Plans for Sunday fowlers

Shooting Times

March 29, 2012

A Government project to cut through the bureaucracy of environmental regulations has proposed lifting restrictions on wildfowling in some parts of the country.

DEFRA?s Red Tape Challenge recommends that restrictions on wildfowling on Sundays should be replaced with a ?non-regulatory mechanism? in certain counties, including Somerset, Cornwall and Norfolk.

A DEFRA spokesman said: ?It is likely that these orders were introduced because of Sunday observance. There is considered to be little conservation benefit.? By scrapping 35 out-of-date regulations concerning wildlife management and the countryside, and ?improving? another 69, DEFRA says that it will be possible to simplify the regulatory landscape without reducing environmental protections or access.

Also among its proposals are improvements to laws concerning spring traps, bird ringing and the importation and keeping of muskrats, non-indigenous rabbits and coypu. Regulations regarding the keeping of mink, which date from the 1970s and which have no effect on animals currently kept under licence in England, would be scrapped.

The rest of this article appears in the 28th March issue of Shooting Times.