Wild Justice is seeking a judicial review of the decision by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) to issue General Licences GL001, GL002 and GL004 on 1 January 2020. Similar licences apply to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and our case will have implications in those countries too.

NRW's licences allow the unlimited killing of a range of birds without those killing the birds having to apply for a licence, without having to justify why the action is necessary, without having to explain why alternative non-lethal measures such as scaring or proofing are ineffective or impracticable, and without having to report on how many birds are killed. All a person needs to do to ‘qualify’ to kill unlimited numbers of these birds is to claim to have read and understood the relevant General Licence.

We are particularly concerned about General Licence GL004 which allows unlimited killing of Jay, Jackdaw, Magpie and Carrion Crow for alleged conservation purposes. We believe that Jay, Jackdaw and Magpie should be removed from this licence altogether and that any licence to allow killing of Carrion Crows for nature conservation purposes should be much more constrained as to time of year, location etc

Wild Justice believes that NRW is operating an unlawful and scientifically discredited licensing system which permits the casual killing of large numbers of otherwise protected birds. We contend that it is NRW's legal responsibility to satisfy itself that killing these birds is an appropriate last resort but that it has failed to do so. 

The General Licence system is a clear example of how wildlife killing is largely unregulated in the UK. The system is lax and has allowed millions of birds to be killed without any proper oversight or regulation.  Our previous legal challenge in England has led to DEFRA carrying out a review of its general licences, and with your help we can keep making progress on this issue.

To challenge the system, we need your help - whatever you can afford to donate! We need to raise £42,500 to ensure that we can fight this case all the way through the courts.

If for any unexpected reason we raise more money than we need to spend on this case then unspent funds will be allocated to other legal challenges on the CrowdJustice crowdfunding page.  These might be future legal challenges taken by Wild Justice or other nature conservation or environmental cases.

Photo credit: Tim Melling