Tim Bonner: Chaos over wildlife licences continues

Natural England (NE) is "the government's advisor for the natural environment" and since 2007 has also been responsible for issuing licences for the management of wildlife under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. In response to the current chaos in the licencing system, the Countryside Alliance, National Gamekeepers Organisation and Moorland Association have produced a report 'Wildlife Licencing in England: Chaos, Crisis and Cure' and written to the Secretary of State for Environment, George Eustice, calling on him to take back direct responsibility for licencing from NE.

That responsibility had Iain with Defra before 2007 and the justification for moving it to NE has been lost in the midst of time, but since that shift, licencing has progressed from being a straightforward and uncontroversial process to an utter shambles.

The general licences for bird control was a simple two-page document when it was inherited by Natural England in 2007. By 2010 it had grown to five pages, and last year NE started to publish 11-page licences for every individual species listed in the original licence before Defra was finally compelled to take back control. You may remember that all this came in the wake of the disastrous - and wholly unnecessary - decision taken by NE to withdraw all general licences for controlling corvids, pigeons and other avian pests with no warning at the start of the key spring period both for wildlife managers and farmers. No-one has taken responsibility for the calamitous decision to cave into the threat of Judicial Review and no-one has apparently been censured. Instead NE has been allowed to carry on with its licencing role and create further chaos.

This spring, gulls have caused unchecked havoc in the uplands as NE has imposed a cap on the number of gulls that can be culled in rural (but not urban) areas, and subsequently only issued licences for public safety purposes. Gamekeepers have been left powerless to stop lesser black-backed and herring gulls, which they were previously licenced to control, predating on upland breeding birds, including vulnerable red list species such as curlew. Meanwhile, no cap has been applied to licences to control gulls in urban areas which suggests that NE is more concerned about criticism from seaside chip shop owners than it is about the threatened species it was created to protect.

Gulls have not been the only issue for NE licencing this year as its administration of individual licences has also collapsed into chaos. General licences are no longer applicable on 'European protected sites, so hundreds of landowners have had to apply for individual licences to control corvids and other species which they have done historically to protect and conserve those special places. NE, however, has failed to issue many licences in time for them to be effectively used, simply not processed hundreds of applications, and refused others without justification or any process of appeal.

We believe that NE's handling of licencing has reached a crisis point. It is clearly failing to deliver its responsibilities to applicants and, far more importantly, its incompetence is having a serious impact on some of the most vulnerable species in England. Yet, there is no direct ministerial responsibility, no appeals process and apparently scant scrutiny of decision making. With our colleagues at the National Gamekeepers Organisation and the Moorland Association we have therefore laid out the appalling chaos in the system and made it clear to the Secretary of State how it must be resolved.