The Countryside Alliance has met with the Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability, Llyr Gruffydd MS. There was much to discuss, including policy developments within his government as well as the opportunity to highlight the Countryside Alliance Wales Manifesto.
A considerable number of interesting workstreams stem from the Minister’s department. The National Food Strategy, the consultation on Rural Proofing and Environmental Sustainability and most recently the Wild Animal Welfare consultation, which includes a proposal for a close season for hares, are all subjects where the Alliance can engage in bringing knowledge and expertise.
The Alliance has warmly welcomed the Minster’s National Food Strategy and is actively engaging with the chair of the strategy, Simon Wright, particularly on school meals and small abattoirs. Our Countryside Alliance Wales best butcher award-winner of 2025, N S James, went on to win the national title in London and has deep knowledge and a wealth of experience running his abattoir alongside his busy butcher’s shop in Raglan. Neil has often spoken of the challenges that face small abattoirs and it is pleasing to hear of the government’s ambition to secure their future in Wales. The strategy is quite an undertaking and the Alliance has called for it to be properly resourced to fulfil its ambition. It is a genuine opportunity for change and the Minister is clearly looking for positive outcomes.
The consultation on rural proofing is also very much welcome. The Alliance has long called for policies to be rural proofed and it gave us the opportunity to reiterate our Welsh manifesto’s calls for a Countryside Champion, a Rural Community Impact Assessment process and an annual State of the Countryside Report. Within the consultation is a section on protecting agricultural land from inappropriate large-scale tree planting, another policy proposal we have campaigned on; we continue to do so, particularly now we are faced with such challenging and deeply uncertain times in food production and food security.
We were keen to promote Welsh shooting. From the previous government’s literature review on the release of gamebirds that this government inherited, to the widely known social, environmental and economic benefits of game shooting, all our concerns were laid out on the table. We relayed the cultural importance of walk-up shooting in Wales, including the availability of mixed bag species, as a considerable winter tourism draw for shooters from the UK and beyond. The Alliance firmly noted the deeply flawed evidence and misinterpretation of data that emerged from Defra in its recent consultation on the wild bird quarry list, in relation to species numbers in Wales. The Minister’s office is understandably unable to comment further until we have seen Defra’s response, but the Alliance will continue to press for any policies to based on robust evidence.
The Wild Animal Welfare paper, including an initial proposal for a close season for hares, remains open. Our discussion on this subject was shorter and necessarily restricted, but we were able to question the evidence base for the proposal and the potential unintended consequences.
Countryside Alliance Wales is grateful for the Minister’s time and looks forward to seeing how his portfolio performs for rural Wales in this, the first term of the new government.