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Received the following from BASC today. I trust that everyone on this forum who undertakes vermin control, wildfowling, Driven or any other associated pastime will e mail Natural England and raise their concerns Please email Natural England at wildlife.consultation@naturalengland.org.uk by Monday 19 May to call for a simplification of the English general licences. There are more than 20 English general licences and a number of them allow the management of species causing conflict with conservation or human interests. For example, the shooting of woodpigeon is permitted at any time of year to help prevent crop damage. General licences were introduced more than 20 years ago as a legal necessity to comply with European law. The reasons were complex but the principle was simple – to permit people to continue to carry out necessary control with no added burdens. As with the quarry seasons people only needed to know what species were on the list. However, following two decades of gold-plating the general licences in England are now so complex that they are confusing to the average user. Natural England is consulting on 48 pages of proposed changes to the general licences. The consultation closes on 19 May. The proposals would make the terms and conditions even more complex while also making it a legal requirement for users to have read and understood up to ten pages of legal text. In essence Natural England is continuing the trend of its predecessors in shifting national legal responsibilities onto licence users. BASC believes in reducing red tape for shooting. The situation today is far removed from 1992 when Ministers assured stakeholders that the introduction of general licences was a legal device but one which would continue to allow necessary control with no added burdens. The general licences need only to list the species legally affected and the legally permitted methods - all on a single page.