MARK AVERY Times they are a changin’
With a no-deal Brexit looming and the RSPB about to announce its renewed position on subjects such as gamebird shooting, these are certainly interesting days for our birdlife.
October is the month for rare warblers with wing-bars and eye-stripes. It’s also the month when our summer migrants are all but gone, and winter wildfowl and thrushes take over. It’s the changing of the guard. And so it might be in two more political areas this October: Brexit and the RSPB’s position on game shooting.
‘Let’s get Brexit done’ is still in play as, at the time of writing, we do not have a trade deal with the EU. If we agree one then it is likely that we will have to maintain many of the environmental standards which the UK has helped to craft over the decades of our membership – the details depend on the deal. But if we don’t have a trade deal then we will be almost completely free to improve or remove the existing environmental framework from 1 January 2021. October is the month in which all should become clearer.
I would regard it as the most blinkered and unrealistic view possible if you were to tell me that you think that the UK (and I think it would be a devolved matter, actually) will increase the rigour of environmental protection at a time of economic recession and with the current government. I would expect that EU directives, such as the Birds Directive, transposed into UK law in the
1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, will be watered down as time goes on. I don’t have a hat, but if I did then I’d offer to eat it if that doesn’t happen.
Special protection
The Birds Directive protects my local patch at Stanwick Lakes (as part of the Upper Nene Valley Gravel Pits Special Protection Area for Birds – catchy title, isn’t it?), as well as the Wash, the Humber, the Somerset Levels, Strangford Lough, the Caithness and Sutherland Peatlands, Fair Isle and Bardsey Island, and in all a total of 275 sites and getting on for 4 million hectares. The protection given by the Birds Directive is far from perfect but weakening it will only make it less perfect still.
The Birds Directive also protects species. What odds will you give me that birds of prey, including Hen Harrier, will see weakening of their protection once we have taken back control?
These things haven’t happened yet, and maybe they never will, but we will know in October whether they remain a possibility, and although nothing will change on 1 January next year, I predict that without a close trade deal with the EU you will see damaging changes to bird protection laws and regulations in the decade ahead.
We also don’t know what the RSPB
Council will come up with after more than a year of cogitating on the society’s position on gamebird shooting, but we will find out at the online AGM in early October. There must be a hardening of the line on subjects such as driven grouse shooting, lead ammunition use, release of non-native gamebirds and so on. I don’t expect the RSPB to suddenly become anti-field ‘sports’, but it will be very odd if there isn’t significant change (after more than a century of fence-sitting). ■
❝I expect that EU directives, such as the Birds Directive, will be watered down as time goes on❞