British gamebird releases to be licensed in 2021

Wild Justice, the non-profit legal organisation set up by Chris Packham, Ruth Tingay and Mark Avery, has won a legal battle with DEFRA over the mass release of Common Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge on protected sites.

DEFRA has announced today (30 October 2020) that the release of millions of non-native gamebirds will be licensed from next year. This is in direct response to a legal challenge from Wild Justice launched in 2019. 

An estimated 9 million Red-legged Partridges are released into the British countryside every year, along with a staggering 43 million Common Pheasants (Richard Stonier).

In a statement, DEFRA admitted that "the body of evidence confirms that released gamebirds can have direct and indirect effects on the fauna and flora of the habitats into which they are released". As a result, George Eustice MP, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has "put in place an interim licensing regime for 2021 releases of Common Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge within European protected sites and within a 500 m buffer zone around these sites".

The move comes just days before DEFRA was scheduled to face Wild Justice's lawyers in a courtroom on 4 and 5 November.

The three co-directors of Wild Justice said they were delighted with the move, adding "we thank our brilliant lawyers and hundreds of people who contributed to our crowdfunder which allowed us to take this case".

"This is an historic environmental victory by the smallest wildlife NGO in the UK against the massed ranks of government lawyers, DEFRA, Natural England and the shooting industry," they continued.

"Thanks to our legal challenge, the shooting industry faces its largest dose of regulation since a ban on the use of lead ammunition in wildfowling in England in 1999. Common Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges are now recognised by government as problem species where their numbers are too high and they cause damage to vegetation, soils, invertebrates, reptiles and so on.

"This move forward was only possible because of the legal protection given to the environment by the EU Habitats Directive (incidentally, largely drafted by Stanley Johnson, father of the Prime Minister). On 1 January, at the end of the Transition Period, the Habitats Directive and other EU legislation will still be relevant to UK environmental protection, but each government in the UK could, in theory and in practice, start amending those laws. Society should be vigilant that environmental protection is not whittled away."