course, and had been pushing the petition hard. Just three days after its launch (and after a huge delay by the petition committee to upload it), the petition has already passed 32,000 signatures – which means that the government is obliged to respond to it. Following Mark’s tweet a question was asked which essentially said, We’ve had petitions on the cull before, they show a fairly even split ‘for and against’, why do we need another one? Here are three reasons why we think we do…

Wild Justice | Ban the Shooting of Badgers petition one day on

Posted on September 25, 2020September 25, 2020 by Charlie

Wild Justice petition smashes through 16,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.
Natural England Chair Tony Juniper (or ‘the former conservationist Tony Juniper’ as he is being referred to on social media) must be wondering what on earth he got himself into when he signed off on more badger killing to protect the dairy industry, poorly-thought out General Licences to protect shooting, and Hen Harrier brood meddling to – er, protect shooting…No doubt NE’s lobbyist chums at BASC and the NFU will tell him to ignore the ‘animal rights extremists’ who care about wildlife in ways that he would have once professed to understand (and even perhaps once shared) but it must be getting harder to ignore the pressures the public are bringing to bear on stopping the slaughter of our wildlife on behalf of industry…

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