Very good news on Northern Ireland General Licences

Yesterday afternoon, and out of the blue, we received very good news on the future of general licences in Northern Ireland. This follows events of 10 months ago (see this blog) when the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs was forced by Wild Justice to revoke its general licences. There have been interim licences in place since that time and a consultation in the summer to which many Wild Justice supporters responded (see our blog on the subject). It has seemed to us that DAERA have been dragging their feet but their proposals have now been revealed and are good (though we await sight of the finished licences).

The letter we received yesterday demonstrates that the species which can be killed under the proposed new Northern Ireland General Licences are pretty much in line with those already in force in Scotland, Wales and England – all of which have been considerably modified since Wild Justice first took action on the English licences in spring 2019. Here is the letter:

DAERA have omitted (presumably by accident) Carrion Crow from the list but you can see that the large area of black type in the table shows that many species have simply been removed from each of the three proposed general licences – that is excellent. We also note with pleasure that the ‘conservation’ licence is limited to just some months.

We regard this as a great victory – not just for Wild Justice but also for the other organisations who supported change and most notably those Wild Justice supporters who responded to the consultation. And most of all it is a victory for wildlife.

Almost 2000 responses were made to the consultation and although we do not accurately know how many Wild Justice supporters contributed views, we do know that hundreds of you responded – because you told us so! And many of you thanked us for the guidance we provided and said that you had never responded to a government consultation before. Well, now you have, and you must have made a difference. Take a look at the simple breakdown of number of responses and what people said:

Government departments and agencies usually react to both the weight of opinion in consultations, and the quality of those opinions in terms of being informed and soundly based. It’s not all about numbers – but you’d be foolish to discount the impact of a strong response. That means that everyone, on either side of the issues at debate in this consultation, had some impact on the result. Thank you if you did respond but don’t worry if you didn’t as there will be, for sure, other opportunities in future.

We will look closely at the details of the licences when they are published but this feels like a very good result. Thank you for your support.

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