Government Language Signals Damaging Move Toward Licensing, Says NGO

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The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) is deeply concerned by the tone and direction of the latest government statement on land use. While it pays lip service to the economic, cultural and environmental value of shooting, it simultaneously lays the groundwork for further regulation, including the spectre of licensing, that risks damaging the very outcomes it claims to support. Gamebird management already delivers considerable public gains. Across vast areas of England, keepers and shoot managers are responsible for habitat restoration, predator control, woodland management and the maintenance of some of our most iconic landscapes. These are not abstract benefits, they are practical, proven contributions to biodiversity, carbon storage and rural employment, funded not by the taxpayer, but by those who live and work on the land.

What is particularly troubling is the implication that additional layers of bureaucracy will “future-proof” the sector. Licensing schemes are blunt instruments. They create cost, uncertainty, and administrative burden, while doing little to address the minority of cases where problems may occur.

A central argument advanced by those calling for new licensing of gamebird release and game shooting is that the sector operates in a regulatory vacuum. This is demonstrably false. Game shooting in England and Wales is already one of the most comprehensively regulated rural activities in the country, governed by an extensive framework of primary legislation, statutory instruments and licensing conditions built up over nearly two centuries. What is lacking is not legislation, it is enforcement and political will to use the powers already on the statute book.

Rural communities are already under significant pressure economically, socially and culturally. Shooting supports thousands of jobs, sustains local businesses and underpins the viability of land that might otherwise be lost to neglect or inappropriate development. To continually single out this sector for further scrutiny risks eroding that foundation.

David Pooler, National Chair of the NGO said "What sits beneath the Government’s language here is not partnership, but a steady drift towards regulation that risks undermining one of the most effective, privately funded conservation models in the country."

As the representative body for working gamekeepers, the NGO will rigorously challenge any proposals that threaten the future of sustainable shooting or undermine the evidence‑led conservation outcomes our members deliver across the countryside.

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Notes to Editors:

The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation: The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) represents the gamekeepers of England and Wales. The NGO defends and promotes gamekeeping and gamekeepers and works to ensure high standards throughout the profession. The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation was founded in 1997 by a group of gamekeepers who felt that keepering was threatened by public misunderstanding and poor representation. Today, there are 13,000 members of the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation.  www.nationalgamekeepers.org.uk