Cotes And Our Way Of Life.

[DEREK CANNING LLB[HONS] 20]

Our way of life is threatened.

Lee Featherstone
1 min · Birmingham
so COTES has a review, answers must be in by tomorrow 10/03/2015, please copy and paste and send by email to the address i post after this lot, please attach your name and address at the top of the email and then copy below...please send it is important and in all our interests to get things changed.
1.1. Interested parties. In our estimation this ought to include the purchasers/consumers/end users of specimens.
1.2. UK is a member of the EU, which is a single CITES area. We should be promoting common regulations across the EU.
1.3. Value of trade: The UK trade in birds of prey is restricted to domestically produced animals and these regulations should be supporting and enabling that trade.
1.11. As a CITES signatory you have an obligation to support legal sustainable trade. This is a central tenet of CITES. Thus controls must not be so onerous that people cannot comply. We must also manage the source populations of the sustainable supplies. With regards to birds of prey, JNCC are not expert in captive populations and the decisions that they make take no consideration of them. This results in the project of maintaining genetic diversity within our domestic populations becoming very difficult. We observe that for many species, the UK domestic populations are of the same order of magnitude as the UK wild populations.
2.1. Wildlife crime in the UK relating to illegally taking or trading in wild birds of prey is negligible. Wild birds of prey are frequently persecuted and this should be the focus of our legislative efforts. The increasingly complex and one might say obtuse, regulations have criminalised otherwise law abiding individuals who fall foul of 'paperwork offences'. These people keeping legally obtained birds of prey from captive breeding, have been vigorously prosecuted for failing to comply with unnecessarily complex regulations. This is a misuse of the legal framework.
2.5. Falconers, breeders and bird of prey keepers are for the most part experts who work with raptors every day. In terms of handling and identification these people are second to none. Please do not overlook this resource of expertise by bypassing it in favour of veterinarians or others who claim subject knowledge.
2.7.Seizing: Who is the individual who comes and catches up the bird of prey? How will the police ascertain that they have sufficient expertise? Will this be based on the say-so of an NGO such as the RSPCA? How will you ensure that the raptor will be humanely caught and handled? It is well documented that legal falcons have been killed or injured during these seizings. Will the subject animal be transported humanely? And where will it be accommodated? How long will it be held there for?
Evidence can be gathered without the bird being moved from its accommodation, seizing is both contentious and largely unnecessary.
2.8. Sting operations: We object fundamentally. There is no place for such practice here. I refer you to 2.1
2.9. It is incumbent on you to demonstrate how the proposals will reduce red tape. We cannot see how these ideas will achieve such.
2.15. In order to reduce travelling time for the live animals, approved ports ought to be as geographically accessible across the UK as possible.
5.4. By producing increasingly complex legislation you are creating a situation where individuals cannot reasonably decipher or navigate such without legal assistance. This is both poor practice and discriminatory.
Proposal E: if breeders/owners return these documents and at a later date need to prove parentage or prior ownership, how are they meant to do this if all documents have to be returned to avoid prosecution?
Proposal F: surely if this is to bring the UK in line with current EU legislation then it begs the question why we have different annexes. In relation to commercial use, it would be useful to have clarification with examples, of what commercial use is, if it’s on the .gov web site it is not easily accessible.
Provision G: The good thing about this idea is that it MIGHT cut down on individuals being prosecuted for passing items on without the paperwork, but, if anything is going to cause problems for end users it will be this. For it to work you will need to ensure that it is VERY well circulated (by contacting EVERY individual/company/organisation) on your database that has ever had a CITES certificate to make sure they know what’s required.
Provision H: If this is adopted then individuals who follow the rules have nothing to fear, but this could be seen as entrapment.
Provision L: Great care needs to be exercised when placing confiscated live animals, the police/RSPCA/RSPB do not fit these criteria. The individuals doing the seizing also need to be experienced.
Civil sanctions as an alternative to prosecution: At the time when the Law Commission is reviewing wildlife legislation and civil sanctions are being proposed as an alternative to prosecution, they must not be dismissed out of hand.
This avenue has been talked about during CSUG meetings for over 12 months and it appeared that the management authorities considered them as a suitable method for dealing with paperwork. Recent paperwork prosecutions that have cost the tax payer thousands of pounds to bring defendants to court to receive £25-£ fines is a clear case of a need for their use.
email to COTESReview@defra.gsi.gov.uk