We have blogged about this before here, here and here.

At the end of June we blogged about moves by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) the body that advises the UK Government and devolved administrations on UK-wide and international nature conservation quietly to seek to reduce or remove the protections afforded to certain species under schedules of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

The protection is afforded to species such as the pine marten, red squirrel and water vole to name but a few. The move was met with outrage by nature conservation organisations but they were quickly silenced by JNCC offering to ‘consult’ if they made no further ‘fuss’ in the media about it. We are still waiting to hear about the consultation.

Pine marten are only just starting tentatively to make a come back in some of their original range following a campaign of extermination by gamekeepers. In Scotland the Forestry Commission (FCS) now rebranded as Forest and Land Scotland (FLS) has spent time and money reintroducing pine marten into the Galloway Forest Park. The aim is that they should spread from that area throughout forests and woodland in south west Scotland. But if their protection is removed then there is nothing to stop them from being exterminated once again when they leave FLS’s land.

Water vole have been in trouble for years, partly as a result of predation by mink and partly as a result of changes to their traditional habitat. Because mink cope less well on moorland the remaining water vole have tended to migrate there. Sadly no measures have been taken to restrict activities on grouse moors such as drainage and heather burning that damage them there. Once again much time and energy has been spent trying to save a species whose very limited protection JNCC want to remove.

Red squirrels are supposedly a species of conservation concern with ‘red squirrel’ groups of volunteers set up around the country to monitor their health and cull invasive grey squirrels. However we are told that some government organisations are ignoring their plight and allowing the of harvesting trees without checking properly for red squirrels and their dreys. This should not be happening now but will be absolutely fine if their legal protection is removed as JNCC suggest.

Many other non-mamalian species are also under threat from JNCC’s proposed changes which nearly got through without anyone noticing.

Why would the nature conservation committee of the”Greenest Government ever” seek to remove the very limited legal protections of these clearly ‘at risk’ species?