A hunter steps down. A shooter steps up.
Yet the government still claims to lead the way on animals
John Gardiner stepped down as under secretary for DEFRA on 13th May 2021, when he was replaced by Richard Benyon. Gardiner’s name is interminably linked to the Kimblewick Hunt, of which he was a former director and was still a member as recently as July 2020. His link to hunting with hounds has caused consternation since he joined DEFRA. Leaving DEFRA, then, ought to have brought celebrations among wildlife lovers. But Benyon’s appointment soured any joy.
Dyed in the wool
It isn’t Benyon’s first time in DEFRA. He previously held a position overseeing natural environment, water and rural affairs between 2010 and 2013. Benyon’s return expands his responsibilities in the department.
However, Benyon is no less entangled with the bloodsports industry than Gardiner. The minister owns Glenmazeran grouse-shooting estate in Scotland and the Englefield pheasant-shooting estate in England. He was also a member of the Countryside Alliance, trustee of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, and an ambassador for the Angling Trust.
As highlighted by RaptorPersecutionUK, Benyon’s Scottish estate was the site of an illegal corvid killing in 2009. The crow tested positive for carbofuran, a poison that the UK government banned for use as an insecticide in 2001. At the time of the poisoning, February 2009, Benyon was the Conservative’s shadow environment minister. And he became a senior minister in DEFRA just over a year later, after the Conservatives took power in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
Dodgy goings on
During his tenure in DEFRA, controversy arose from an attempt to prosecute West Yorkshire grouse shooting estate Walshaw Moor. Public conservation body Natural England attempted to prosecute the estate in 2012 for 43 environmental breaches. But the case was, as New Internationalist described, “abruptly dropped”. As the Independent pointed out later that year:
Mr Benyon is the minister directly in charge of Natural England, but neither Defra nor Natural England itself is willing to offer any explanation of why the prosecution of the Walshaw Moor estate was abruptly dropped
The estate entered a lucrative ‘stewardship agreement’ with Natural England soon after.
Benyon also faced criticism in 2012 for not making carbofuran possession illegal. While the poison was no longer permitted to be used, possessing it in England and Wales wasn’t criminalised. A parliamentary environmental audit in 2012 recommended the government “immediately” introduced such legislation due to the scale of its use in killing birds of prey.
Benyon’s refusal to do so led Green MP Caroline Lucas to describe his actions as “protecting the interests of his friends on the shooting estates”. His defence for not doing so, the Independent reported, was that:
poisoning was an offence anyway, and that outlawing the chemical "may not be a proportionate course of action".
Possession remains uncriminalised at the time of publication.
Benyon has also talked directly on hunting. In a 2017 filmed Q&A with local paper Newbury Today, the then-MP unequivocally stated that he would repeal the Hunting Act if the opportunity arose.
The value of animals
While keeping the shooting industry close, Benyon appears also to have made broadly positive motions regarding the non-animal natural world. Mark Avery, vocal critic of the grouse shooting industry, even describes him in a nearly positive light during a recent blogpost. But acting well on plants and meta concepts like biodiversity doesn’t preclude or absolve the persecution of animals. Some may even call it greenwashing.
The government’s recently announced animal welfare action plan claims to “improve” animals’ lives in the UK. But we can’t expect fairness from those with power. They place their interests at the forefront; that’s why they take power in the first place. And if that means the political value of some animals is in their deaths, then - in the eyes of those with power – so be it.
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