Wild Justice update

 

 

 

Good morning! 

 

Our survey

More than 8500 of you responded to our short survey - that's a phenomenal response rate.  Thank you. And over 4500 of you gave free text comments - many of them very warm words of encouragement. Thank you again!

 

We've summarised the results and published a host of comments (anonymously of course) in five blogs which you can find here https://wildjustice.org.uk/blog/ .  It's a lot of information so here is a very brief  summary: our newsletter subscribers come from across the UK in proportion to the populations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, most of you are over 45 years' of age and there are more women than men (blog 2); you support a range of other organisations and were/are strongly Remainers (blog 3); you are more likely to be vegetarian than the average person in the UK and although you have concerns for wildlife, the environment and animal welfare the first two of those are the predominant ones (blog 4); and well over 50% of respondents class yourselves as active supporters of Wild Justice (blog 5).

 

Your comments suggest that you like what we do (blogs 3 and 4) and understand our approach (blog 2). The only people who posted rude comments also identified themselves as supporters of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (blog 1). You asked us some questions about why we aren't a charity (Short answer - we are still thinking about it, costs and benefits), why we don't sell merchandise (Short answer - we are still thinking about it, costs and benefits), why we don't encourage you to make a monthly donation (short answer - many of you do - thank you), why we can't help you with your local case (Short answer - sorry, we can't do everything) and why we don't have membership and a membership fee (Short answer - we're happy to rely on your donations if you think we are doing a good job). The slightly longer answers are all on Blog 5. 

 

Thanks for your responses - there were a few things that surprised us but the warmth of the responses was what really struck us.  We may ask you more about yourselves sometime in the future.

 

NRW's general licences

Thank you for showing NRW that many people are interested in the details of their current general licence. We know that many of you were wholly unimpressed by NRW's evasive and unhelpful response. So were we! A public body responsible for licensing the killing of wildlife in unregulated numbers should be happy to clarify the legal boundaries of its existing licences. Not just happy, it should be embarrassed that it has not made this area clear already. All that guff about doing a review and future licences is irrelevant to questions about the current licences. We know that many of you will follow this up and do not need our help, but if you are thinking of asking again for details of the existing licence then a question of the form 'Is it legal to kill [Magpie/Jackdaw/Carrion Crow/Jay] to protect birds of conservation concern in Wales in the month of [any future month, particularly September/October/November/December] demands a precise answer. Wild Justice will be prepared to complain about NRW's lack of response to these reasonable public questions unless answers are forthcoming. Please do let us know how you get on.

 

DEFRA general licences

DEFRA also seem to think that it is acceptable to publish licences without making it clear in which months they can lawfully be relied upon - see blog here. DEFRA still has not clarified its position despite telling us most recently that clarification was 'imminent'.

 

Also, very briefly, we have written to DEFRA, sending them a dossier of legal arguments and factual information, about what may be a recent breach of general licence conditions in England. More on this when it is appropriate for us to make it public.

 

This newsletter

It took us c19 months to send out our first 30 newsletters but only c8 months to send out the next 29. As our work increases we have more to tell you - and  news pops up unexpectedly so we sometimes send newsletters close together. We'll try not to clutter up your inboxes but we also know that many of you want regular updates.  If you want to stop receiving these newsletters there is an unsubscribe button at the bottom of this and every newsletter. We'll be sorry to see you go, but it is your choice.

 

We know the Wild Justice newsletter is widely circulated among civil servants, government agencies and a range of other organisations and that's fine by us - it's a newsletter, it has our news in it, we are glad that so many in powerful positions are concerned about what we might do next.  And we know that many of you forward this newsletter to your friends - that's fine too. We hope some of them then subscribe in their own right. Feel free to forward this or other newsletters to those you think will be interested and may want to subscribe themselves - click here if you have been sent this newsletter by a friend and you want to subscribe yourself.

 

That's it for now!

 

Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).

 

 

 

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