NRW moves goalposts on gamebird releasing proposals

Natural Resource Wales’ recommendation to the Welsh Government that it should license gamebird release from 2025 demonstrates a complete lack of fairness and transparency, says Conor O’Gorman.

In the 15 years I have been doing policy work for BASC I have seen my fair share of bad practice when dealing with the civil service and government, but nothing compares to the level of contempt shown to the shooting community this week in Wales.

Despite receiving what we believe was a massive majority of responses rejecting its plans, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has proposed that the Welsh Government should proceed with licensing the release of red-legged partridges and pheasants, and that this should happen in 2025.

Incredibly, NRW has admitted that it did not review the 42,597 responses it says it received to last summer’s 12-week public consultation – rather, it asked its staff to randomly sample the responses, due to the “very large number of responses”.

BASC’s ‘Act Now’ campaign was part of the reason for this huge response from both the rural community within Wales and those who travel to the country to support shooting. We know – because you told us – that there was an overwhelming message in your consultation responses for the Welsh Government to leave gamebird releasing well alone.

Critically, we have not been provided with a breakdown of the proportion of Yes/No answers received to the consultation question on whether the pheasant and red-legged partridge should be added to the release ban list. We have been asking NRW for months to release useful details of the consultation responses.