Natural England's plan for goshawk control: Have you tried shooting at It?

Natural England has told a license applicant to fire a gun at a protected bird of prey before it will consider a licence to control it.

Somewhere in Natural England, a person sat down, opened their inbox, and typed the words "shoot to scare the goshawk" into an email to a member of the public. They then pressed send. Nobody, at any point in this process, appears to have stopped and asked whether telling people to fire guns at one of England's most strictly protected birds was a sentence that should leave the building.

The story is almost too good. A shoot was losing pheasant poults to a goshawk near its release pen and applied for a licence to do something about it. Natural England's response was not yes. It was not even no. It was, in effect, "have you tried shooting at it first?"

To be specific, the agency suggested the applicant "shoot to scare" the bird outside the breeding season, and said it would want evidence that this had been attempted before any lethal control licence could be considered. The applicant had already pointed out that he had not done this, on the entirely reasonable grounds that firing a gun at a protected raptor sounds like a quick route to a conversation with the police. Natural England's view appears to be that this is precisely the box he needs to tick.

Let us pause on the phrase "shoot to scare," because the more you look at it the worse it gets. What does it mean? Blanks? A starting pistol? A stern warning fired into a hedge? Or does it mean live ammunition pointed in the general direction of a bird that the law goes to extraordinary lengths to protect?

Natural England has not said. It has handed a man a gun, pointed vaguely at the sky, and wandered off whistling. The one word in the sentence that carries all the legal risk is the one word nobody at the agency seems willing to define. Marvellous.

Natural England now appears to believe that scaring a Schedule 1 raptor with a firearm is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, provided the reason is protecting some pheasants.

Which raises a delicious possibility. If it is fine to fire at a goshawk to save gamebirds, it must surely be fine to fire at a predator to save curlew, lapwing and golden plover, the ground-nesting birds whose nests are quietly emptied every spring while everyone wrings their hands.

By Natural England's own logic, gamekeepers across the uplands should now be encouraged to get out there and start scaring raptors off vulnerable wild birds in the name of conservation.

Is that the policy? Because that is certainly where the email leads. One reading of Natural England's position is that it has accidentally invented a nationwide scheme for letting people fire at birds of prey, so long as they fill in the right form and mutter the word "deterrent." We assume this is not what the agency intended. We would gently suggest it check, because right now its official advice reads like an open invitation.

Of course, it will not apply the logic consistently. Fire at a goshawk to protect a commercial shoot and you get a sympathetic nod and a tick in the evidence box. Suggest firing at a predator to protect a red-listed curlew and the same agency will rediscover its caution at remarkable speed. Apparently the protected status of a raptor is negotiable, but only when there is money rather than conservation on the other side of the equation.

Spare a thought for the police firearms licensing department, who are about to receive an explanation that begins "well, Natural England told me to." Every certificate holder knows that discharging a firearm has to be cleanly justifiable. "A man from the government emailed me and said to" is not, traditionally, a phrase that fills licensing officers with calm.

One arm of the state protects the bird. Another arm of the state controls the gun. And a third arm of the state has just told a member of the public to point the second at the first. They should really all have lunch together at some point.

The genius of the whole arrangement is that it cannot actually be completed. You cannot get a lethal licence until you have tried the non-lethal options. One of the non-lethal options is now shooting at a protected bird. The applicant has said he will not shoot at a protected bird, because he is a sensible person. Therefore the licence cannot proceed.

The position is bascially this. Land managers are repeatedly told the licensing system is rigorous, scientific and legally watertight. What they have actually been handed is advice to fire a gun at a protected raptor, with the key word undefined, the firearms risk unowned, the conservation logic conveniently abandoned the moment it becomes inconvenient, and the whole thing arranged so the licence can never be granted anyway.

So we will put the obvious question to Natural England plainly. Do you, or do you not, want gamekeepers firing at birds of prey? Because your own advice says yes, and we suspect the goshawks would quite like to know before the next breeding season starts.

It is not good regulation. It is not even bad regulation. It is a sketch show.