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 D
DAY 1
-------
Rt Hon Alun Michael, MP, in the Chair
-------
(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.
(Short adjournment)
THE CHAIRMAN: The purpose of this session is to explore the principle of utility in regard to related areas of activity which involve the use of dogs, namely hare coursing, ratting, falconry, rabbiting and deer-stalking. We are joined again by Professor Stephen Harris and Dr Jonathan Reynolds. I invite Professor Stephen Harris to go first.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Thank you, Minister. For this session I am taking the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of "utility", which they define as being "usefulness or profitable; a useful thing, or severely practical". I have looked at each of the species here.
First, we look at hare coursing. We have two species of hare in Britain, and both are coursed. As we have already said, the mountain hare is listed on Schedule 3 of the Conservation of Natural Habitats Regulation 1994.
The key problem facing the brown hare population is the pressure posed by coursing. The main pressure is from working lurchers. Burns says there could be in excess of 200,000 working lurchers in Britain. With a population of just 625,000 brown hares in lowland landscape in Britain, clearly the hunting pressure is high. We do not know how much pressure that puts on hares, but certainly it could be a major contributing factor in having an impact on hare numbers. Where hare numbers do need to be reduced, shooting at night with a rifle or during the day and during shoots is probably the best way to manage hare populations, and at least with shooting, carcasses have a commercial value and there are substantial numbers of hares that are exported each year from Britain by game dealers.
The other point I raise is the problem with coursing is supplying hares for organised meets; and where numbers are down they are supplying hares for coursing needs. We did detect that in the survey we did of farming in Britain. We do not know how often hares are moved to re-stock populations. The data we have from one published study suggests it is not a very successful way of maintaining numbers long-term, and we do not know how many hares in Britain are caught and trans-located each year. My overall conclusion is that it is impossible to view coursing in terms of the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of being "useful or profitable, or severely practical".
A variety of dogs can be used for ratting, although terriers are most common. In Britain, and probably most of the world, the most widespread method of rat control is the use of anticoagulant poisons. Unknown millions of rats are killed this way in Britain each year. In comparison, the use of dogs is very small-scale and tend only to be used where rat numbers increase to levels where it would cause a significant problem. When ratting is undertaken to reduce the level of infestation, it is usually accompanied by excessive, expensive clearing of rubbish and other areas used by rats. The point is generally that good farm hygiene prevents a build-up of rat populations to levels where it is necessary to use dogs, and Defra is currently funding a project investigating farm hygiene and habitat management generally in preventing rat infestations.
Generally, the message is that it is not necessary to use dogs for ratting. Where dogs are used, it is usually the last resort in response to poor standards of hygiene.
If we look at falconry, I have appended some tables giving details of the falcon season and the types of prey taken by different species of falcons and hawks, and estimated the numbers killed per season by a hawk or falcon, working full-time at it. The problem is that it is very difficult to estimate the number of people involved in falconry - there are no clear statistics. I attach a letter from Defra who say that they had 2,100 falconers registered in the UK, who hold roughly 6,600 Schedule 4 birds. However, there are many species that are not listed on Schedule 4 and so there is no record of them. The overall best estimate I can come up with is that there are between 2,000 and 4,000 falconers who hunt live prey in Britain. Equally, it is hard to work out how many animals are killed by falconers. Again, the only records are for the number of birds killed under licences issued under the Wildlife & Countryside Act, 1981. There are various figures in the appended letter. I make the point that in relation to the number of those target species, the number killed is extremely small.
A number of other species taken by falcons are the ones you do not have to register, and things like corbies, game, rabbits and hares are unrecorded. The most common bird of prey used to hunt live quarry in Britain is the Harris's hawk, and the best estimate we can come up with is that there are probably about 11,000 in Britain, half of which are used to hunt mainly rabbits, in a short season extending from September to February. The best estimate we can come up with is that a couple of rabbits are killed on average by these hawks, so hunting with Harris's hawks makes at best a marginal contribution to controlling species such as rabbits.
The other point to bear in mind is that compared to other forms of pest control, the falcon is very low in terms of environmental impact, and falconry is a sport than perhaps being practical, but it has to be remembered that falconry plays an important role in reducing risk of bird strikes on airfields.
Looking at rabbiting with dogs, again the aim of rabbiting is primarily pest control, which differs from hare coursing, which is solely sport, and it probably makes a small contribution to population control in rabbits in most circumstances.
The vast majority of rabbits are killed by ferret, gassing and shooting, but despite those pressures, the rabbit population in Britain is increasing at roughly 1-2 per cent per annum, with, as I have already mentioned, intra-annual variations.
Rabbiting may be a key element in rabbit control in areas where few rabbits are in burrows, particularly on cliff-tops or other areas where there is shallow soil. Rabbiting may be particularly useful with large warrens where situations of other forms of control are more difficult; so it is probably a practical and useful means of pest control.
Finally, I was asked to comment on stalking. We have already discussed it to some extent. Deer stalking is a standard way to control deer numbers and generates a substantial revenue from stalking, trophy shoot and venison sales, although we have to say that as far as I can work out, there are few good things from the levels of revenue generated by this activity; the cost benefits of revenue and losses due to deer damage and the overall costs of remedial measures to reduce the impact of deer. I have come to the conclusion that stalking is useful, possibly profitable and immensely practical.
THE CHAIRMAN: There is a reference to the most common bird of prey used to hunt down quarry. Is the figure of 11,000 correct, or is that a misprint, because it seemed a high number against 2,100 falconers and a reference to 6,600 Schedule 4 birds?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Harris's hawks are not on Schedule 4; indeed they group hunt, several at a time. There are quite a lot of them doing it. I said there are 2,000-4,000 falcons who hunt live prey in Britain and about 5,500 Harris's hawks used for hunting live prey; but Harris's hawks are often flown two or three at a time because they hunt communally. I do not think there is a discrepancy in those figures.
DR REYNOLDS: I am taking a rather different tack because I do not think there is an agreed definition of "utility" yet. This session addresses the use of dogs in a wide variety of practices. In five minutes, I feel we can probably learn most from looking at the contrasts among them. For instance, one can contrast the commercial control of large populations with the non-commercial control of small ones. With rats, for example, we tend to think in terms of big infestations in farmyards or food storage buildings; and these are almost certainly best dealt with by professional operators using poisons or traps. But poisons have serious drawbacks including humaneness, non-targeted involvement, declining long-term effectiveness and safety. For a rural householder, facing much smaller infestations of rats on his property, poisons present all these problems, are expensive and often not fully effective. Because rats are afraid of novel objects, traps are not very effective unless permanently in place. Some killing traps are unregulated and, in my experience, inhumane. Live capture traps suffer the same problem of effectiveness and, furthermore, most householders would puzzle how to humanely and legally kill a live-captured rat. In these very confusing circumstances, who would actually deny the terrier the opportunity to kill a rat that was pestering him?
Similar observations apply to rabbit control. Control of serious, large-scale rabbit infestation is a major undertaking, best dealt with by gassing. However, the fumigants used are hazardous; their humaneness cannot be guaranteed, and because their use brings no rewards, the costs are high.
This brings me on to contrast pure control methods like rabbit gassing with much smaller-scale practices that not only reduce rabbit numbers but also provide useful game meat and recreational interest. Because of those extra benefits, the control aspect is free at the point of delivery. These practices therefore offer a utilitarian mix of lesser effectiveness at lower cost and with other benefits.
For rabbits, such small-scale practices include the use of lurchers, shooting and ferreting. In shooting and ferreting, lurcher dogs and terriers can also be useful to act as backstops. A major advantage of ferreting with nets is that it produces a very clean and useful rabbit carcass. Ferrets are domesticated polecats and their mode of hunting is something that rabbits in a large part of England and Wales experience naturally. Of course, we are not discussing ferrets today, and we should ask, " why not?"
If we are seeking a consistent, ethical principle to guide the acceptability of hunting practices, why are we not discussing those issues? The RSPCA, which I have quoted before because it publishes its policies, is opposed to the hunting of animals with dogs or other animals, which presumably includes ferrets. However, the RSPCA is not concerned about falconry except for the welfare of the birds used, nor does it address the issue of cats kept as companions. For centuries, cats have had justification as killers of rodents. Nowadays, they still hunt but the main purpose of keeping them is obviously companionship. If companionship is sufficient utilitarian justification for allowing one animal to hunt another, what about harvesting and population control? If cats may kill rats, why should not terriers?
One technique that Defra recommends in dealing with farmyard infestations of rats is to clear all removable cover from spaces between buildings. This works because it exposes rats to natural predators, chiefly foxes and owls.
In terms of humaneness, is hunting by these wild species actually distinguishable from killing by cats, terriers, lurchers and falcons?
Another apparent inconsistency is between different quarry species. Currently, methods to kill mice, rats and moles, are regulated if they are poisons, but unregulated if they are traps. Quite strict entry rules are now in place for new killing traps but these do not actually apply to rat, mouse and mole traps, which are exempted under the Pest Act 1954.
The common break-back type of mousetrap (familiar from the Tom & Jerry cartoons) failed to meet international humaneness standards in one Canadian study.
We must also distinguish carefully between welfare issues and management problems. In some places, the brown hare is numerous and a pest to arable crops. Elsewhere, we would like to increase hare numbers. Hare numbers can be increased by simple management, as in the Allerton project in Leicestershire; but one thing running counter to this is illegal coursing, carried out without landowners' permission. Not only can such poaching be locally damaging to hare numbers, but many landowners choose to suppress hare numbers themselves by heavy harvesting, rather than to receive the attentions of poachers. This is a management and policing problem. Poaching is already illegal; and making it doubly so will not solve the problem.
The utility of fox control has been questioned on questioned on the grounds that foxes kill rabbits, which are a pest of arable crops, and we have had some discussion this morning. This, too, is a management problem not a welfare problem. If foxes are to be controlled for any reason, the landowner must realise that additional rabbit control measures may be necessary, and many shooting estates successfully control both foxes and rabbits.
We have been asked to discuss utility, with the implication that utility can justify culling, sporting and harvesting practices. In my view, no clear ethic has been proposed that explains why today's debate is confined to the sue of dogs. There is no pest control element to angling, and very rarely to falconry. Those things are practised solely for recreation and harvesting. Shooting shares those roles but can also play a role in pest control. Dogs, too, have a utility in different circumstances in population control and harvesting, as well as recreation.
Minister, you have said that legislation will be based on principles and that this Government has no intention to legislate over angling and shooting. It will not be easy to find an ethical principle that distinguishes sensibly among the practices we have discussed here and stand the test of time.
THE CHAIRMAN: In fairness, I should try to answer that final question. Parliament has been exercised over the issue of hunting with dogs by legislation brought forward by individual Members, as private members, year after year after year. There is also a manifesto commitment to enable Parliament to reach a conclusion on the issue of hunting with dogs. Whereas in comparison to other things outside the scope many illuminate the issue of hunting with dogs, and whereas they may be philosophically interesting, they do not take us further in reaching a conclusion on the issue, which is certainly the responsibility that I have in terms of bringing proposals before Parliament and in which I have engaged and asked people to engage. We decided, with some process of discussion, to identify the topics that would assist in moving that forward. I accept entirely that anyone, as you have done, is entitled to say "yes, but that is not my starting point"; but that is the challenge that Parliament has. It is a very clear limitation on what is before us. It seems only fair not to leave the question hanging there and say that it is a perfectly good political process, although the question may not satisfy you personally.
MR JACKSON: Minister, I would like to return to Professor Harris. In the last session, Professor Harris, you dismissed evidence by Mr Thomas as mere assertion because you could not understand it. We have just heard from you at high speed a lot of evidence that contained a number of assertions. It would help us all if you could tell us, in terms that we can understand and which Dr Reynolds can address, what your evidence is. I will give you one example. "The best way to manage a hare population is by shooting."
PROFESSOR HARRIS: If you are looking at managing in terms of reducing numbers, then shooting is the way you have the biggest impact on the population, depending which approach you want to take. If you went to do a driven shoot, the figures I have produced and the figures the Game Conservancy have produced suggest you could take out 70-80 per cent of the population in a hare shoot. In terms of reducing numbers, that is the evidence we have. If you want to do it the other way, a lot of keepers prefer to use night shooting with a rifle, and over a period of a few nights would have a substantial impact on hare numbers, though not as dramatic as a drive hare shoot, but 40-50 per cent is quite easy to achieve.
MR JACKSON: With respect, that sounds like building assertion on assertion. It would be very helpful to hear what Dr Reynolds has to say.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Before you do, that is something I would address. That is not assertion on assertion; they are published figures, based on going out, counting hares before and after shoots, and looking at estimates beforehand to see how many hares are shot. That is not assertion. That, to me, is data.
DR REYNOLDS: It is perfectly clear that the main strategy for dealing with hares that have got to such high densities that they are a pest of arable crops is by shooting, driven shoots. I do not think that is what you are pressing me to answer, though, is it?
THE CHAIRMAN: I do not think it is the questioner's responsibility to say what the answer is that he wants.
DR REYNOLDS: It is certainly not my intention to give it! Is there any further question to answer?
MR JACKSON: I have another question for Professor Harris. "Falconry plays a very important role in airfields in reducing the risk of bird strikes." What is the hard evidence for that, again expressed in terms that Dr Reynolds can comment on?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is the assertion from Jemima Parry-Jones who gave me a number of examples of airfields where this is the case, so I take that at face value. I have no first-hand experience of using birds of prey to reduce bird strikes at airfields, which is widely used on airfields across Britain; it is the issue of being practical, and I accept that.
DR REYNOLDS: I, too, understand that is a use of falconry, and I further understand that they use it at landfill sites.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I agree: I should have quoted landfill sites.
MR OPIK: I was very interested in hearing Professor Harris's comments and looking at the report it does indicate that you feel under some circumstances it is appropriate to use dogs to manage populations of rats and rabbits. Therefore, it seems clear to me that you are saying that it is not wrong in principle to use dogs; it is simply a matter of establishing the criteria under which it is acceptable to use dogs to kill mammals. That is correct, is it not?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not think I was asked to give my personal views on it. I was asked to say whether it would be some criteria of utility. The problem we face - and Jonathan said it himself - is that it is very hard to define a clear definition of "utility", and therefore the one I have worked with is the one in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. It may not be the best one. I am trying to work out whether the use of dogs plays a role in reducing a problem caused by these species.
MR OPIK: For the sake of absolute clarity, you said that ratting can be viewed as useful when farm hygiene levels have deteriorated to the level where rat populations are high, and rabbiting may be a key element in rabbit control where few rabbits were in burrows. Do I correctly understand from those two sentences that you have outlined the criteria where it may be "acceptable" in your judgment in terms of animal control or pest control, to use dogs?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: In some circumstances, yes.
MR OPIK: This is a crucial point. We have now established that it is not wrong in principle to use dogs; we must simply define the criteria under which it is acceptable to use dogs - is that correct?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think you are trying to ask if my view on this is the only view. I am just simply saying where I think they may make a role in reducing problems caused by pest species.
MR OPIK: For the sake of clarity, because I think it is a very important point - I am trying to find a form of words that we can both agree on. You can see situations in which it is useful to use dogs to control a population of mammals.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes.
MR OPIK: It would be very helpful then if you could define, without being species specific, what those criteria are.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: To some extent, Minister, this is going on to the session tomorrow where I am talking about effectiveness, and I will address those issues in tomorrow's submission. That is why I am prevaricating on doing it now because it seems to go to another session.
The criteria I would use for that is basically situations where using dogs in helping deer stalking, where I would say that having a dog is essential if you are going to be stalking - and most stalkers would agree with that - and I have said that the situation where it seemed to be useful and acceptable is the species where dogs are used for effectively killing animals and doing it effectively. That is the criteria that I use for rats and rabbits, where I think that occurs.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can we take one step back because both witnesses in this session have made a contribution on the question of what "utility" means. Professor Harris used the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition; and in an earlier session in his paper Dr Reynolds referred to the four issues of whether it is one component of an effective population strategy. Is it a sole control strategy? Is it efficient or cheaper? Is it essential, which cannot be replaced by any alternative? It seems to me that it is not an issue of defining one of those and saying "that is the narrow meaning of 'utility'"; in exploring this it seems to me that we have to say - and this is the starting point from Burns - "If utility is an important issue, then in relation to any one of these activities, the question is, what is the utility in that particular set of circumstances? Which of these criteria does it meet?" Then of course there is a judgment to be made, when set against issues of cruelty or likelihood of suffering. What conclusion do you reach? The concept of utility is not a magic ingredient which suddenly produces the answer, is it? As we are on this, perhaps it would be useful if our two witnesses on this element were to say in relation to which of the definitions of "utility" they would see a usefulness of the involvement of dogs in relation to the four species that we have here.
MR OPIK: If I can clarify my question, it is to see if there is a beginning to some common ground around the questions of utility that you yourself have asked for, Minister, and the sort of criteria that have been implicit, both in Professor Stephen Harris's comments and also Dr Reynolds's comments, because for the first time I begin to see the potential for some kind of common ground around the utility criteria and considerations that we are discussing.
THE CHAIRMAN: Would either of you like to comment further?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I was waiting for the question actually.
THE CHAIRMAN: Without trying to give a single definition of "utility" because both of you have given indications of what might be regarded as utility, to what extent do you think the use of dogs has utility in relation to the activities before us in this session?
DR REYNOLDS: I think it is more difficult coming at it from this suggested angle than from the angles I originally took. Let us go through thes list.
Rat control: I would regard dogs as having a utility in rat population control but only for small scale infestations, obviously not for large scale ones.
Rabbit control: pretty well the same observation but additionally there is a clear recreation and harvesting element to it.
Falconry: population control, no. Recreation and harvesting, yes.
Hare coursing: population control, no. Harvesting and recreation, yes - well, harvesting is questionable but recreation, yes.
Deer stalking - the use of dogs in deer stalking: in as much as deer stalking itself has recreation, harvesting and pest control potential then if dogs help that then they also have those qualities.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think I have largely covered that I guess with a slight difference of emphasis here. For me, the use of dogs for hunting hares in recreation does not have that utility in terms of pest control, if that is the phrase we want to use. It is an activity as a sport basically.
Ratting I have already said. I think that where you resort to using dogs in a different way, then it is as a last resort. It is a consequence of poor standard of hygiene but presumably it does have some value there.
Falconry: the actual use of dogs we talk about in a subsequent section but yes, most falconers will use dogs to flush prey so their birds can catch them but, again, that is a sport. Where falconry plays a practical function in dispersing birds from airfields and from landfill sites, dogs are not used.
For rabbiting, again, it does not play much of a role in pest control or population control, whatever phrase you want to use. It is really a sporting activity using dogs. There are limited situations where it may play a significant role in helping reduce rabbit numbers or limit losses to rabbits.
For deer stalking, the value of dogs is simply for the stalker to have it there so if they do need to follow up a wounded deer they have it to hand, and that is the value of the dog.
MR OPIK: We will probably want to return to this tomorrow because it sounds to me that in both cases there are the conclusions from deeper principles regarding utility. Perhaps it is not reasonable to try and force you to bring them out now but I sense there may be something further to develop.
MR BATCHELOR: I think the point that is being made and I think Dr Reynolds was the first to make it was that there is an ethical decision underlying decisions regarding this point of utility, and I think we see that as being tomorrow's agenda because clearly you can kill things by a variety of methods but the fact you can does not mean the method of doing so is acceptable.
I would like to move on now to questions specifically from Arthur in relation to the brown hare population.
DR LINDLEY: Professor Harris, for clarification, in your written paper you quote a figure from a shortly to be published study of 625,000 brown hares and I believe that an estimate was given to the Burns Inquiry of just over 750,000 from a survey in the late 1990s. That seems to be quite a significant decline in a fairly short period of time and I wondered if there was any explanation of that or any information?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No. If you look at the figure I have given here, we only talk about brown hares in arable pasture and marginal upland landscapes. The problem is there are so few hares in the upland landscapes that it is not that easy to come up with a reliable population estimate, so when we put the paper to the referees they said that it was better if we did not include upland landscapes in the population estimates so we put in the population estimate on the lowland landscape which is the only way to get a reliable figure. That is all we have done. It is a slightly different emphasis.
DR LINDLEY: So the information to the Burns Inquiry covered a slightly different geographical area?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: It covered upland landscapes as well and it is clear that brown hare numbers are going up, but trying to put an estimate on upland landscapes is problematic, so ultimately we decided to leave it off that figure. That is why it does say there particularly the landscape that that figure refers to, and that is where most coursing is done as well. There is not much coursing done in upland landscapes.
MR BATCHELOR: As a supplementary to that, in terms of the numbers involved, I remember from one of the papers that we were talking about something between 100,000 and 200,000 lurchers so we are talking about between three and six hares per lurcher?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is absolutely right.
MR BATCHELOR: So the impact when you get down to the utility in relation to control of the population, which is what we were seeking, is where do these numbers fit in relation to either control or threat to the population.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I have always said that I think the pressure of lurchers and all forms of coursing on brown hare numbers is very high. The best estimate we have is between three and six hares for every lurcher and the potential of the impact is very high. I think previously we said that, as far as we can work out, brown hare numbers do appear to be declining in Britain still and it is hard to relate that decline to current changes in landscape structure or anything else, so if it is not changing landscape what is causing that decline? No one knows and I am not going to say it is hunting pressure. I simply say hunting pressure is a plausible hypothesis.
DR REYNOLDS: Could I ask Stephen Harris this: at the time of the Burns Inquiry, it was being said - I am not sure if this was official - that there was no significant difference between the two hare surveys which were nine years apart. Is that still the case?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is still the same in most landscapes but, in fact, there are three landscapes where the population has declined significantly. We just said that overall there was no significant difference and in three landscapes there is. The decline has been greatest between the arable landscapes in the east where before the numbers were most robust and I think the data from the BTO suggests much the same. Hare numbers are going down most rapidly in the west but our data shows that that decline is becoming more significant in the east.
DR REYNOLDS: I would just point out that hares are a species whose populations go up and down from year to year because they are susceptible not only to weather in terms of productivity but also to epidemic diseases of various kinds and if you take two points in time nine years apart they do not tell you very much about what has been happening in the meantime. This is an area of some disagreement amongst biologists on the question of the current status of hares in Britain.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Coming back on that, Jonathan, I assume, has not seen the evidence I have submitted in the same way as I have not seen his evidence, and one of the things submitted in that bundle was data from the British Trust of Ornithology who have published their data, albeit in their newsletter, and they have year on year on year data based on counts of hares across about 2,100 squares in Britain and they have shown a year on year decline. So I agree; my data showing it has gone up is provisional but theirs shows a decline and that, I think, is good trend data so I think there is more and more evidence suggesting that hare numbers are going down in Britain.
MR JACKSON: I think we would like to hear a little bit more on the subject of coursing. Professor Harris, I think you believe that your statement that coursing is not going to take place in upland areas is an assertion, and if you have evidence we would like to know it, but we would like both of you to say a bit more about virtual work which involves well over 200,000 people, which is a lot of individuals. Professor Harris says it does have a major impact on populations; it includes people working with lurchers, whippets, greyhounds and salukis and their prey is not limited to hare but includes foxes and rabbits as well. We think it would be helpful to hear more from both of you on this subject of coursing.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Firstly, a couple of those things I do not think I have said. I have not said there is no coursing in upland areas; I said it was mainly in lowland areas. I think that is a fair comment and if Jonathan wishes to question it I am happy with that. It is 200,000 people with working lurchers and if I read the submission from the Lurcher Club correctly, it is an average of two working lurchers per person so it is up to 100,000 people and up to 200,000 working lurchers.
MR JACKSON: That is still a lot of people.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes, but I am just correcting the figures. Now, they do hunt a lot of prey besides hares, there is no question about that, and different sized lurchers take different sized prey. It is very hard to know what proportion of those lurchers are killing hares regularly. The simple point is that there is a lot of lurchers to relatively few hares and beyond that I do not think, Minister, I can go much further.
DR REYNOLDS: I think we are in danger here of confusing two issues: one is whether lurchers have a utility in hunting rabbits or, indeed, hares legally, and the other is whether lurchers for some reason, presumably bad management or poaching, have an undesired impact on hare numbers. Unfortunately this is an area in which we are all floundering with very little information and I do not think I can go further than that.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think that is fair comment. I think we have both made much the same comment. I think we have also both said that one of the problems of coursing is because it is a problem in many areas land owners do take steps to reduce hare numbers on their land to keep the coursers off their land and that is a problem. So it is a twofold issue: the potential impact of the number of lurchers hunting hares and the negative impact of farmers removing or having large culls of hares on their land simply to deter people with lurchers.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I explore one matter in terms of terminology because for a variety of reasons people have used different terminology and sometimes I think we are talking about the same thing. I think Professor Harris earlier referred to poaching rather than illegal coursing. At the same time we have references to hare hunting which is quite distinct from hare coursing in terms of its purposes. One of the big complaints, and a lot of MPs representing rural areas write to me fairly regularly on this, is illegal hare coursing in which the illegality, whether it is trespass or poaching is not the issue; it is the associated activities and the people and some of the damage and intimidation that go along with it. So there are three or four different issues slightly confused in public discussion about this, and I wondered if we could unpick this slightly.
If we refer to coursing as essentially being about testing the speed and agility of the lurcher, the dog, and hunting as being intending to catch the prey, and the distinction between legal and illegal is purely in relation to the question of whether it is trespass or not trespass --
DR REYNOLDS: I think that will cut across the way other people have used these terms and is going to introduce some confusion. Other people have used hare hunting to refer to hunting hares with hounds or beagles and hare coursing to refer to hunting with running dogs, ie greyhounds, lurchers, whippets, whatever.
THE CHAIRMAN: I want to be quite clear about the way the terminology is being used.
DR REYNOLDS: In the case of coursing, defined like that, there is coursing under rules which is, as you suggest, a contest between the dogs. There is coursing for the sake of getting quarry, which is more often applied to rabbits than hares, and there is unofficial coursing for gambling where, again, it is a contest sport but is usually illegal and has all the attendant problems that you mentioned earlier.
Does that help?
THE CHAIRMAN: I am not sure that it does! It is not conclusive in the way you clarified the distinctions you are drawing but in terms of the utility issues, which is what we are looking at here, what is the impact of each of those? Do you see what I mean?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I guess, first of all, I am using coursing much the way Jonathan is - hunting a hare with a long legged dog - and you rightly say there are a certain number of clubs that mainly use greyhounds and they work under ATC rules. I think there may be 23 of them but there is a lot of other clubs beyond that that are not formally recognised that either do coursing themselves with, again, two dogs with the idea of testing dogs, and that may or may not be greyhounds, and some of those are walked-up coursing and some are standing courses in a field, and there are various scales to it. I know several down south of me in Bristol which are not recognised clubs, small groups of people, and no one has too much idea how many of these perhaps slightly more informal clubs there are and they use a variety of different dogs, either one or two, to hunt a hare for the purpose of catching and killing it, and Jonathan says also rabbits and other things as well. So I think there are differences in utility between those and I guess it is the matched coursing comparing two dogs against each other that perhaps has a different definition of utility as opposed to where you are using a dog to catch a hare.
THE CHAIRMAN: We have evidence submitted from a variety of organisations and certainly in relation to what some have said, and some have been to see me, the distinction made is that coursing is not essentially about catching and therefore an element of hunting but about the speed and agility of the animal, and that element in the context. Now, by the very existence of legal and illegal activity, of course, an activity under rules is not under rules and it does become slightly confusing but I think it would be helpful if we could be as clear as we can about the way in which the terms are being used.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps if you look at illegal coursing, which is when people go on to your land, again it is very hard to separate that because illegal coursing can be either a person going and catching and killing hares or it can be people matching dogs for betting operations, so illegal coursing can take both those forms as well, and where you are betting on dogs it is matching dogs and trying to bet on them. I do not know but I guess whether the hare is caught and killed is perhaps not the prime issue. I am not sure what the rules of betting are in those situations - I have never dared get too close to the gangs doing it to find out! So the two are very hard to separate on simple definitions like "illegal" and "legal".
THE CHAIRMAN: Part of the problem is law rather than language, I think, as well.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes.
MR BATCHELOR: In relation to the point that was being made about utility, if you are taking the particular example of coursing, there is dragged coursing where there is not a live quarry, so is the utility being described in terms of testing the dog, or is the utility being described in terms of managing the hare population? It seems to me these issues are getting well and truly confused and the presumption being made in some cases is that the utility of dog testing could be carried out without a live prey whereas the utility of population control is entirely different and may or may not be necessary. I think it would be useful if our two speakers addressed the extent to which some utility could be done without a live quarry and some utility requires a live quarry.
DR REYNOLDS: The utility of contest between dogs is obviously tested very often without a live prey on greyhound tracks but I suppose the argument is that that is not the same as doing it with a live prey out in the field. Aside from the potential utility of management in coursing under rules, if you want to look for a further utility you have to look at further coursing which is done in order to harvest either rabbits or hares or, in some cases, pest control of foxes but I think that is a relatively minor aspect.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: If I understood the question, whether utility and contesting of dogs can be done without a live quarry, in some cases it clearly is, as Jonathan says. I cannot identify the advantage of using live quarry to test the utility of dogs in that way.
MR LUFF: I am trying to understand something. Both our witnesses have agreed that, in a number of these species, the use of dogs does have utility in the control of the species in some contexts, and I think Professor Harris has made it clear that on the whole those contexts are quite limited but there is utility.
In the last session Professor Harris said that, because the number of animals killed in the other quarry species was small, there was no utility but here the numbers killed are small but there is utility. I am trying to understand the logic of these two positions and failing.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think there is a logic there. Particularly for the species where I said there may be utility, rats, where clearly you have a limited infestation and you can deal with it by cleaning the habitat and killing the rats with a dog, frankly you might just as easily clear the habitat up and let the natural predators sort the rats out. You do not necessarily have to use a dog but it is a limited situation, and there are limited situations where it may make a significant contribution to controlling rabbit numbers. I have stressed that I am not convinced of the data for that but there may be limited situations where it does. I have also said that whatever levels of rabbit control are being used, the rabbit numbers are still growing.
DR REYNOLDS: If recreation and harvesting are permissible as utilities, then I cannot really see a lot to choose between killing a lot of animals and a small number.
MR LUFF: But it is surely not the total number of animals that gets killed by dogs that is the issue. It is not the scale of control; it is whether it is the appropriate thing to do in those circumstances.
Perhaps we should be looking at the sustainable use of wildlife resource. Where you have a situation where a balance is being maintained, that is surely desirable, is it not?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: My criterion is not looking at the number of animals killed, but whether it is actually achieving the goal; whether it is dealing with the problem or helping limit problems. That is what I used as my measure: not the number of animals killed.
MR LUFF: That is helpful. Specifically, Professor Harris, factually on numbers killed, and there is no hidden agenda in this question: you say on page 2 of your evidence that the vast majority of rabbits are killed by ferreting, gassing and shooting although despite this the rabbit population is currently increasing. Do you mean the total number of rabbits killed by human intervention? What is the impact of fox predation on those figures?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: The data on fox impact on rabbits is relatively clear. The Minister himself wondered how this figure of œ100 million of saving from fox predation comes in because I do not believe that. The evidence seems to be that where rabbit numbers are low foxes may play a role in helping to limit population growth but where the numbers are high they probably do not. I think that is a fair assessment of what the data show.
DR REYNOLDS: I agree, yes. Actually, the Defra website says ϣ40 million not ϣ100 million.
MR ROLLS: Going back to rats, Professor Harris, is it not the case that the Defra recommendation regarding removal of cover from farmyards is primarily aimed at removing resources from the rats rather than exposing them to an increased risk of predation, and just as a note there is no mention of the use of predators in Defra's advice sheet 2001.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I understood it was a mixture of both and that when Defra put out the tender it was to look at the removal of resources for rats but also the removal of cover to maximise a risk of predation. But if I have that wrong you have to ask the Minister.
MR ROLLS: Well, it is here in the advice and we cannot see any reference to predators.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That was the tender they put out recently and that is what I referred to, to look at the value of this in keeping the habitat clear so predators have an impact on rats.
DR HEYDON: That is an RDS leaflet and I am an RDS adviser, and when we give those leaflets out we would talk to people and say that the removal of harbourage would have both functions - to remove food resources but also cover for predations. It may not be written but that is certainly the advice we give.
MR BATCHELOR: Just as a supplementary, we notice that the GCT in their own advisory leaflet recommend the use of rodenticides to control rats and not the use of terriers, or cats for that matter, so when you come to utility it seems to me that if the issue is the utility of using dogs as a method of control, neither set are suggesting that that would be their favoured method of control. One is saying hygiene; the other is saying use poisons.
DR REYNOLDS: We would not say that either method was a sole method of control. You would want to keep all those methods available to you.
MR BATCHELOR: But at least you have chosen to highlight one rather than the other in terms of use of poison rather than the use of dogs.
DR REYNOLDS: What are you quoting from there?
MR BATCHELOR: I am quoting from the Game Conservancy Trust advisory leaflet which recommends the use of rodenticides to control rats.
DR REYNOLDS: In some contexts obviously rodenticides will be much more valuable than in others.
MR BATCHELOR: So going to the issue of utility it may not be acceptable, but it has greater utility. That is simply the point I am seeking to establish, which I think you are confirming.
DR REYNOLDS: I do not think I am at all - forgive me. I am saying that all three methods - trapping, poisons, and terriers - would have utility and which method you choose depends on the context. Most gamekeepers, for instance, run trap lines round their estates in any case and will pick up rats which would otherwise be ecologically important. If they are dealing with large infestations of rats under release pens or something then they will probably choose poisons. Dealing with small infestations of the kind I describe in my written paper then I think they would take the terrier along with them.
MR HART: Taking one step back from rats to other creatures, Professor Harris mentioned earlier on the important contribution of local groups in monitoring and assessing hare populations. I think you mentioned the British Trust for Ornithology or some such group. How have you factored into your comments about the utility of hare hunting and coursing two points: firstly, a 10-12 year annual study of hare populations and how they have shifted by the hare hunting community and that community's alteration of hunting practice to fit in with the figures and population assessments they have made, and that the hare coursing and coursing community is the only community which has a voluntary closed season with regard to the hare?
I was interested to know how you factored those into your earlier comments on utility.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Let us take the second one first. There is a voluntary closed season as such but there is a voluntary closed season because it is rather hard to hunt hares at times of the year when vegetation is higher and where damage to crops is potentially higher. The closed season they have is not the closed season we need. Virtually all of Europe has a limited open season which is 1 October to the end of December. One or two European countries have a slightly different season by a couple of weeks or a month further north where breeding seasons are different, and that is very different from the closed season that the hare hunters have and when hares start breeding in January and a lot of data we have suggests that early breeding patterns may be more important in terms of leveret survival than later breeding, continued hunting through the first part of the breeding season is not a major contribution to hare conservation, so I am not sure how I view that closed season in terms of hare welfare or conservation.
You asked about methods of monitoring hare numbers, and again this is one of the problems we have with trying to look at the methods for monitoring hare numbers, the techniques being used by the BTO and that the Mammal Society and the BTO jointly are developing under contract to Defra are based on a random stratified survey of all the countryside covering all forms of management and all patterns of land use, and we have come up with very different data than those generated by the hunting people who tend to focus on particular patterns of land use and where hare numbers are high, and they are not structured in a way which gives good monitoring data. So we do get different results and I am afraid my faith is in the random stratified survey approach which is the one we adopt.
DR REYNOLDS: I have not seen the data from the hare hunts so I do not have anything to say about that.
MR HART: Professor Harris obviously has, I think.
You made the point earlier on that the best method of controlling hares was by driven shoots. Are you suggesting that you are therefore in a way in favour, if there are statutory seasons for hares, that they apply to all of these things, and are you suggesting there should be a statutory season for other methods of controlling hares as well?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Absolutely. There should be a statutory season where hares can be culled in whatever way is being done.
MR HART: I think you are wrong about the assessment that the hare hunting season is dependent on features other than the welfare of the hare but --
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Well, it certainly is not linked to the hare's breeding season.
MR JACKSON: Flowing out of this, I think there may be a difference of opinion within the panel. We are talking about utility. In your views, does this embrace social and cultural goals as well as impact on animals, and do you agree that that is going to vary according to local circumstances and local species?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I have given my definition of utility at the top of my paper. That is the one I have worked to. "Usefulness, profitableness, useful thing;... severely practical". It seemed a reasonable definition.
DR REYNOLDS: Personally I think these kinds of issues are so difficult they are best taken at a personal level, not a national level. Do I think recreation is utilitarian? Yes, I guess I justify quite a lot of my activities in terms of recreation. Whether I apply that to the use of dogs is a personal question I do not really want to make a judgment on here in public. Besides, I do not think that is my value to you as an expert witness. Certainly, however, a case can be made for other sports like angling and shooting and falconry that recreation is an adequate justification for doing these things.
MR OPIK: Pursuing that very point, I think there is some benefit not to force you to share your personal views but to put on the record clarification of the logic of the situation which probably it is appropriate to ask you about.
Would you agree with my reasoning when I say that the only way that we as parliamentarians eventually could ignore the recreational element in a utilitarian sense is if we value the recreational or the sports utility at zero? I am not asking you to say whether you put a zero or non zero emphasis on that but you both scowled incomprehensibly at me at the same time!
Would you agree with my assessment of the situation as follows: if we rate utility as necessarily zero when we consider the human enjoyment of an activity, the recreational benefit of an activity, then we can simply restrict ourselves to looking at pest control considerations and perhaps some related conservation habitat considerations, but if we provide a non zero value - in other words we think there is some amount, however small, of utility to human beings of doing that activity, then we will have to take that into account even if we should not be pushing you as witnesses to ascribe a rating to that utility.
DR REYNOLDS: I do not think you can set the recreational utility at zero because the recreational aspects determine motivation and motivation determines economics. For rabbit control, for instance, an awful lot is done by local chaps getting a few rabbits enjoying themselves in the process and that pays for it. For a great many land owners that is sufficient; they do not need to call in big operatives or people with gas and so on.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think the problem is it is trying to look at the question in isolation and I do not think you can. If you want to put a utilitarian value there it has to be an acceptable practice. You could say that if your personal recreation gives you a utilitarian value you can apply the same argument for things like badger digging and cock fighting and the other activities that it has been decided are not acceptable in the society we live in. I think there is more to the issue than just saying it is a recreation activity therefore it has a utilitarian value to it. By the same definition other activities not allowed have that same utilitarian value.
MR OPIK: It sounds to me that we are violently agreeing and the reason is that because, like you, I would be concerned to consider any one aspect of utility in isolation. Until this point, unnecessarily because of the nature of your evidence in this session, we have been talking about conservation, pest control and so forth but not about the utility to human beings. If you are saying that we need to look in entirety at all the utilitarian aspects one of which is recreation, then I agree. I do not want to put words in your mouth but is that what you are saying? That we have to consider recreational benefit in the context of the other considerations as well?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not think I did say that. I thought I said we have to consider the welfare issues, and therefore if people want to argue for the recreational benefit of an activity it has to be within prescribed limits and those limits are prescribed by society.
MR OPIK: I am sorry to labour this point but I do think it is important: I understand Dr Reynolds values utility to human beings at the non zero level. Are you saying that, given the other criteria that we discussed earlier on, there is some interaction in the overall assessment of whether an activity should be allowed or not by taking into account recreation, as has already been suggested by competition angling, which has no conservational benefit whatever?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, I do not think I have said that. I think you are trying to put words into my mouth. I thought I had said it quite clearly but I will try it again, if you like. I have given my answer. Do you want me to try it again?
MR OPIK: If there is a genuine difference of opinion, if you do not think that the recreational benefit is a consideration at all in this debate, then that would be helpful to have on the record.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, I have not said that. What I have said is that it has to be put in consideration with other issues which would be primarily the welfare issue and the standards by which we have already set standards for other welfare legislation of Britain.
MR OPIK: Is the recreational benefit any consideration at all in this debate of utility?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: In isolation, no. It cannot be in isolation.
MR OPIK: I am not talking about in isolation --
THE CHAIRMAN: I think you have had three excellent goes and have failed to put the words into the witness's mouth so I think we will allow Professor Harris's evidence to stand.
MR BATCHELOR: I would like to move this forward because it is quite interesting that when we are discussing utility and evidence based decisions, where we have ended up is a discussion that actually has said population control and habitat control do not seem to feature very largely in this and we are holding tomorrow's moral debate today in terms of those decisions, and I would like to move to Arthur in relation to a question about evidence that is available in the utility on these very specific issues so we get back on track.
DR LINDLEY: Minister, looking at this session and the previous session where here we are supposed to be looking at utility for a range of other species and previously we looked at utility in relation to the four primary hunted species, I get the feeling, and I would be interested in both experts' views on this, that the quality and quantity of data available in this session in relation to these other species is an order of magnitude less, than that which relates to the four primary species, so that is why we are floundering so much more in this latter half of the afternoon and I would be interested to know whether that is just me or a true reflection of the nature of the data.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Yes, I think that is right. It is very difficult to get hard data on any of these issues.
DR REYNOLDS: I would agree. I do not think we have been floundering about that but about the acceptability or otherwise of different definitions of utility.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think it possibly comes down to a couple of issues - that people have been over the issues so much in relation to fox hunting and issues to do with deer populations that the language and the definitions are clear, whereas in relation to these to some extent people have taken a position that that is not as important. I think it is a good thing that we have explored what is available in order to make sure that we do not accidentally come to simplistic conclusions in relation to these arguments.
I think that was a particularly helpful question, if I may say so.
MR JACKSON: Professor Harris, how do you square your definition of utility with the Berne Convention and the Rio Declaration both of which are given legal force by the Habitats Directive which says specifically that it is to promote the maintenance of biodiversity taking account of economic, social and cultural regional requirements.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I have given you my definition, Minister, because we got no definition of utility in our brief for preparing these papers. I cannot comment on social and cultural issues; it is not my area of expertise and I do not intend to do so.
MR JACKSON: So you cannot square it?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: No, I have not said that. I have said my own area of expertise is quite clear. I am not a sociologist; I am not a studier of human culture so it would be disingenuous for me to sit here and claim to be an expert witness and comment on those issues. If you want some comment on those issues, you should get an expert.
DR REYNOLDS: I have to say I would struggle to make a sensible comment too because I am not terribly familiar with the Rio declaration and the Burns Convention only passingly. If I have any evidence to offer in terms of cultural issues, it is to comment about our three region study five or six years ago in which we found that the requirement to cull foxes was certainly a regional attribute; it was something held by a whole community of people and that is really about the only comment I can make.
MR OPIK: I think we have covered utility as far as we can on the cultural aspects.
Returning to the other aspect of utility which is perhaps a little bit less controversial, Professor Harris said in the previous session that he thought foxes could control the rabbit population in some significant fashion. You said that when the rabbit population was very large then probably the fox population did not make a significant impact on it. Could you clarify where you stand on that?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I thought I said, and it has been a long day so perhaps I did not say it, that the evidence suggests that where rabbit numbers are low foxes may play a role in limiting the rate of population growth. Where rabbit numbers are high, they probably do not. I do not think the data from studies go beyond that and I think that is what Jonathan said as well.
DR REYNOLDS: That is right.
MR OPIK: That is very helpful. Thank you.
MR BATCHELOR: This is really an extension of the questions on utility: I think perhaps both speakers might like to comment on the extent to which any reduction in population species by species may reduce the alleged damage that particular animals or problems may produce. I say this simply because if you are looking at utility from the point of view of what purpose it serves, then presumably one purpose might be that by taking an action you have a consequence that would be beneficial in terms of reduced damage. I just wonder, in essence, if these are marginal changes in population, what is the evidence, if any, to suggest that there is any reduction in the problem that such species may or may not cause?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: This is very difficult to address and perhaps one of the most crucial things we do not understand on the question of utility. I think I made the point in relation to foxes perhaps which are not being dealt with here that there are no good data to show that there is any relationship between economic impact and fox densities, and in fact the data we put in the paper showed there was not a relationship between fox densities and economic losses of lambs. So for that species it is difficult.
For hares, we looked at the impact of hares when they are living in high density in conifer woodland in East Anglia, and again the economic impact of those hares was not dependent upon hare density but on the types of trees the Forestry Commission were planting. If they planted particular seedlings the hares were browsing; if they planted different seedlings of the same species of tree, the hares would not. So there are a number of factors that relate directly to damage. I guess when you are looking at rabbits, for example, it is probably the species where the data do suggest that rabbit numbers are probably directly related to economic losses. I have not seen good data on that but I guess that is probably a species where that may be true. Beyond that, it is hard to answer the question.
For deer there is good data showing that certainly the economic or certainly the ecological impact in terms of impact on ground flora is related to deer density, and there are good data to show at certain densities what the level of impact of deer is. I am not sure the evidence for the economic impact of deer in forestry is as good, and I am not sure I know of good data showing a simple relationship between deer density and economic losses.
DR REYNOLDS: Let me start again with foxes since we have gone back to those. When we are talking about losses of lambs due to foxes, we have quite a complex issue because when we are not dealing with something characteristic of all foxes. I think most fox biologists are agreed that the level of fox loss is such that it cannot possibly be something done by all foxes in the population. So in that sense there is not a pro rata relationship that if you remove X per cent of the population you get X per cent less damage necessarily.
However, the impact of foxes on game birds is quite a different matter. There it seems likely that you have to have a pretty well complete impact on the local fox population in order to achieve any substantial gains in game bird productivity. Most game keepers are aiming to have very low or non existent fox populations on their patches.
With all the species we have been discussing in this section, rats, rabbits, hares and deer, I think we are talking about a pro rata damage level. I believe there is very good evidence from Defra about the levels of damage caused by rabbits in relation to their density. Obviously, if that is the case, then the less impact you have on the population, the less benefit you will get from it. Really there is nothing more to say than that.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think Jonathan and I have agreed on that for rabbits and I think the data are there. I think we largely also agree on foxes actually. I think it is a point I made in the previous session: that actually limited fox control rather than widespread fox control is often advocated by people like the RSPB and it seems the most cost effective way of dealing with the problems.
I guess I might disagree with him simply on the issue of game birds because it may be true for some game bird estates but a lot of particularly pheasant estates rely now on released pheasants and a number of the game keepers we spoke to during the contract for the Burns Commission said their standard response dealing with fox problems is to release slightly more birds and that seems to be an effective way of dealing with it. Now some are saying that, not a huge number, and again that has been the response of game keepers with stoat and weasel control; they have cut their levels of control back perhaps 50 per cent or so in relation to going for release pheasant as opposed to wild reared birds, and if there is more and more of a trend towards released pheasants then perhaps the economic impact of foxes will not be dependent upon having no foxes in your area, so who knows how things will change in relation to the game bird industry?
MR BATCHELOR: I think what both speakers seem to be saying is that, in relation to generalised management of the population, the process of hunting and killing with dogs which is at the core of all this seems to lack utility, as I understand it. There was some mention made of the more specifically targeted activity but the generalised process of controlling the population seems to lack utility in the ways described here, both in regard to the species in this session and in relation to the fox. You seem to have common ground between you on that.
DR REYNOLDS: I am completely baffled how you make that leap!
MR JACKSON: Picking up the theme of stalking, let us take the advantage of Dr Reynolds being with us, is it correct that on Exmoor where there is both stalking and hunting with dogs we have in fact got the largest herd of red deer in England?
DR REYNOLDS: In terms of density I believe that is the case, yes.
MR JACKSON: Would you like to comment on that?
DR REYNOLDS: Stephen Harris said to us earlier that there was no evidence of positive impact of the hunting regime on red deer. Perhaps that is the evidence that was lacking.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I am not sure where Jonathan comes up with the figure that the density of red deer is highest on Exmoor. I am not sure the density of red deer on Exmoor is any higher than the density of red deer in other parts of south west Britain where they are not hunted, and I am not sure we know the density of red deer in south west Britain is any higher than in parts of East Anglia where they occur. I am not sure it is true and I am not sure where that figure comes from.
DR REYNOLDS: I am not an expert; I do not have these figures at my fingertips but my overriding impression is that we do know that is the case.
MR JACKSON: And if it were true would it be relevant to the discussion today?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps I should go further then because I have studied the red deer in East Anglia and published density estimates and those are comparable to those on Exmoor. That is why I say I am not sure the figures are there. I think overall there is little difference in the density of deer in East Anglia and Exmoor. The deer in the west country cover a bigger area and there are more of them but equally, if you look at the data supplied by the British Deer Society and also in the Puttnam Report which was a few years back, densities was higher in parts where they are not hunted as where they are hunted.
MR JACKSON: Perhaps this is an area where, further on, it might be helpful if there was some evidence available.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think this is an area where questions have been put to the witnesses and they have helped us to the limit of the information available to them and left us with one or two questions to take away, but I think the comments have been extremely helpful.
MR OPIK: Has there been any research about the realities of wildlife, of killing certain pests with dogs as opposed to alternatives? Have we done a utilitarian assessment? One example I can think of is that minks cause a lot of damage on the riverside and dogs are sometimes used to control it. There may not be any research.
PROFESSOR REYNOLDS: In the case of mink I do not think there is.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think all I can do is repeat what I said, as far as I know there is no over all assessment in quantified terms, although there are people in the Environment Agency who say that it is environmentally damaging.
MR OPIK: It is largely anecdotal.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is what they say in their published literature. Ask them how anecdotal it is!
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, indeed. Can I remind people of the process. I think I am discovering something which I found previously when this sort of model has being used in parliamentary hearings, that one is able to add layers through the hearings because no single session is likely to produce anything which amounts to taking us to a conclusion. I have certainly found the exchanges and the discussion of elements of the assertions that have been made on both sides in the past helpful in trying to tease out the issues that we have explored today, mainly in relation to utility. I am sure tomorrow will be equally illuminating and I am optimistic that Wednesday will be even more illuminating and a combination of the three days will be extremely helpful.
Can I thank both of our experts who are here now and the others who gave evidence during the course of the day and to all of those who have helped, those in the front row and their support in posing questions and, of course, to my officials who helped so much with all of the preparation, because it does not happen without an awful lot of work going into it, as well as a degree of forbearance that is necessary. Thank you very much indeed for your help with the first day and for the manner in which everything has been conducted by all concerned. Thank you very much indeed.
# 7
Page last modified:
19 May, 2005
Page published: 10 December, 2002