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Wildlife and countryside Act put up for reform

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By Will Finch

Thursday, 05 May 2011

The inclusion of the Wildlife and Countryside Act in the Government’s Red Tape Challenge provokes fierce debate

DEFRA has said that environmental regulations such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act will not be scrapped, despite their inclusion in a Government initiative to cut unnecessary bureaucracy.

The Red Tape Challenge asks for the public’s views on which regulations are working and which are not. However, the inclusion of major environmental Acts provoked outrage in certain parts of the media.

A DEFRA spokesman said: “We are committed to enhancing the natural environment and there are no plans to remove important environmental protections. The Challenge is about examining and understanding the impact of regulation on the people, businesses and communities it affects, to ensure that it is proportionate while delivering the desired outcomes.”

A spokesman for the National Gamekeepers Organisation said that problems with the Wildlife and Countryside Act came not from its text, but from its operation: “It allows for the various schedules of protected animals to be reviewed every five years in light of changes to population, but it is seldom that changes allow increasing species to be controlled.

The rest of this article appears in 4th May issue of Shooting Times.

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