New General Licences set to launch in Wales – Have Natural Resources Wales bowed to outside pressure

Changes to General Licences 001, 002, 004 and 005 for Wales will come into effect on the 1^st of July 2022 and we urge you to familiarise yourselves with them via NRW's website.

The biggest and most concerning change occurs for general licence 004, the licence for conserving wild birds. We fear that the effect of this decision will cause irreversible damage to the wild bird population, particularly to those species of conservation concern.

Previously you were permitted to control Magpies, Jays and Jackdaws but now you will need to apply for a specific licence for those species. The current turn-around time NRW allocate their office for such licences is four weeks. Furthermore, you will now only be permitted to control the carrion crow between the 1^st of February and the 31^st of August of the licence granting year.

Some of the decisions made seem to be completely at odds with the evidence that NRW themselves provided the public with within their own consultation document. Within that document, NRW referred to their own 2019 review which clearly stated that there was 'well established scientific evidence of impact' for magpie and jay to be included on GL004. They go on to say 'We consider that there is a medium-high strength of evidence of some likelihood of a high effect of predation by magpie/ jay on wild bird populations'. Strengthening the need to retain the jay on GL04 they continue to bolster their evidence stating that 'There is strong evidence that nest predation by jay is likely to be greatest for open-nesting birds in scrub or woodland habitats. On this basis we believe that it is appropriate to include jay on a general licence for the purpose of conserving wild birds, but that the beneficiary species of such control should be restricted to breeding wild bird species of scrub and woodland habitats.' Yet they have removed the Jay from the licence stating that 82% of respondents wanted the Jay removed.

The changes are the result of 18 months of work and a consultation analysis carried out by NRW which received over 600 responses of which only 38.7% came from Wales with the weight of responses, regarding Welsh General Licences coming from England with a total of 61%. Organisational responses including the Countryside Alliance totalled 5% of the total number of respondents with 95% coming in from individuals largely associated with a Wild Justice tick box campaign, carrying no purposeful evidence to back up their responses but were heavily aligned to a personal opinion.

It sems that once again, despite assurances during our stakeholder engagement sessions that this would not happen, NRW have been content with playing a numbers game to drive forward a new general licence programme to appease the animal rights groups. Here deepens the divide once again between NRW and custodians of the countryside.

The relevant documents can be found at the bottom of the consultation hub page (you'll need to scroll down to view the documents), where you can also find other documents that were previously available, including a report summarising the responses to the consultation, the consultation document and other relevant reports:

• In English: Consultation on NRW's approach to regulating the shooting and trapping of wild birds in Wales - Natural Resources Wales Citizen Space - Citizen Space (cyfoethnaturiol.cymru)
• In Welsh: Ymgynghoriad ar ymagwedd CNC i reoleiddio saethu a dal adar gwyllt yng Nghymru - Natural Resources Wales Citizen Space - Citizen Space (cyfoethnaturiol.cymru)