Defra gamebird licensing found to be unlawful. Wild Justice wins legal challenge

Last week, after months of spinning things out, Defra finally conceded that the issuing of licences for gamebird releases in the Deben Estuary and Breckland in 2023 was unlawful. This is what Wild Justice has argued for months and months. Defra is paying Wild Justice’s costs up to the Aarhus threshold of £35,000. Yesterday, the court sealed the consent order, which means we can now begin to tell you more.

Here is the consent order:

It was a Wild Justice legal challenge back in 2020 that forced Defra to strengthen protection for wildlife and important habitats from the mass releases of non-native gamebirds for recreational shooting.

In 2023 we were seeing a huge outbreak in bird flu, and so Defra used this legislation to require landowners to apply for individual licenses if they wanted to release gamebirds in or near certain designated sites. This didn’t please the shooting industry – the UK has one of the least-regulated recreational shooting industries in Europe.

The process for granting or refusing these licences was particularly murky (see cartoon above) – something we blogged about last year. Through some digging, we managed to find out that licenses for the Deben Estuary and for 27 sites in Breckland were granted despite being protected areas – and we wanted to know why.

The crucial aspect of this case is that Defra ministers did not follow Natural England’s formal advice on issuing these licences. Instead, Therese Coffey and Richard Benyon adjusted the terms of the licences to weaken the protection that they would give to wild birds and these changes made life easier for shooters.

Wild Justice challenged the lawfulness of these licences on three grounds. Defra has now conceded on the first ground and admitted that the issuing of these licences was unlawful because the ministers involved could show ‘no cogent reasons’ why Natural England’s advice was not heeded. We interpret Defra’s words on Ground 2 as a concession too. We also believe that had this case gone to court then we would have won on the Ground 3 too – but we’ll never know.

Let’s be quite clear here – Defra ministers did not adhere to the legal requirements of the Habitats Directive and the advice of their own conservation agency. Not only that; they were unable to give good reasons for why they didn’t.

Does it matter? Yes, it always matters if politicians act unlawfully. Yes, it matters when the most powerful politicians running government departments act unlawfully. And yes it matters very much if there is any suspicion that ministers are ignoring the law in order to please particular interest groups.

Wild Justice is pleased to have taken this legal challenge, and very pleased to have won it! This victory helps to remind all public bodies that they are subject to the law, not above the law. When a tiny organisation like Wild Justice (working with brilliant lawyers) faces down a powerful government department this helps to create a landscape of fear in Whitehall, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. Respect for the law is always helped by strong enforcement. This outcome was only possible because of a legal challenge.

We will reveal some of the documents relating to Defra’s decision-making over the next few weeks.

Wild Justice said:

‘Defra had ‘No cogent reasons’ to disregard Natural England’s expert advice. So to find out that Therese Coffey and Richard Benyon have licensed releases of pheasants and partridges into what are supposed to be some of our most precious places, against that advice – and during a catastrophic outbreak of bird flu – it frankly reeks of both recklessness and arrogance. It seems to us they may have had more regard for the interests of the shooting industry than those of the environment in this matter.

Natural England has faced legal challenges by Wild Justice in each of the past five years, but in this case we support them and have stood up for them.

We challenged these decisions because government is bound by the law, just as the rest of us are. We shall expose more about this reprehensible behaviour over the next few weeks.’.

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