Imagine the scene: you’re sat in the First Minister’s office in Cardiff Bay. Your desk groans under the weight of the great issues of state: a crumbling health service, a botched roads review, mismanaged millions and conditions so bad even your own staff are going on strike. So, what do you do to win the masses back on side? Announce a licensing scheme to regulate the release of game birds. Brilliant!
Natural Resources Wales has announced a 12-week consultation on behalf of Mark Drakeford’s government on whether they ought to licence the release of pheasants and red-legged partridges in the Land of My Fathers. NRW claim that there are concerns over the potential environmental impacts from the release of such birds – especially on protected sites.
But despite their insistence that such a move is ‘not a consultation on whether or not shooting live quarry should continue to be allowed in Wales’, opponents fear that the proposals will present future governments with an open goal to introduce further restrictions – effectively banning it in all but name.
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