The outcome of your wildfowling club’s consent
application to manage shooting on protected areas will depend on
the information provided, club relations with local decision makers
and whether you have requested BASC’s assistance. Dr Conor
O’Gorman, BASC’s conservation officer explains…
In recent years, the
grant of consents for wildfowling within nationally designated areas1
has become an area of major concern for those tasked on committee
with negotiating their club’s upcoming applications. Horror
stories, myths and misinformation through the grapevine are rife! A
common question I am asked when approached for advice by BASC
members is how decisions are made in the granting of consents. The
straight answer is that that a hassle-free and fair process
resulting in the grant of consent can have a greater bearing on
human behavioural dynamics than waterfowl population dynamics.
Consulting with BASC at the outset can help to improve your
experience and the outcome of your application. Indeed, we provide
assistance with consent applications not only to affiliated
wildfowling clubs, but to BASC members from all shooting
disciplines. There are over 4,000 SSSIs across England alone!
First, a very
generalised background2: killing animals within
nationally designated sites usually requires a written permission to
do so, granted as a ‘consent’ through your statutory
conservation agency. This relates to killing animals as one of a
number of activities in a standard list of potentially damaging
operations with regard to the conservation features for which
the site is designated. Therefore, wildfowling, taken as a method
of killing animals, requires consent in sites designated for their
importance for waterfowl. Given that the majority of our estuaries
are sites designated with waterfowl populations as a feature, most
wildfowlers will have shot over an area that has a consent in place,
thanks to the dedicated efforts of the club committee.
The local office of the national statutory
conservation agency is where your club’s application for consent is
considered. The information your club provides in its proposal
(termed the ‘notice of consent’) is the information used to make a
judgement on whether your shooting activity is deemed likely to
damage the features of the designated site. The task of assessing
that ‘risk’ will usually fall to one individual in that office.
The types of consents that are granted now, and
that have been granted in the past vary greatly in wording and in
the conditions placed on them. In England, for example, during the
tenure of the Nature Conservancy Council (now English Nature) in the
1980s, wildfowling clubs received straightforward consents to carry
out wildfowling in SSSIs with no conditions and no expiry date. In
other words, as long as the club remained in existence to manage
that wildfowling and as long as they remained tenants (and without
intervention from the agencies), the consent remained valid. There
was an element of trust and pragmatism with regard to that approach
and the interpretation of legislation. Wildfowling was taking place
prior to designation of a SSSI, so why should it be suddenly
perceived as a problem after designation? The duty of care was
entrusted (without undue interference) to the wildfowling club, as
the local experts in managing the waterfowl resource available to
them.
Things have changed however in that the statutory
conservation agencies, and in particular English Nature, are
reticent to issue consents in that way without some form of review
period and certain conditions, the nature of which depend on the
information given by the club in their application. Not only have
there been changes in national legislation relating to management of
nationally designated areas, but European legislation, its
transposition to local legislation and the interpretation of that
legislation is also a factor. Why? Because many of those nationally
designated sites have over the last decade have been designated as
sites of European importance (the Natura 2000 network).
So, to cut an already long story short, contact BASC
for advice and assistance if that dreaded word ‘Consent’ is tabled
at a club meeting. We are successfully assisting wildfowling clubs
from all over the UK in their applications for consent, through our
collective knowledge and our regular liason with the statutory
conservation agencies. No two situations are the same which is why
comparison between the conditions of a consent granted to one club
should not be taken as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than another club’s
consent. BASC will ensure however that you are dealt with fairly
and consistently during the process and that if conditions are
placed on a consent that there is a valid reasoning for them.
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