Hunting Hearings - Minutes of Proceedings
DEPARTMENT FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS
at a
PUBLIC HEARING
on
HUNTING WITH DOGS
held in the
Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Westminster, SW1
on
Monday 9 September 2002
SESSION B
DAY 1
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Rt Hon Alun Michael, MP, in the Chair
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(From the Shorthand Notes of:
W B GURNEY & SONS LLP
Westminster House
7 Millbank
London, SW1P 3JA)
In attendance:
MR DOUGLAS BATCHELOR, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
MS PHYLLIS CAMPBELL-MC-RAE, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
DR ARTHUR LINDLEY, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
MR JOHN ROLLS, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
BARONESS GOLDING, Middle Way Group.
MR PETER LUFF, MP, Middle Way Group.
MR LEMBIT OPIK, MP, Middle Way Group.
MR SIMON HART, Countryside Alliance.
MR JOHN JACKSON, Countryside Alliance.
MR RICHARD LISSACK, QC, Countryside Alliance.
MR CHRISTOPHER BRAUN, Defra.
MR NIGEL LEFTON, Legal Directorate, Defra.
DR PETER ROBERTSON, Defra.
MR ANDREW SHERROTT, Stewardship Advisor, Defra.
ANNA WALKER, Defra.
After a short break
THE CHAIRMAN: May I thank our two experts for this session. When I announced this process on 21 March I said that one of the two key principles on which the Government intended to make legislation is the recognition of utility, and that is what we are about to explore.
I think it may be worth making the point, because there was quite a bit of interest - I am sure shared in this room as well as outside - in some research that was published last week, and we may well touch on that in later sessions if it is not directly related to this particular sessions. I will just say that so that we focus on the topic which we are all agreed what we would look at in this sessions. The purpose is to explore the principle of utility generally, including the broad impact of hunting on management and conservation of natural habit and wildlife.
I am very pleased indeed that we have been joined by two experts with a considerable track record in the field: Dr Stephen Tapper, a Research Scientist currently working with the Game Conservancy Trust, and Professor Stephen Harris, Professor of Environmental Sciences at Bristol University. It is very helpful actually as a starting point that both have looked at Burns and will be referring to Burns and therefore helping us to move forward from that base camp. Can I start by inviting Dr Tapper to make a brief contribution.
DR TAPPER: Thank you. I have some slides. (Slides shown)
I have broken down utility into three aspects which I think can be appropriate for almost any form of field sport: recreation, animal population control - and by that I mean pest control as well as managing the quarry species - and wildlife and landscape conservation which is the habitat management which may relate to that particular field sport, which I think is what we are most concerned with here.
Firstly, recreation. Hunting is clearly the smallest of the field sports, but traditional country sports are recognised as being important in the Government's own Rural White Paper. Lord Burns concluded that there were 19,000 subscribers and supporter households to hunting. If you compare that to the other field sports it is obviously smaller. For example, in relation to shooting there are about 120,000 members of BASC and about 1 million licensed anglers. Lord Burns's Inquiry concluded that there was something like £74 million spent for hunting, mostly horse related, £3.8 thousand roughly per household. That is somewhat larger, but since it is per household rather than per person it is not surprising it is somewhat larger than gameshooters and anglers.
In terms of animal population control, I think we know more about foxes than we do about the other species in relation to this. The first point is that there is a large variation in abundance of foxes in different regions. The yellow bars there indicate relative numbers of foxes in those different regions, and the cross-hatched bars indicate the regions in which we took a special study looking at the effects of culling. Broadly speaking, the effects of culling were not important in the Midlands at all. They were important in Wales, and hunting was an important contribution to that suppression. In East Anglia fox numbers were mainly suppressed by gamekeepers. That led to the two conclusions of Lord Burns that registered packs in the lowland areas probably make only a minor difference to fox levels, whereas in Mid Wales they probably did contribute to the suppression of numbers.
I want to turn to the question of countryside management by the foxhunts. We circulated some 117 hunts with a questionnaire as to what they were doing in terms of countryside management. We asked them the range of activities and how much time they spent on it. We have tentatively costed that at this stage as £1.4 million. We did carry out a verification exercise this spring looking at woodland areas managed by those hunts, to make sure that that was actually being carried out, and they were not misleading us. The sort of thing that they typically do is cut rides through woodland like this. We need to ask whether that has an environmental benefit, and we have looked at this in relation to the cutting of small glades. If you cut small glades in this woodland you open up the canopy and you create a rich ground for wildlife, consequently you get increased numbers of things like butterflies.
This shows some woodland managed in the South of England. The red shows the abundance of different species of butterfly in these glades created by hunts. The yellow bars indicate what the rest of the woodland was like.
That is broadly the kind of thing that we are showing up here. Thank you, that is it.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed.
DR TAPPER: Was it five minutes?
THE CHAIRMAN: A very professional five minutes, if I may say so! Professor Stephen Harris , can I invite you to speak?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I understood the session to be the broad impact of hunting on management and conservation of natural habitat and wildlife, so that is basically what I am doing, trying to take forward what Lord Burns said - I know he said people quote selectively. I hope that I have quoted objectively - in his conclusion that "Nowadays, however, hunting with dogs is likely to form only a relatively minor factor in determining farmers' and landowners' land management practices", and that "a ban on hunting with dogs would be unlikely to have a major impact from a conservation perspective". That may not be too surprising. Clearly the Common Agricultural Policy and whatever environmental schemes are in place are likely to have a very large impact on what goes on in our countryside today.
To try to take thinks forward I have actually quoted from the paper that Piran White and myself and various other colleagues have prepared that is in Piran's submission. I would basically support the general conclusion from Burns. We did a questionnaire survey across seven regions of England and Wales in March and April looking at the views of practitioners – i.e. farmers, foresters, fish farmers, etcetera - on their attitudes to the full quarry species and also their attitude to a ban on hunting. Not surprisingly, only 4 per cent actually manage their land to encourage foxes, 58 per cent said that a ban on hunting would have no effect on their tolerance of foxes on their land.
The situation was different for red deer. 82 per cent of practitioners with red deer on their land actively managed their land to encourage red deer, and 89 per cent said that a ban on hunting---
MR ROLLS: Sorry, could I just ask you to slow down slightly. I realise that the pressure of time is tight, but I think the acoustics are making it just a little difficult to hear everything.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Okay. 89 per cent said that a ban on hunting with dogs would have no effect on their tolerance of red deer on their land.
For brown hares, 23 per cent of the practitioners actively managed their land to encourage brown hares, and the majority of practitioners (89 per cent) said that a ban on hunting would have no effect on their tolerance of brown hares on their land.
Perhaps not too surprisingly, no one managed their land to encourage mink. 61 per cent said that a ban on hunting with dogs would have no effect on their tolerance of mink.
So the overall conclusion is that for foxes, hares and mink very few - only a minority of people - are actively managing land for these species, and the majority will not change their attitudes following a bank on hunting with.
We also tried to work out how widespread the control of these various species was on land. This is quite difficult, because it is very hard to get a good objective survey that samples farmers' views in a stratified and random way. I think the only good attempt to do this is the paper we did jointly with Defra that is currently before review, in which we tried to work out how many farms across England and Wales actively control foxes on their land. It is actually only 58 per cent, and I think that is probably a reasonable estimate. The same for hares: only 24 per cent of farms actually have hares hunted on their land in any way or form. It is difficult to get a properly structured survey of farms in Wales to show how many actively hunt deer and mink.
I went on then to look at the two key species in my submission - brown hares, rats and foxes -for which we have data. For brown hares there is a problem. Clearly, there is a big issue relating to the impact of coursing with lurchers on farms, and particularly East Anglia where there is a big impact on hare numbers, and it has long been reported that farmers kill a lot of hares on the land to try to keep lurching gangs off. Clearly, that has a big impact on the conservation of a BAP species.
Burns concluded that "a ban might lead to farmers and landowners to pay less attention to encouraging hare numbers". We could not find any strong evidence for this in the survey done by Piran White and myself, and it is highly likely that any potential losses in conservation terms could be more than offset by reduced pressure on hares from coursers.
The big problem with conservation of brown hares is the fact that it is actually not that clear what the habitat requirements are for this species. We are currently finishing with Defra a contract - you will get the report at the end of the year - trying to work out what the habitat requirements of hares are in Britain. Some of the data in that paper is appended to this submission.
Clearly, the problem with brown hares is that many of the habitat requirements actually do not marry well with the conservation needs of particularly farmland birds, and so trying to reconcile the needs of different species is problematic, and we are trying to do that in the final report for you.
For foxes, there has been considerable debate about the impact of foxes on wildlife. As far as I can see, the best review is the summaries taken by the RSPB in their review of the impact of predators on farmland birds. They do not define that predation was the "main ultimate cause of decline" for any of the 11 species of farmland bird they covered; it was only the mechanism of decline, or one of a number of mechanisms, for the grey partridge.
I asked the RSPB what their attitude was to fox predation on their reserves. The answer from their Reserves Manager is that "overall fox predation is not a significant problem at our 176 reserves" and predation "usually stops when the control is precise and small scale". They have reissued those views various submissions to the Scottish Parliament during the debates up there, and their attitude is that the best approach to conservation is habitat management, get this right, and then to accommodate the full range of predators and prey.
So overall that was my conclusion, as far as we can see, on the impact of hunting on the conservation management of wildlife and habitats.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed. We asked each of the people giving evidence over the next few days to make a presentation in this way - short and disciplined - in order to maximise the time for discussion. If questions are directed to one rather than another of the people who have just given evidence, could you indicate, but I do hope that this will develop as a discussion and therefore the other might wish to comment on the reply. As long as we do that with both, I think that is fair. John, would you like to start?
MR JACKSON: Following on from that, Minister, we would actually like to hear a discussion between the two experts so that we are clear on this, but I have a slightly long question which I will read out fairly slowly, if I may. In the search for common ground which we think already includes agreement on the need in our countryside for firstly sustainable development on the state of mutual interdependence with conservation and biodiversity, secondly a full role for social capital in rural resource management, and thirdly recognition of wildlife - and this is an expression that Professor Harris will recognise - as a publicly owned good, would the panel please discuss the proper role of local communities with their local knowledge in these respects, with particular reference to utility of hunting with dogs in the context of the conservation of natural habitat and the management of wildlife?
DR TAPPER: Probably starting at the other end, if I may, I think it is important to consider the farming community above all, and the farming community does not just have an interest in producing commodity crops, it also has an interest in countryside recreation. I think it is that interest in countryside recreation that has helped make the landscape what it is and still supports it today. However, farmers are economic beings, and of course large Defra-funded schemes like Countryside Stewardship in the broad and shallow scheme that is proposed will have a huge bearing on what they are prepared to do. But you have to remember that even though you may be offering them money, there has to be an incentive to do it as well. I think Defra will already know that those people taking up Countryside Stewardship and woodland grants, for example, tend to be those who have a sporting interest rather than just a commercial interest in getting as much out of the land as possible.
In terms of biodiversity, Professor Harris is right, habitat is very, very important in the biodiversity in the countryside for producing wildlife, but we think also that predation pressure can have a big impact on that too, so if you have parts of the countryside that have lower predation pressure than other parts of the countryside, certain species that are vulnerable to predation will do better, and ground-nesting birds are a key area where foxes are a very important predation factor. That is not just gamebirds; that includes waders as well.
Have I said enough for the time being?
THE CHAIRMAN: Fine. Professor Harris?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I guess that is one of the fundamental disagreements - the predation pressure exerted by foxes. The RSPB do not agree. They look at a range of species and say it is not the key factor, managing habitats is important.
Perhaps coming back to the primary issue of John Jackson, I understood the central part of your question was that of the role of local communities in managing the utilities that are available to them. I think that is very important, but I think also one of the problems we face is actually trying to get the local communities to understand what the resources they have are. Perhaps there are two quantified studies have looked at perhaps how farmers perceive the foxes on their land. The first I can think of where their assertions were tested was the study in Wiltshire done by the Agricultural College at Cirencester and Dave Macdonald at Oxford, where they looked at and assessed how many foxes they had on their land. They were out by an order of magnitude. The densest farms that were estimated were ten times that of people who had been recorded with that sort of habitat and comparable to the highest density I have ever recorded in Bristol. If you look at the work the Game Conservancy did asking farmers how many foxes are killed on their land, they were over-estimated by a factor of 7 to 12 times.
So I think the problem is that yes, it is important that people have a role in management the utility on their land, but part of that is the need to help to provide them with the information that helps them make a good assessment. Perhaps one of the answers also to that is when we come on to the session this afternoon where we talk about some of the work that Piran White and Stephen and myself have been doing looking at the cost and benefit of fox control in terms of land predation. Again, farmers seem to think - in fact using data supplied by the farmers - it suggests that actually they are not making the right informed decisions, because so far they have not got the right information to do that. So I think we have to go forward in helping supply robust information that helps people make informed and practical management decisions.
THE CHAIRMAN: Dr Tapper, do you want to come back?
DR TAPPER: No.
MR OPIK: As a graduate of Bristol University, I have to be very respectful, because I do not want my degree to be revoked, therefore I shall be suitably neutral in the phrasing of the questions.
Since we are considering a focus on conservation and habitat, hunting is the biggest provider of off-road horse-riding for voluntary access agreements, and that is at a time when it seems that riding access is actually decreasing in the countryside. Hunts, for example, provide gates between farms to enable access and clear tracks and so forth. If hunting with dogs was banned, what assessment have our two witnesses made of the impact on the countryside with regard to access to off-road horse riding facilities, and have they considered the perhaps consequent increased dangers of accidents on roads and so forth and other provisions or strains on local authorities to find suitable alternatives?
DR TAPPER: Yes, I think if hunting with dogs were banned, many Midland farmers would opt to take up pheasant shooting and use their land for pheasant shooting, and I think gamekeepers would prefer to restrict access as much as possible, so I would think access is likely to decrease, other things being equal. Clearly if there are Countryside Stewardship agreements and so on, quite often provisions of access will be built into those.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think that is an interesting question to consider. I know of no quantified data. All I know at the moment is, I guess, much of what we have so far, which is assertion. I think that in years to come looking at how the countryside is managed may well depend on user paying, and I suspect there will be much more access to the countryside in terms of riding and other activities when farmers see it as a source of income. Again, I do not have hard data for that. It is very difficult to get any hard data.
MR OPIK: For clarification, as with a number of the other things in your submission, we have not got hard data, therefore it is a degree of making assertions. To that extent there may be a degree of uncertainty in what would happen?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I know of no hard data on that particular issue you have raised, no.
MR BATCHELOR: I think this is a question largely to Professor Harris, but obviously Dr Tapper might like to comment. It is really a follow-on from what was said in the Burns Inquiry in relation to the need for control being more perceived than real, and what you said earlier about 42 per cent of people actually managing the fox population to increase it and about 58 per cent carrying out no form of management control of foxes at all, therefore when you get down to the utility of hunting, how would you attach the principles of utility to what you were saying with regard to the paucity of information with regard to which people are trying to make their management decisions on?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps I could correct one thing, Douglas. I think it is 42 per cent do not control and 58 per cent do control foxes. I think you said 58 do not and 42 per cent do control them.
MR BATCHELOR: I beg your pardon.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think the problem basically with utility is that farmers are not actually making, as far as I can see from the data we have so far, informed decisions. They do not have the facts at their fingertips, and that generally seems to be the rule. So I think on the question of utility, when it comes to management, I do not see that there is a very strong case to be made about it.
DR TAPPER: I would like to add one point. When you are looking at levels of lamb losses and things, you have got to take that in the context of the current level of fox control. You do not know what the lamb losses would be if that fox control ceased and, as I say, our data from Mid Wales suggests that the fox numbers are suppressed there, and it is a community-led control. So even if an individual farmer does not participate much, he may benefit from it.
MR BATCHELOR: I understand the point you are making, but I think the fact that the large number of farmers already say that they choose not to exercise that degree of control suggests that they do not see that the fox is the problem. I think I would like to move slightly on from that one.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Do you mind if I come in on that one? I think obviously the question of effectiveness of control is something we will discuss this afternoon, so I am not going to do down that line at the moment. I think it is a debatable point that fox numbers are suppressed in these areas, but I think the key thing is, as Stephen Tapper has said, that we do not know what the level of lamb losses would be if there was no level of fox control, but what we do know - and it is in the papers that have been submitted - is that there is no simple relationship between land losses and fox density, so the fact that fox numbers may go up does not mean that you are going to have more land losses.
MR JACKSON: I would like to invite further discussion on the point that Professor Harris made about local knowledge. I think that he is plainly of the view that in many cases it is defective. Taking hunting with dogs in the context of the whole question of wildlife management, which involves other methods of control, do not Professor Harris and indeed Dr Tapper think that the best way to get people to take ownership of their own resources and the way in which they can be used is to proceed by way of education and not by way of prohibition?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I am not sure I necessarily 100 per cent agree with that. We have this system in Britain which is perhaps unusual compared to, say, much of Europe, whereby you are talking about the individual person on the individual property taking control on the individual property. The problem is that wildlife is not confined to a single farm; one person may want one thing, and a neighbouring farmer may want something different. I think in much of Europe where you look at it management is done on a community basis, not an individual holding basis, so people collectively decide, for instance, how many animals are going to be culled in their area, and much of that sort of policy is seen in the way that the British Deer Society is trying to set up deer management groups. I think that yes, there is a strong case to be made on a community basis, but perhaps not on the individual basis, because the individual basis can lead to unfortunate instances where people decide to do exactly what they want and to hell with the rest of other people's attitudes. So I think there is a strong case being made for overall community ownership of wildlife, not individual personal ownership of wildlife - "ownership" in the loosest term, obviously.
MR JACKSON: So you think people should think locally and act locally?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, I think there are the other issues as well. After all, there is the issue at the moment that if people pay for the way the countryside is managed if it is for the community as a whole, then the community as a whole also have a say in what they expect to be seen to be done there. As a person who pays a lot of money for the maintenance of the countryside, I would quite like to have a say in what I see in the countryside when I go to visit it.
MR JACKSON: Could we hear from Dr Tapper?
DR TAPPER: This is a very interesting area of wildlife management, because generally with species that are owned locally, like game birds, for example, which are highly resident, it is much easier to manage them and conserve them, and ones that do drift around the countryside are much more difficult, because they are community-owned, if you like. I think probably it is good to reflect on how our fisheries are managed. They are essentially managed by the Environment Agency, and in order to conserve salmon stocks a whole number of people have to be involved in that, and they do not necessarily reap the benefits. In the upper reaches of the river, for example, where the salmon spawn, there is really no value in salmon fishing; that is all down the lower stretch. So there has to be a sort of community involvement. Having a kind of regulatory authority in a sense does help you to do that.
THE CHAIRMAN: The topic we are looking at - and I probably need to bring us back, as Professor Harris did, to remembering the specific topic of this session - is the principles of utility generally in terms of the broad impact of hunting on the management and conservation of natural habitat and wildlife. I wonder if I could ask Dr Tapper initially, looking at your evidence and the references to foxes, how you reconcile the creation of habitats to benefit foxes and hunting with the objective of controlling fox populations?
DR TAPPER: It was pretty clear to us that many of the Midland fox counties were using the fox as a wildlife quarry really; they were not operating a pest control system by and large because there was no game-bird interest in the area, and so there was more of an interest in ensuring that there were plenty of foxes around. In fact, if foxhunting was to be abandoned in those districts, I suggest that if there became more interest in pheasant management, for example, the fox numbers would be suppressed by the gamekeepers.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I find that hard to believe. I think the classic example was back in East Anglia where in the past when there was a much higher density of gamekeepers and they used techniques such as poison and gin traps which are illegal today, they did largely eradicate foxes from East Anglia, and until the early 1960s they were extremely rare over large parts of Norfolk and Suffolk. There is still the highest density of gamekeepers in Britain in East Anglia and some of those areas, but fox numbers have been increasing steadily throughout those 40 years, and all the data and independent studies show that their numbers are going up, they are spreading into new areas, and they are doing it quite rapidly. I am not sure what you decide is quite rapidly, but they are doing it quite consistently. So we have got a high number of gamekeepers in Britain, but fox numbers are still increasing, and I guess they will continue to increase until they reach the current capacity of that the environment. I do not see that if you change to having more gamekeepers in the Midlands fox numbers will go down. There is not much evidence of that. This is as far as I can interpret the data we have got.
DR TAPPER: If you look at the evidence from Norfolk, it is quite clear that the fox numbers there are currently being suppressed by the amount of culling going on. The way you can tell this is by looking at the productivity of the foxes, because they have large litters and most of the vixens are pregnant, whereas in the Midland areas that tends not to be the case. So there is other evidence that you can use to see the amount of suppression by culling.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps that is coming on to the next session, but I will say that I would disagree with that. You can interpret the fact that foxes have got large litters, most are breeding, as being exactly what you would expect to see with an expanding population. They are an expanding population. The Game Conservancy's own data, they keep publishing it, is that there are more and more foxes in East Anglia both in terms of spread and numbers being killed. Our own shows the same. So there is an expanding population. You would expect to be. When they cease to be an expanding population then you will see that that they will reduce litter size and fewer animals will breed. That is exactly what the research around the world has shown.
MR LINDLEY: Thank you very much. I would like to bring this back to where you have just said we should be. As Professor Harris has said, that is an issue for this afternoon. Could we get a bit more of a handle on what it is the contribution hunting with dogs specifically makes towards the conservation of habitat and the protection of the countryside which Dr Tapper addressed in some detail? You mentioned an estimate - your own, I think, as yet unpublished estimate - of £1.4 million as a contribution to conservation by hunts. You have also said, I think, at least in your written paper that many spinneys, copses, landscape features owe their origin to hunting and shooting. I do think it is important to make sure, if we can, to separate those two. So a number of points, if I may, around this issue.
First of all, that £1.4 million. You compared it in your written paper with the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, £151 million, so it is kind of a 2 per cent proportion, but the Countryside Stewardship Scheme is surely only one agro-environment scheme - Environmentally Sensitive Areas - within grant schemes, and it is my belief, the Minister will know, that the Government is going dramatically to increase the funding from what must be 120/130 million at the moment to something a lot more. So what proportion really is the £1.4 million if that estimate is right? What proportion of that is it? Really, how important is that in comparison with all these other resources available for countryside conservation, and I wonder actually how much of that is funded by the Countryside Stewardship Schemes, because money may well be available?
A final point, if I may, on the same theme, you mentioned in an answer that if hunting were banned many farmers in the Midland would switch from hunting to game management, and you felt that might restrict access. Given that there are a number of pieces of research and problems from consultants you will be aware of from some years ago which show that game management to a land owner is a much more important issue for the maintenance of wildlife habitat than hunting is, would not that actually result in an increase in provision for wildlife habitat management if hunting were banned in those areas?
DR TAPPER: Let me start at the beginning. In relation to the other schemes which you mentioned, I chose to compare it with Countryside Stewardship because Countryside Stewardship has the most similar kinds of things that are available - hedge laying, maintenance of footpaths. Those kinds of things are more in line than, say, an
ESA scheme which may be grassland reversion or something. I think in terms of the way the countryside is split up there is a big history to it. Some counties were regarded as hunting counties, and other counties were regarded as shooting counties. If an interest in shooting became more apparent in the hunting counties, certainly different styles of management would accrue. You would have game crops, for example, which certainly have advantages for songbirds. So it would be a different mix entirely. It is difficult to know whether one is better or worse.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I guess the only comment I may add to that is when you listen to the things that have been described as some of the management being undertaken by foxhunts, I am not quite sure that I would see that as a natural conservation of natural habitat and wildlife. I do not think gate-hanging is necessarily much of a contribution to the conservation of natural habitat and wildlife. If you say cutting rides through woods, it might, it might be useful for riding horses down, but the problem is that for some species - and there were the examples of Steve Tapper of types of butterflies - it may be beneficial for, but for other species it is highly detrimental. For species like dormice the one thing you do not want to do is cut big rides through the middle of semi-natural woodlands. So I think it is management of habitat there, but it is management for hunting. I am not quite sure necessarily what contribution it is making to the conservation of natural habitat and wildlife, and in some cases it may be entirely detrimental. I have not seen much evidence yet that it is focussed on the important species in that woodland and what the conservation needs are of that piece of land and also of that area generally.
BARONESS GOLDING: Would you not agree that the only people who have actually got an organised and systematic programme of control and preservation of wildlife are the minkhunters, and that in fact if you ban hunting with dogs who will then take on their role?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think again that comes this afternoon. I can discuss that in my paper this afternoon. Frankly, no, I do not think they take any role whatsoever. I do discuss that. I think most of the agencies that might be directly involved - if we go back to the Environment Agency - are very concerned about the negative impact they do have on the conservation of species and of habitats.
BARONESS GOLDING: Then could I ask what has happened to the voles in this country?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: The problem with water voles - again this is discussed in my paper this afternoon - is if you go and look at the handbooks on the conservation of water voles they talk about the key problem which is improving the habitat. Where your habitat is fine, water voles and mink coexist quite happily. Conservation guidelines are all about improving habitat quality, and there are the odd pages in the back to say you can control mink as well and you to do it by trapping. Perhaps just to finish that, your own agency, the Central Science Laboratory, is currently doing a project on the Uist to try to control mink and to reduce their impact on a variety of nesting birds up there. Their method of control is trapping, and I have discussed in the paper this afternoon that they say that the use of dogs to help them in that process is questionable. Some people use dogs. Some of their trackers help to use dogs to find sites to set traps, but the most successful trappers they have do not use dogs.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I point out that we have got a session this afternoon. We tried to separate these issues out so that we could focus on each methodically, and managing and controlling the forest species is this afternoon's session. I appreciate if the question is posed you have got to answer it, but can we try to make sure that the questions therefore reflect the limits of the topic?
MR HART: I hope this discussion does not fall immediately into that trap, but I think it is in that context. On the issue of the definition of control, just to help clarify a few things, we seem to me to be leaning towards the view that control is only control that reduces the population from one figure to another. Is it either of your views, or both of your views perhaps, that in the context of all methods of control that it can mean in some cases suppressing the population, as we discussed, in some cases maintaining it at a specific level, which is perhaps governed by the local community or whatever or in some cases - and perhaps hares will fit into this - the actual enhancement of the population, all of that is controlled? In answering the question can we have your views on where the other methods of hunting fit into this, because we seem to be stuck, to my mind, on the effectiveness of mounted hunting, and of course there are plenty of people here who are interested in the contribution to all of this of control of lurchers, control of terriers, all of these other aspects of hunting which form to a large extent the majority of hunting with dogs in the UK.
THE CHAIRMAN: Simon, I think I now understand why you prefaced that remark like a skilled parliamentarian who tries to hide the facts of the topic of debate by almost apologising before they start! I think I am going to ask for a response in relation to the way in which management of population relates to management and conservation of the natural habitat and wildlife, but I think frankly that was straying beyond the topic. I will probably stop you this afternoon as a punishment!
DR TAPPER: In the light of that, I am not quite sure what the question is, sorry.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think if we can talk in terms of the utility of control of populations in relation to natural habitat and wildlife.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: It is difficult to answer that. I guess this is a summary whilst Steve thinks. I would say that as far as foxes go, I find there is very little evidence that any form of hunting of foxes is making a contribution to the conservation of habitat or wildlife, and hunting in the wildest sense of shooting or hunting with lurchers or terriers.
MR ROLLS: Could Professor Harris just repeat that? I did not quite get it.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Sorry. I am trying to not move closer to the microphone. It is not very good acoustics. I guess as far as I can see, from foxes I find it hard to find any evidence that any form of hunting of foxes with any form of dog is making a contribution to the conservation and management of natural habitat and wildlife; in fact I would even argue that it has been a very major negative impact. Before hunting with dogs was introduced in the mid 1700s there were very few foxes in Central England. The problem we had was that foxes were stocked extensively in very large numbers from the Continent; many thousands were brought over actually to supply a population of foxes to hunts. In fact, your own agency, the Central Science Laboratory, has been looking at the genetics of the British fox population. The foxes in Southern England are genetically much more closely related to the foxes in France than they are to the foxes in Scotland. That is simply the result of the huge numbers of foxes that were brought in to give us a population to hunt at all. So no one is actually very clear what our fox population would be like in lowland Britain if it had not been stocked to such huge levels to supply a population for hunting.
If you look at deer, then clearly particularly for red deer there is a lot of interest in the impact of red deer on habitats, and a lot of the practitioners - the majority of the practitioners - we managed to interview for our survey said they were managing habitat to promote the number of red deer on their land, but one of the points being made, I think, in the Countryside Alliance submission for this session is that deer numbers in some areas on Exmoor are already high enough that they are having an impact on the quality of the habitat. So I am not quite sure whether we should be trying to manage habitat to increase red deer numbers, or whether we should have a more comprehensive management programme that decides we should have a certain population level, and try and achieve it to balance the overall ecological needs of habitats such as Exmoor.
Brown hares - I guess I have a big problem overall with brown hares. They are not a native species, they were introduced for hunting. They have been highly detrimental to the native species of hare, the mountain hares. All the data we have got suggests that in the absence of brown hares in Britain we have a situation, say, where in Ireland the native hare, the mountain hare, would be found throughout the whole of lowland Britain down to sea level, and that is what we would expect to be here. So I am not quite sure that trying to manage the habitat to promote numbers of brown hares is necessarily our best conservation strategy. I always compare it to trying to save grey squirrels at the expense of the red squirrel. That is the perfect analogy there. The problem is that a lot of the management of habitat for brown hares will produce particularly high densities solely for the benefit of field sports, and I am not 100 per cent sure that is a good conservational management strategy.
For mink, clearly the problem we have here is trying to minimise the impact of mink. One of the points I made to the Burns Inquiry is that the data we have suggests that the recovery of the otter population has led to a dramatic decline in the number of mink in England and Wales, and there has been evidence that perhaps disease has also played a role. The data seems strong here that this has been due to the spread of otters. As otter numbers continue to recover, we do not know what will happen ultimately to the mink population. Frankly, we are lumbered with mink. It is a consequence of the fur industry, there is not much we can do about that. I do not see what we can do, except try and find ways to minimise the impact of mink, and that probably will mean trying to keep them off islands, particularly the west coast of Scotland, where there are vulnerable populations of ground-nesting birds, and trying to manage the habitat in lowland Britain or in mainland Britain to promote the conservation of species such as water voles and other vulnerable species of water birds.
MR ROLLS: Thank you. Dr Tapper?
DR. TAPPER: Yes, just to take up two points there. The remark about brown hares is quite interesting. I mean the brown hare were introduced in the Iron Age, so they are quite an ancient part of our fauna, and they are a bio-diversity action plan species, so we have agreed that we want to conserve them. Of course, unlike the native mountain hare, they are much more suited to farmland and that is what we have got most over England, farmland, we have not got heathland or any other kind of natural habitat. I think the other point I would make in general is if you have got an interest in a species that has some damaging effect, like foxes or hares or something, the fact that it is also a hunting quarry to a certain extent mitigates the damage that may be being done, and I think that is probably true for hares and I think it is certainly true for foxes as well.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps I can just come back on that. I think Steve and I have long disagreed about mountain hares and brown hares. No one disagrees that brown hares were introduced quite a while back, but all you have got to do is look at the situation in Ireland and see that actually it is a misconception to think that mountain hares are a species of upland heatherland. If you go and look at Ireland, they are found throughout the farmland, they are found right down to the sand dune at sea level. They are very happy on farmland, if they are not out-competed by brown hares. So it simply is a problem we have. It is one of the consequences of the fact that about 40 per cent of our mammal fauna is introduced and we have a very unbalanced fauna and that creates problems of trying to assess our conservation priorities. It is interesting that there is a BAT for our introduced species of hares, which is much more common than our native species of hare, which has no backbone. There is an anomaly for you!
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. John?
MR JACKSON: Thank you. I would like to take us back into what I think are the core principles of utility because it seems to me that we started off in essence talking about the need for control and an assumption that an animal was a pest, and now we seem to be talking about the situation where actually habitat management is about preserving an adequate supply of the quarry species so that they can be sported with. I am not quite sure where this is going and I think - well, I would particularly like to hear both from Stephen Tapper and from Stephen Harris, when you start looking at habitat management, particularly given the economic figures that Stephen Tapper put up, what part of the habitat management actually relates to shooting and would go on anyway, and what part of that habitat management relates to hunting and there would be no impact, or little or no impact, if hunting were banned, because it would seem that the habitat management is there not to deal with the pest, but to preserve an adequate supply of the prey?
DR TAPPER: I mean, the figures I have given to you do relate to hunts and we are pretty convinced, because we have done a verification exercise this spring looking at a number of woods, to make sure that they are not including pheasant woods as hunting woods, if you like, so I do not think there is much overlap there. I will put it back to you, why can it not be both? I mean it seems to us that it is at least both. The hunts, in some areas, certainly are looking after the fox population, if you like. In other areas, where the farmers wish it, they are insisting that the hunts suppress the numbers.
MR BATCHELOR: I think the reason it is a very clear issue for Parliament is you are drawing a very clear distinction between what is a sport and whether or not it is appropriate to sport with an animal, and what is a necessary form of habitat management and population control or individual animal control. That is the moral issue. I wonder if Stephen Harris would like to comment on that.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes. Again, perhaps to some extent the moral issue comes slightly later, but I think the point - if I understand the point you are making - is correct. The key issue is that more and more of the evidence suggests that if we get our habitat management right, then we can accommodate predators and prey, we can have them in a reasonable balance and we do not have to have this argument of widespread population control of species. I have quoted in my evidence the RSPB who say that they place great emphasis on getting their habitat management right at reserves, with sufficient size so that they can accommodate a full range of predators and prey. I think that is ultimately what good habitat management is.
THE CHAIRMAN: We seem to be struggling slightly to be precise in the area being covered, and if I may just perhaps indicate why we ended up with these topics. When hunting is being debated, there is frequently a suggestion that the fact that hunting takes place results in certain things being done which then leads to the conservation of natural habitat and of wild life that lives in particular habits. I think we perhaps just need to focus slightly more clearly on that question. Do you think that the case is made from your knowledge, experience and research? Does the existence of hunting lead to things being done, which significantly improves the conservation of natural habitat and the wildlife that depends on that habitat? I think that is the issue, is it not?
DR TAPPER: In my view, it certainly does. The magnitude of it is a matter of debate and I am certain now that the agri-environment schemes are considerably larger. Certainly I will acknowledge that work that is done for shooting is considerably larger than that which is done for hunting but, nevertheless, I believe it to be positive and a significant contribution.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: My answer to you, Minister, is no. Your question had the key word in there "significant" and I am struggling. In trying to prepare this submission, I struggled to find any evidence of significant contribution to conservation species or habitats from hunting with dogs and I could not do it. There may be a small amount of contribution. I think the point being made is that it is dwarfed by all other contributions and, frankly, what happens to our countryside tomorrow will depend largely on future agricultural policy and not the future of hunting, and there seems to be no evidence to contradict that.
THE CHAIRMAN: Just to allow Dr. Tapper to come back on this point, I am slightly puzzled at the suggestion that quantification almost is not important, because surely it is if we are to make a judgement about the extent to which this should count in the balance in reaching conclusions about the future of hunting. It may be that you say it is more but beneficial and therefore unimportant in deciding the big issue of hunting, and that would be fair, but if it is regarded as significant in terms of decisions about hunting, then surely a quantification is important?
DR. TAPPER: Yes, it is, but I would have thought if you were proposing to ban hunting, you would also want to ensure that the conservation effort by hunters was maintained and you have to do that, presumably not just by ensuring you have got £1.4 extra million in your budget to do that, but you have somehow to maintain the motivation of the landlords and farmers that were doing it in the first place.
THE CHAIRMAN: Then it is important to quantify the importance of the contribution that makes in order to know how much weight to put on that particular aspect
DR TAPPER: Yes, it is.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is an argument?
DR TAPPER: Yes and, frankly, we have not had enough time to appraise this sort of thing. We documented the extent of the kind of management that they are doing but, I mean, there is a whole range of species that one might want one to look at, songbirds, for example, and Stephen Harris has mentioned dormice. It would seem to be a good exercise to get English Nature to have a look at some of these woodlands managed by hunts.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps I could go back to the point I made, there is money being spent on habitat management, but of what I have seen it seems to be mainly for the benefit of hunting. How much is to the benefit of habitat management per se and conservation? It is hard to work out what proportion of that £1.4 million is actually spent in that direction, and I think you are right to ask, because I cannot find out.
DR TAPPER: It is perfectly true that if there is a management being done, it is being done for hunting, it is not being done for butterflies. The butterflies and the other species are spin-offs, no question about that.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think in terms of the discretion the question is to what extent the spin-off has significance.
MR LUFF: Thank you, Minister for bringing the subject back to the area that we studied this morning. I happen to think that cruelty is the most important issue and activity in terms of wild life management is a second issue but, nevertheless, that is what we are discussing now, and I find it frustrating we cannot get agreement between our witnesses. That is perhaps not surprising.
THE CHAIRMAN: Agreement is not compulsory, we are told
MR LUFF: No, no, no. Perhaps can we try and hone in on some areas
of agreement. Stephen Harris quoted, I am afraid slightly selectively, from the Burns Report in his submission. He quotes the middle sentence and the conclusion, but not the final sentence. I do not think it undermines his argument necessarily. "Nowadays, however, hunting with dogs is likely to form only a relatively minor factor in determining farmers' and landowners' land management practices." I think we agree with that and agree that the future of the Common Agricultural Policy is much more important than local land management practice, and that is something we can agree on. It goes on though: "It still plays a role though in certain localities in respect of woodland planting and management." So we are talking only really about woodland planting and management and then only in specific areas. That is true, is it?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think the problem is, I have only quoted selectively from Burns, I am told to keep it to the size of A4 and, therefore, there is a limit to how many words you get on A4, so it is not that I am being selective.
MR LUFF: Sorry.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes, Lord Burns does say that but, again, there do appear to be examples where woodlands are planted for the benefit of foxhunting. Well, as far as we can work out it is not very significant. I think we have reached that point where the contribution is very limited and if we look at how woodland schemes are contributing overall compared to other planting schemes, they are extremely small. The biggest planter of trees in Britain is the Highways Agency on roadside verges, and I am not quite sure what contribution they are making to conservation of wildlife either. They are just planting a lot of trees, helping raptors, but that is another point. It kills raptors, it actually helps increase ----
THE CHAIRMAN: I am sorry, can we, for the benefit of anybody that is following this, hear both ----
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I am sorry, it was my fault.
THE CHAIRMAN: Could you just repeat that final point?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I was just saying the fact you are planting trees does
not necessarily mean you are making a contribution to conservation. I have quoted the example that the Highways Agency, as far as I understand, is the biggest planter of trees in Britain and their contribution to conservation is that it seems to increase the number of raptor deaths on our roads, and greatly increases the number of deaths of other species, because it brings them down to the edge of the road where they get run over. So I just made the point, I was not sure that planting trees is a very good measure for contributing to conservation.
MR LUFF: It is this question of magnitude. We were trying to get sorted out this morning what the magnitude actually is. Also I want to pursue as well the issue of which species benefit from what the management is, because I was fascinated by what Stephen Harris was saying earlier on. You say that you have tentatively costed the work of 99 hunts who do some conservation activity at £1.4 million. What about the other people in hunt country areas who themselves hunt or, like to hunt, and themselves conduct conservation activity on their land but it is not actually owned by the hunt? Have you got any figures for that?
DR TAPPER: This includes that. To the best of our knowledge we asked the hunts what they did themselves and what woods were being managed on their behalf, as it were, by sympathetic farmers.
MR LUFF: I must say, knowing how much it costs to manage a woodland I find £1.4 million quite a low figure in that context.
DR TAPPER: It is just hours work and costs of material that has been included here.
MR LUFF: What about the number of woods? I was interested in the figure at the top of the second page of your submission where you say that you visited 200 randomly selected woods. This suggests to me that there are quite a lot. Have you got a figure for the total number of woodland you think supporters and their friends are managing? What kind of area are we talking about?
DR TAPPER: The total amount of woodland is, I think, somewhere in there - 23,000 hectares. With the average size of the glade, for example, that is being cleared or the bit of coppicing that is being done, I think you are probably looking at about 1,000 to 2,000 sites of bits of woodland throughout England and Wales.
MR LUFF: I have always worked on the basis, from talking to Wildlife Trust, that clearing woodlands and creating light, letting light get to the forest floor or the woodland floor, was a good thing, and that certainly is the basis of your presentation, is it not?
DR TAPPER: Yes.
MR LUFF: But Professor Harris appears to have a conflicting view. What is the issue? You talked about dormice suffering.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not say that I necessarily disagree with that statement. I think what I was saying is that it is not good for every species, and for the management of woods on a conservation basis I have not seen any evidence that actually the priority is established before the management is done. I think that is the only point I was making. So for some species it may be that a woodland is particularly important for a particular species, and what management you are doing, which is, I think - I am not trying to be rude - which is, I guess done by rote is the factor you are describing of just let some light in because that is seen to be good management strategy. That actually might be counterproductive. So I was simply making the point that each case needs to be done on an individual basis to assess local conservation priorities.
MR LUFF: Would Dr Tapper like to comment on that?
DR TAPPER: Yes. The kind of management that is being done is things like coppicing. It is not clearing great big swathes of ancient woodland or anything like that. Do not forget, species like dormice need corridors. So, for example, the hedge laying and the hedgerow management is going to be more important to a species like that than, say, ripping out the hedgerow and putting in a barbed-wire fence. So there is no question that there are swings and roundabouts with every kind of thing, so some species will certainly benefit and some will not.
THE CHAIRMAN: Lyn Golding booked a supplementary.
BARONESS GOLDING: Thank you. On the question of mink, given that Professor Harris has said that we are lumbered with mink, surely anything we can do to minimise the damage on the balance of our wildlife - because they do affect the balance of wildlife - whatever we can do about it, even with hunting with gods, should have some significance?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, hunting with dogs has no significance to the number of minks. The problem with mink hunting is that it is a summer activity where a lot of other species are breeding on waterways, and the Environment Agency themselves are very concerned about it being environmentally damaging. So it makes no detectable contribution to population or to limiting the impact of mink on vulnerable species. It is a damaging activity in the middle of the breeding season for many species. No, I do not think it does make a contribution. I do not think just because mink have a significant impact on native species it is carte blanche to do what you like.
BARONESS GOLDING: So you think that even though they catch mink, that it has no contribution?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Absolutely, no contribution.
BARONESS GOLDING: Thank you.
MR JACKSON: Trying to get back to common ground on utility again, our own country's bio-diversity plan says that hunting influences the management of large areas of land, and that without field sports it is arguable that many copses and spinneys would no longer exist. I think it is plain from what the panel speakers have said that there is common ground that habitats are fragile, and we must remember that we live in an environment which is entirely manmade. Does not this follow, following the thinking of the people that we are and so on, lead us in the direction that utility must be judged by local people in the light of local circumstances?
DR TAPPER: I will repeat what I said before. I believe that the landowners and the farmers certainly should have the first say in how that landscape is managed, but the public has a right also, do not discount that.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think that is what I would have said as well in general terms, so there is some agreement there for you. But I think the other point that has not yet been made, in the absence of a ban on hunting, is how much of the management that is done on woodlands, etcetera, at the moment would disappear. That is the other issue we would have no data on. I see no reason to assume that it would all disappear.
MR JACKSON: But we do not know?
MR BATCHELOR: I think there is a very interesting theme coming through this, and the balance of what is being said seems to me to be that the habitat management such as takes place is principally about ensuring that there is an adequate supply of quarry species. Nobody here has advanced yet the suggestion that the habitat management is about reducing the number of problem species. So I think I would like to ask my colleague here to ask a supplementary with regard to the way in which the money is being applied to address that issue, and then the speakers to comment on that.
DR LINDLEY: You said a little while ago that you felt you did not evaluate the scale of the contribution, but there is also the question of if hunting were banned, would that work continue? Obviously landowners have all sorts of motivations for managing their land - Countryside Stewardship money, Woodland Grant funding, their interest in the landscape and a whole range of other things - so there are many motivations in any landowner's view of his land as to why he should conserve the countryside. If, as my colleague has just said, and I think it is quite clear, it seems to be a generally accepted point that the primary aim of management by hunts, such as it is, is to preserve the quarry species, I think Professor Harris is making the point that if you want to preserve the habitat you should approach it from a point of view of what is the conservation strategy for that habitat, rather than what is the best way of preserving individual species. No doubt many landowners have that in mind, and therefore, were hunting to be banned, those motivations would still apply, much of the work would still be done. Is that not the case?
DR TAPPER: To begin with the first point about managing woodland for the benefit of the foxes, that is only partially true. A lot of the management being done here is to provide access for the hunting, so there are wide grass rides, for example, round fields, the rides cut through woodland. Those are not done to improve the quarry species but are done to improve access. That is the first point.
Of course, in any kind of habitat management you always have a set of objectives, and the objectives currently are to do with ensuring adequate numbers of foxes in some areas and ensuring adequate access for hunting. If you change the rules, are you going to manage for dormice, in which case the butterflies will suffer, if you like. So you are essentially, in any kind of management, making the decisions on what you want the outcome to be, and I think quite rightly we prefer to let the farmers choose what they think they should be doing most of the time.
DR LINDLEY: Are you in fact agreeing that if hunting was removed as a motivation, other motivations for managing habitat would still apply, and that habitat management for something would still continue?
DR TAPPER: What concerns me is that there might be no motivation, so you would get none.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I am not sure whether that is true or not. I think Arthur Lindley has made the point that there must be a number of motivations why people manage the habitats on their land, and I would be surprised if people do it solely for one purpose. Most farmers I have talked to do not, but that is very hard to quantify.
Perhaps I could raise one point that was made by Steve Tapper, in that a lot of the management done by hunts is access to land; that access being cutting broad swathes and making easy access to woodland can be very counterproductive to the conservation of many species. I simply refer you to the English Nature report on the impact of the ban on access to the countryside during the foot and mouth disease, and the massive changes we saw in a lot of our wildlife because of the reduced levels of disturbance. I think access to the land can be a problem. I think we have to try to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different management strategies in trying to achieve the overall benefit in terms of aesthetic quality, habitat conservation, conservation of species, enjoyment of the land by both the landowning community and the general public. It is a very difficult set of balances, and I do not think at the moment we have enough data actually to say quite where the balances lie.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think the difficulty is, we are not really trying to decide what the balance of habitat management ought to be, although it is difficult to have this discussion without referring to the need for those very serious management decisions to be taken, and clearly Government has a responsibility, landowners and land managers have a responsibility, there is a public interest in all of this. I am still concerned about really the basic question, which is the contribution that is made by hunting to these goods - the public benefit, if you like. I wonder if I can go back to one of the points made by Dr Tapper in relation to the quantification of spend, and to ask whether those figures include the spend on maintaining hunt accessibility or wall and hedge repairs and issues like that, which may have a spin off but are directly related to the management of that land for accessibility for hunting? In other words, we are moving on to this question of where rides are driven through to other issues.
DR TAPPER: Yes, it does. The figure of £1.4 million I have given you is an assessment which includes repairing dry-stone walls, hedge laying, gate hanging as well. So a lot of it is basically countryside management, if you like, rather than habitat for wildlife.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I wonder if I could ask Professor Harris as well. He has referred in his initial remarks in the paper to illegal hare coursing and the extent of the fact that that can have an effect on farmers' attitudes to the hare population on their land. Obviously there are a lot of complaints about the activities of illegal hare coursing which go beyond the fact that it is illegal because it is trespass, and some of the other nuances that are associated with that. Are you able to quantify the extent of that problem, or is that more anecdotal?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not think I have ever used the phrase "illegal hare coursing", Minister, because some people try and use it solely for all forms of hare coursing which are not done under NCC rules, and a lot of the coursing done by people owning lurchers is under NCC.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think you referred to it as "poaching", did you not, which is technically correct?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Poaching, yes, rather than actually hunting. Where the impact of poaching gangs is very difficult to access, I have actually written to a number of the wildlife officers in the various local police forces and they say it is a significant problem, but they cannot quantify it, and that is as far as they go. They say it is a big problem. It is one of the main causes of calls they get from landowners in certain areas at certain times of the year, but beyond that it is very hard to say.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, that is helpful.
MR OPIK: I want to approach this in a slightly different way. It is obviously not appropriate for us to have a moral discussion about the relative comparison of whether one is doing it for pest control or recreation in this session. Therefore, the question I would like to ask is the same question you would ask about other activities conducted involving land - for example, golf or football - where we might make a consideration about the damage to conservation, damage to utility, that those spaces make because they take up land. The first point I therefore have is, in your view, does hunting do any damage in terms of conservation and utility, leaving aside the quarry species, we will discuss that this afternoon?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think it does. I think much of hunting tries to maintain populations of predators or quarry species in numbers that you may not necessarily want, and I think the presence of hunting, as I say later in other papers, actually ultimately prevents us having an overall management strategy for mammals in Britain. I make the point that for mammals we are 50 years behind birds, and that is simply because the presence of hunting has rather prevented us actually giving some overall management strategy for our mammals. So yes, I think there is a very negative impact.
DR OPIK: So if this was a very important argument, you did not mention this in the paper.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is not habitat per se. That was actually looking at managing the quarry species, and that is dealt with further down the session, so it is dealt with. I am just trying to know exactly where we draw the boundaries for every one of those sessions.
MR OPIK: For clarification, before we hear what Dr Tapper says, in terms of habitat your judgement is that it would not necessarily be harming habitat, but we may be discussing the size of the quarry species population itself?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, I think that is slightly putting words in my mouth. I think the sum of what I have said already is that the management that is being done, as has been described by Steve Tapper, by hunts may be managing habitats; we just do not have any measure of whether it is achieving any good or not.
DR TAPPER: Sorry, I have lost my train of thought. Could you repeat the question from the beginning?
MR OPIK: I will not repeat all of it. Specifically the question I am asking is, looking at it in the converse way, rather than saying is this good for wildlife management, is there an environmental damage, is there a damage to conservation and utility, leaving aside the quarried species, of allowing these to carry on? The comparison I made was with other activities which take up land.
DR TAPPER: In relation to damage, if I can answer that solely, I think there are instances where hunts do damage, like hard-stopping badger setts, things like that. I cannot see that any of those could not be addressed by adequate regulation.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Can I come back to the point you asked me originally, would you mind? You asked particularly about comparison with things like golf courses. You can argue there is great conservation value from golf courses, and a lot of rare species have been maintained on golf courses. You asked about sports facilities. You can make the point that a lot of birds, particularly in winter, rely heavily on sports facilities; you can go and look at ducks, waders and geese and things on them. So the comparison you use, whatever pattern of land use you look at, you can make the case that there will be examples where it plays a contribution to conservation. It is very hard to say overall whether one activity or another makes a greater or lesser contribution to conservation.
MR OPIK: To bring this together, then, my understanding from reading the whole session is that it is equivocal, that the work that Professor Harris and Dr Tapper have shown us does not point, as I understand it, absolutely in a cast-iron way, because there is a degree of supposition in both cases. I am not trying to put words in your mouth, I am just trying to be clear about that. Is that a fair summary: that you cannot be sure one way or the other?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: My answer is, I have said in relation to the question the Minister put to us - does it make a significant contribution? - the answer is no, because the data provided show us that it is actually a very small contribution in terms of the overall costs of conservation of the British countryside.
MR OPIK: But it may not do significant harm either? It could be neutral?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes, for a very small contribution overall it may not be necessarily high.
MR OPIK: Dr Tapper, you said that possibly access may be restricted because, for example, shooting might replace horseriding. Was I correct in understanding that from you?
DR TAPPER: Yes.
MR JACKSON: I would like to have a further discussion on what Professor Harris says about habitat. Given that utility is actually ultimately for the benefit of human beings, would you or would you not agree that wildlife populations, including the four quarry species hunted in the UK, cannot maintain themselves at population levels tolerable to human communities, given the absence of their historic predators, and an unnaturally abundant availability of food provided by increasing human habitation?
DR TAPPER: I think all of those species could survive, but the abundance would certainly change, and it would depend on the landowners' attitudes. If landowners choose not to have hares because of the poaching problems, they can knock them out and might choose to do that.
THE CHAIRMAN: Professor Harris?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I obviously interpret the question slightly differently. I think I understood you were asking whether these mammals need to be controlled because they cannot do it for themselves. Is that a précis? No, I do not agree. I do not see any evidence that fox numbers actually do need to be controlled, and I think there is a lot of evidence as we go into the other session to say that they do not. I am not aware of the historic predator of foxes in Britain. You must enlighten me what it was, because I am not actually sure I know what it was. For the other species, there clearly is a role that the big predators of deer have gone and yes, deer need to be culled, and stalking is the way that I think makes a major contribution to doing that.
THE CHAIRMAN: But as you rightly say, that is coming on to a later topic.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes, it is for a later session.
MR BATCHELOR: There is almost a suggestion that has been implicit in the discussion here that habitat management is purely carried out by people who are involved in country sports. They have certainly publicised the fact that when they knock over gates and walls they put them up again. I am not quite sure whether that constitutes habitat management. The question I was really going to ask both Dr Tapper and Professor Harris was that most of the wildlife trusts around the countryside who are looking at habitat management and at conservation do not allow hunting on their land. I think it might be useful to hear from them how they reconcile that position of people who are simply trying to manage and conserve habitats with the position that is put forward by the sporting lobby that their contribution is more essential and different. Perhaps Stephen Harris would like to comment first on that.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think that is perhaps the crux of the issue. There is a lot of habitat management going on by a variety of people around Britain. Much of it makes a much more substantive contribution, and a lot of reserves and trusts do not allow hunting on their land, and where it does occur it is because there is an existing agreement prior to the trust acquiring the land or their management agreement for that land. As a norm, conservation bodies do not have hunting on their land.
DR TAPPER: I do not know how much, the proportion of the land, the wildlife trusts do have access to. I do not know whether you have the figures, but I do not have figures on the ownership of the wildlife trusts, but I do not imagine it is very large. I think it is quite interesting, if you look in Lord Burns, you will find references to what FWAG thought or what the motivation for countryside management given by FWAG was. I think in some regions a sporting interest was something like a second or third major reason for preserving habitat.
MR BATCHELOR: I accept what is said, but I think you might be surprised, on the basis of the level of employment and management that some of the wildlife trusts do exercise. Going from memory here, I cannot remember whether it was Devon or Somerset, but they employ 55 staff and they cover a lot of land.
DR TAPPER: I did not refer to employment. I referred to land.
MR BATCHELOR: In terms of area of land and intensity of management. I think you were trying to make the case that there is a substantial and measurable contribution, and in a sense I am saying where is the evidence to back that, other than the assertion that it takes place?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps a good example I could quote, I have it to hand, is that the RSPB have 121,082 hectares of land, which I think greatly dwarves the figure that was quoted for what was being managed by hunts, and they do not allow hunting on their land. That is just one conservation body. I just happen to have their figure to hand.
DR TAPPER: To put the record straight, it is quite important you recognise that conservation bodies do cull foxes in order to reduce predation, and English Nature does it on some of its reserves. So nature reserve managers do opt for predator control when they think it is needed. Certainly it is not their first option. I think even the RSPB control predators, including foxes, on at least one of their reserves.
MR BATCHELOR: I think the only point we would make in relation to this issue is that none of those bodies uses hunting to do it.
DR TAPPER: No. Indeed, yes, that is right.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I have the RSPB's words in front of me: "Predation of eggs and chicks usually stops when the control is precise and small-scale, e.g. when one family of foxes is destroyed alongside a tern colony or, say, breeding habitat at the Minsmere lagoons". That is what they do. They do not use hunting.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I at this point thank both our experts for their contribution during this discussion.
I want to make two points at this stage. One is that if anybody is listening to this debate and thinking that any one of our sessions will answer the major topic of what should be done with hunting, they will be disappointed, because what we are doing is moving from one topic to another, having identified the big issues that have been used as arguments by the pro-hunting and anti-hunting campaigners, in order to examine the evidence, and to try to do that in an objective way.
I am grateful to the two contributors for the way that they have provided their information, and indeed for the exchanges between them as well as with members of the panel, because I think this takes us beyond the straightforward cross-examination of evidence.
This room, once people have left - you are not going to be locked in - will be locked during the lunch break and will be reopened at 1.50 in order for people to be able to take up their places, but it means that until 1.50 papers and bags can be left safely and will be secure in the normal parliamentary traditions.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you both.
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Page last modified:
19 May, 2005
Page published: 10 December, 2002