Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Wild Justice action is waste of conservation resources
Anger as thousands of pounds are wasted on legal wrangles instead of projects to save species the general licences are designed to protect
The shocking cost of defending Wild Justice’s failed attack on the general licences in Wales has been exposed by Shooting Times.
The anti-shooting campaign group brought the action in the hope of having the licences declared unlawful by the court, forcing their withdrawal. But the High Court judge rejected all of the group’s claims (News, 27 January). In a subsequent costs order, the group was ordered to pay £10,000 — the maximum allowed under the Aarhus Convention (News, 10 February).
Responding to a Freedom of Information request from Shooting Times, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) explained that it was unable to calculate the full cost of defending the action due to the number of staff hours that were spent on it. However, the external legal advice it needed and its court representation took £145,000 away from the agency’s efforts to protect the Welsh environment.
Welsh game Shot and wildfowler Gethin Jones was furious at the waste of money, saying: “This sum represents a massive and totally unnecessary expense for what is well known to be a cashstrapped Welsh government agency. The action brought by Wild Justice achieved absolutely nothing in terms of conservation value and the minor clarification concerning the Welsh general licences could have been just as effectively achieved by a simple, and cost-free, exchange of emails.
“This expense will be nothing but detrimental to conservation in Wales,” he added.
BASC Wales director Steve Griffiths agreed with Mr Jones. “BASC stated from the start that this judicial review was an unnecessary diversion for NRW in a time of a national pandemic,” he said. “Those funds could have gone towards tangible conservation efforts, improving Welsh biodiversity. Instead resources have been wasted with nothing to show.”
“That money would have been better spent on saving curlew”
Andrew Gilruth, director of communications at the GWCT, revealed what £145,000 could have been spent on.
“To put such a financial burden on wildlife agencies — and the taxpayer — at this time is disgraceful. The money NRW has been forced to waste on legal advice would be far better spent on conserving the species the general licences aim to protect. That £145,000 would be enough for us to run a comprehensive two-year study into curlew declines — including the GPS tags, monitoring and the salary of a postdoctoral scientist,” he said. “With numbers falling, what gives curlew a better future: working towards their conservation or wasting taxpayers’ money on legal wrangles?”
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