Wild Justice’s 2024 – our year in review

It’s been another busy year for Wild Justice; here’s a very quick run through some of our highlights of 2024.

We started off with some positive news – and followed it with some positive action. In January this year we learned Wild Justice had been voted Conservation Hero for 2023 by readers of Birdwatch magazine. In February, our hardworking team packaged and posted 1,164 books to 97 schools across the UK. All books were titles in nature and wildlife writing, aimed at a range of reading ages, and were sent to schools nominated by our supporters.

By March, Badgers were back on our agenda, and we started the process of challenging Defra on their shoddy consultation on Badger culling. Due to the pressure we (and the Badger Trust) exerted, Defra agreed to extend their consultation period by a further three weeks. By August, we’d begun a new challenge of supplementary Badger culls, after Natural England issued additional culling licences against scientific advice from its own experts. We’re still fighting this one and are ready to take it into 2025.

The arrival of spring brought a major success for Wild Justice after we won a legal challenge against Defra for their unlawful licensing of gamebird releases into the Deben Estuary and Breckland in 2023. In total 27 licences were found to have been granted unlawfully, under the direction of Therese Coffey (Secretary of State for Defra at the time) and Richard Benyon. The pair signed off releases of pheasants and partridges into protected areas during a catastrophic outbreak of bird flu, disregarding NE’s advice at the time. We challenged these decisions, because government is bound by the law, just as the rest of us are, and we won.

As the General Election race started in May, Wild Justice published Fighting Fearlessly: advice on election and charity law aimed at the environmental charitable sector.We did this because whilst we are not afraid to be outspoken, many within the sector appear to be. Our report pointed out that there was little to prevent organisations from highlighting environmental problems, asking for solutions, and assessing proposed policies from different political parties. We also used this period to share others’ opinions, featuring 50+ guest blogs from over 30 voices within the nature sector, whom we asked to assess various parties’ manifestos.

In June we drew attention to Natural England allowing filming on an important wildlife site in the bird breeding season. We still think this was shockingly bad.

July saw Wild Justice taking on a new legal challenge. Following Freedom of Information Requests (FOIs) to the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council (DCC), we discovered there had been no grazing limitation notices issues over the last decade, despite widespread overstocking of livestock on Dartmoor’s protected heaths. Following this revelation we began another legal challenge to remind DCC of the duties parliament have given them to prevent damaging overgrazing; duties that they should be meeting. Again – watch this space.

In September we continued our work to challenge the use of toxic lead by the shooting industry. Wild Justice made complaints to the Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) about Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, highlighting high lead levels in some game meat products – revealed by our own testing – despite each supermarket’s claim of being lead-free. The CMA has a ‘green claims code’ that provides guidance for businesses when making environmental claims about their goods and services. We’ll keep you updated.

In October we were approached by members of the local community in Moylgrove, Wales, who were concerned about the potential impacts of a proposed development on a nearby Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Residents were concerned that a planning application for a new ‘adventure hub’, located in the Cardigan Bay SAC, would lead to disturbance of wildlife such as Grey Seals and nesting seabirds if it were approved. We wrote to Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority with criticism of their assessment of the impact of the development.

Heading into winter, Wild Justice published the final two of our three reports this year. Collateral Damage revealed the widespread and worsening poisoning of birds of prey by rodenticides. The report concludes that the Rodenticide Stewardship Regime (or scheme), set up to reduce exposure of wildlife to rat poisons, is failing.

In mid December, we published Lost Nature in collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield. Using data from 42 housing developments, our report showed that house builders fail to include nature-friendly measures into new housing developments – even those required by the planning process. This means new developments are lacking features like bird and bat boxes, hedgehog highways, and even living trees. The report launched as the government made announcements about reducing the barriers to house building, which blamed nature for being in the way.

There you have it – a Wild 2024. Here’s to the challenges – and successes – 2025 brings!

All of these things, and many more, have been reported in our newsletters through the year. Our newsletter is our favoured means of keeping you in touch with our thoughts and work. It’s free – subscribe here.

And all this work is funded by donations from the public – if you feel you can support our future work then you can donate via PayPal, cheques or by bank transfer – click here for details.

P.S.  Some time during 2025 Mark Avery will be stepping back from Wild Justice involvement . This has been on the cards for years and Mark has now decided that he needs a less crowded life. Ruth, Chris and Mark have been planning what happens next for several months and the expectation is that a salaried post will be advertised in the New Year. Mark’s departure will be a phased giving up of projects and work rather than a sudden exit.’.