Wild Justice presses for woodcock season change

Pressure for a change to the woodcock season is continuing to build. A Wild Justice petition calling for the season to be changed to start on 1 December has been heavily promoted on Twitter by Chris Packham, who made a video alongside a woodcock called Wanda.

Nature writer and Cambridge don Robert Macfarlane also joined the campaign, claiming that 160,000 woodcock were shot every year from a UK population of 130,000. However, GWCT experts have rebuffed the call in a letter to Environment Minister Ranil

Jayawardena. Dr Andrew Hoodless said: “Given the available evidence, we do not believe that a statutory change in the season will have any beneficial impact on our resident woodcock.”

Meanwhile, Mr Packham was criticised for claiming in his video that woodcock are “red listed” and “endangered”. Along with nearly all other vertebrates, woodcock are on the IUCN red list; however, they are classified as being of ‘least concern’ due to a stable global population.

The IUCN classifies the woodcock as a species of ‘least concern’