The political birder: Mark Avery
It’s fair to say that last year was an interesting one. Mark Avery forward to see what that might mean for nature.
It’s fair to say that 2020 was an interesting one for all of us. Our columnist takes a look back and forward to see what that might mean for nature.
❝There is the centuriesold dispute between the UK and Spain over Gibraltar and yet the BirdLife partners have worked closely together for decades❞
2020 was a momentous year for the environment. So much so, it’s worth looking back and forward to assess its impacts. Coronavirus changed everything in the short term, but its lasting impacts are hard to fathom for the world, for the UK and for our passions of birding and nature conservation. How much of a game changer will it be? On an entirely trivial and personal note, my 2020 year list was smaller than in any year for decades, only adding Willow Warbler in the autumn.
Nature conservation organisations were hit hard financially and some of them should examine whether they are part of the entertainment industry or the conservation movement, and the implications of that for their funding. Government plans for a green recovery are meagre – they seem to be doing their best to get back to the old unsustainable normal rather than using the biggest ever shock to the system to create a fairer, more environmentally friendly, society.
Almost everyone (not me!) is bored stiff with Brexit, but as I write this, on the last day of November, it is still not clear what our relationship with the EU will be in terms of trading or environmental regulations. Those terms are just as important as they were in June 2016 when we, foolishly in my view, voted to leave, and despite years of ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and getting Brexit ‘done’, 2021 will see the environmental outcomes of the B-word play out, perhaps in very different ways in the four UK nations. This column will return to Brexit in coming months. My second column here, in November 2011, raised the issue of driven grouse shooting and wildlife crimes. 2020 saw the biggest move by the statutory sector to restrain the unsustainable nature of this niche hobby. The Scottish government announced it will license driven grouse shooting and heather burning and has already announced plans to protect Mountain Hare populations takes a look back and from mass culls on grouse moors.
In contrast, in England, where we have the same problems as in Scotland, some (like flooding) even worse, the Westminster government has done nothing and hasn’t even really acknowledged the problems. Scotland is leading the way, albeit rather slowly, but England isn’t even in the race. And some say that politics don’t matter for nature conservation?
Battles won
Wild Justice won a highly significant legal challenge against DEFRA on the subject of releasing non-native gamebirds, in which 2021 will see Common Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge added to Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act as species whose release must be licensed; they will sit alongside Grey Squirrel, Japanese Knotweed and Brown Rat as species which cause economic, social and/or environmental damage.
DEFRA will consult in February on the terms of licensing, but plans to introduce a
500 m buffer zone of no gamebird releases around sites of high nature conservation value. Subscribe to the Wild Justice free newsletter to get information on how to respond to that consultation (www.wildjustice.org.uk/ contact/). The Welsh government is planning similar curbs on gamebirds in 2022.
Wild Justice legal challenges of general licences, under which so-called pest birds can be killed, bore fruit too. Rook is off the conservation licence in Scotland, and off the 2021 English list too. England removes Jackdaw from its 2021 list and maybe Wales and Scotland will too. But all three administrations retain Jay as a species than can be killed for alleged conservation purposes. There is more work to do. ■