Unlicensed to kill
Failed applications for gull control licences have resulted in much damage to many threatened species. Wildlife licensing must once again be held accountable to democracy, says Charles Nodder
LAPWINGS, curlew and golden plover took a hammering in 2020 that in normal times would have been averted. Gamekeepers watched throughout the spring as herring and lesser black-backed gulls destroyed the eggs and chicks of these and other threatened birds. They could take no action because Natural England (NE) refused nearly all applications for gull control licences, other than for public safety and seaside towns. On 56 grouse moors, keepers recorded 1,355 such incidents. Scale that up for the attacks they didn’t see, or the countryside as a whole, and the total impact of gull predation on birds of conservation concern must have been immense. It was also unprecedented. In 2019, NE issued licences for killing 6,050 adult gulls and destroying 40,000 gull eggs. Before that, herring and lesser black-backed gulls were on General Licences, allowing culling without numerical restriction.
The conservation catastrophe is but the latest result in a string of dreadful decisions made recently by UK wildlife licensing authorities. Last year, infamously, NE revoked at no notice its main General Licences for controlling pest birds. Since then, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has removed rooks, jackdaws and jays from the Welsh equivalents. Rooks have also gone from conservation licences in Scotland, whilst in England just 6% of Individual Licence applications for predatory birds were granted this spring.
It all began last year when Wild Justice claimed earlier licences had been issued unlawfully. Without even attempting to see off this new anti-shooting outfit in court, the nature conservation authorities took flight, making rushed and botched decisions with disastrous consequences for wildlife. At least NRW was honest enough to admit that it was doing so to make itself “proof against any future Judicial Review”, yet already it faces just such a review of its new approach.
Distraught at the damage being done to wildlife and the interests of its members, the Countryside Alliance, Moorland Association and National Gamekeepers’ Organisation wrote to the Rt Hon George Eustice MP, Secretary of State for Defra. They sent him a detailed paper, ‘Wildlife Licensing in England: Chaos, Crisis and Cure’, cataloguing the unfolding disaster and suggesting ways in which it must be addressed.
The paper argued that NE was no longer fit to be trusted with wildlife licensing, which must be taken back in hand by Defra, not least so its administration could be held to democratic account. Rural MPS rallied to this cry and press coverage was helpful. A sufficient head of steam was generated for the Secretary of State to brief Conservative MPS and send a four-page reply.
In it, Eustice told the organisations, “I appreciate the concern that you express in your letter and report, and I am grateful that you have brought these issues to my attention. I am working closely with NE’S chair and chief executive to ensure that they are resolved as quickly as possible.” He announced a six-month extension to the key Defra General Licences, to allow more time for a thorough review of their future, and he committed to, “achieving a licensing regime for wild birds which is both robust and workable for users”.
At the same time, Tony Juniper, chairman of NE, wrote to parliamentarians with a chippy defence of NE’S approach, saying that it would not issue licences without proof of need and that in the case of gulls licence applications had “for the most part” contained no evidence of local direct impact on ground-nesting birds. He gave no hint that NE might change its spots.
This is tricky legal territory. Under the EU Habitats Directive, in our most sensitive wildlife sites ‘projects or plans’ that include such things as granting wildlife licences have to be preceded by a Habitats Regulations Assessment. This must conclude there would be no ‘likely significant effect’ before an action can go ahead. But when NE’S benchmark for such an effect being ‘significant’ is that it “elicits flight response in birds”, it is clear whence the real problems come. Lots of things cause birds to fly and if the conservation authorities carry on in this vein, most of them will have to stop. Change is clearly essential.
If the Secretary of State is true to his commitment and his officials use their extended licensing review creatively, working with licence users and learning from this year’s disasters, then we can yet have a licensing system that works. Problems arising from the EU legal framework should be changed, as Brexit now allows.
Most importantly, wildlife licensing must once again become accountable to democracy. The experiment of recent decades, delegating licensing out to unelected bodies that can only be challenged through the courts and then only for unlawful decisions, not just bad ones, must end. Parliament wisely put licensing in the hands of the Secretary of State when it passed the Wildlife and Countryside Act back in 1981. It is to the Secretary of State that responsibility must return. Charles Nodder is the NGO’S political advisor.
The conservation catastrophe is but the latest result in a string of dreadful decisions
WHAT Is the difference between a chicken and an elephant? No, that’s not a schoolboy joke but something that feels surprisingly worth thinking about when viewing Knox Field’s two bronzes, one of an elephant and another of a hen with chicks, placed side by side.
“At about 45cm high, the hen is actually slightly bigger than the elephant,” Field admits, humour not that far from his mind. “With the hen, I did want to put a bit of comedy into the scene, with her four little chicks that I imagine saying, ‘I don’t want to be a nugget.’”
It turns out that, to an artist, the difference between a chicken and an elephant isn’t size but gravitas. Field explains: “Of all animals, the elephant is special. They have such expressive faces and they have such weightiness to them. I can’t explain it in words but there is something solemn about them, almost a sadness, that I want to express in sculpture.”
Despite his respect for the elephant, Field’s first love is the tiger and it was this that inspired him to become a sculptor while still in his teens. “I was a bit turbulent at school and my father tried to motivate me by taking me to visit the famous sculptor Mark Coreth. He was talking me through how to make sculpture and asked me what I would like to sculpt – and it was tigers, immediately. I keep coming back to them and I so much want to get into India to see them in the wild.”
With Coreth taking him under his wing, Field’s teenage angst evaporated as he began to grapple with his newfound art. “I worked at a bronze casting foundry for three years to get an understanding of the medium and how it works, and now I want to push it as far as I can. For example, texture is very strong in my work. I made a labradoodle and I wanted to see how far I could go with its hair, the strands and the shagginess, so the hair had to be silver-soldered onto it after the casting. To get the textures I want, the material is pulled and stretched to extremes.
“When I started sculpting, at first you look at the whole animal but now I am looking at the individual small aspects – the muscle texture, the hair and the skin. I want this minutely observed detail to become a thing in itself.”
Of course, at this level, size becomes a less important attribute. In fact, Field’s quest is leading him away from threedimensional, representational sculpture into an area that is almost abstract. He explains: “I have started working on flat copper plate. Each plate is etched with one element – perhaps skin or hair – and I am very interested in the texture and the detail, and I want that to be the true value. I want to go on a journey into abstract sculpture.”
Field’s idea of abstraction in closely observed detail is rare in wildlife art, which usually concentrates on accurate, figurative representations of animals and their environment. Sporting and wildlife art is sometimes criticised for its tendency towards a pragmatic, photographic approach. In the 18th century, it was dismissed as a lower order of art because it was considered to make no commentary on its subject. So Field’s approach is refreshing, and he is trying to bring it into his commissioned work. “Now that I am finding this more abstracted way of working, it would be nice to bring it into the sculpture and to work with different materials and go on a journey with it.”
Field’s next big plan is literally a journey. “I want to go out to Africa and spend time with the animals. But I haven’t any preconceived ideas of what it will be like. I know that the moment I arrive, there will be so much variety and so much going on. So I don’t want to limit my view, I want to go out with open eyes.”
Field hopes that by seeing – and feeling – the animals in a different way, his work will develop further. Even in his commissioned work, he explains: “I try to get the personality and what I feel about animals. For that reason I love doing domestic animals. If I do a dog, I need to meet that dog and hopefully do the sculpture with the dog there. And I like having a range of different animals represented in my work.”
Certainly Field’s portfolio portrays a menagerie worthy of Noah’s ark, from the bronze of Texas, the founding father of a herd of South African water buffalo, to a life-size fallow deer. He comments: “The scale of the fallow deer came to me because I live in fallow country in West Sussex and I see them all the time, I have a connection with them.”
So sometimes size does matter – but only as an expression of feeling.