Tim Bonner: RSPCA prepares fresh attack on wildlife management

Two weeks ago in Parliament the RSPCA, backed by the American-funded Humane World for Animals, quietly launched a campaign which could have a fundamental impact on nearly every part of rural life. Their call for a single consolidated and updated Wildlife Act incorporating everything from the Wildlife and Countryside Act to the Hunting Act was accompanied by a 70 page ‘research report’ produced by Professor Angus Nurse of Anglia Ruskin University’s Centre for Access to Justice and Inclusion. 

I would suggest that Professor Nurse does not put his paper forward for peer review as it is shot through with errors and omissions, but it does very usefully lay out the RSPCA’s agenda. It makes unhappy reading for anyone involved in wildlife management, game shooting, hunting or fishing. 

From the application of the ‘precautionary principle’ to general licences for pest control, to removing exemptions in the Hunting Act, to providing legal protection for the fox, the proposals would create nothing but barriers to vital management in the countryside. This is the direction of travel the RSPCA and its outriders like Wild Justice and the League Against Cruel Sports have been pursuing for years: the presumption of innocence for each individual animal; the rejection of holistic species management; and an abhorrence of any activity that anyone is seen to take satisfaction or pleasure from, whether or not that activity has any animal welfare impact. 

The practical implications of this would make wildlife management nigh on impossible. If only the ‘guilty’ can be subject to lethal control then the logic is that the raven can only be shot after it has pecked out the ewe’s eyeball, the pigeons can only be controlled when they have destroyed the oil seed rape crop and the fox can only be removed after it has eaten the curlew chicks.

Reducing wildlife populations over time through landscape-scale control to reduce the damage they do to wildlife, crops and habitats (an activity proven to deliver conservation success in study after study) would be illegal under such a regime. On top of such fundamental changes the report also lists every issue on the animal rights checklist from a completely unnecessary close season for hares, to vicarious liability for farmers on whose land wildlife crimes occur, removal of Hunting Act exemptions and increased penalties for offenders. The production of a single consolidated Wildlife Bill will be a long and complex process. It would probably start with the Law Commission being asked by Ministers to update its pre-Brexit proposals to update wildlife law. 

The launch event in Parliament was attended by Defra Minister Mary Creagh so presumably such a referral is already under discussion. This would likely be followed by consultation, the drafting of a Bill and then a long parliamentary process. This would probably take longer than one Parliament, but have no doubt that the campaign is underway and that new wildlife legislation is likely to be introduced at some stage in the not too distant future. 

The Alliance will be working tirelessly in the coming years to ensure that wildlife management and activities that are crucial to the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the countryside are not compromised, but it will be a tough battle.