BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="StevePreddy" data-source="post: 3381269" data-attributes="member: 37455">I'm slightly late to the thread, apologies, but hopefully I can shed some light on things. I had some quite prolonged email correspondence with David Stroud and Helen Baker at JNCC at the time, and I've just re-read it to remind myself what happened (it was over 10 years ago now ... scary). Essentially John's basic premise is pretty much correct: an agreement was reached between BOU and JNCC that no new non-native species would be added to the British list without JNCC being first informed, and as a result the addition of Muscovy Duck was postponed, pending receipt of JNCC's view on whether or not it wanted to carry out a cull. I emailed David Stroud on 14 October 2005 pointing out the problems that arise when a government body interferes with what is supposed to be a scientifically objective process ... "dodgy dossiers" got a mention ... and asked him to reconsider the way that this process worked, to avoid the BOU list becoming compromised. He agreed to look at this. During 2006, little progress was made as JNCC ornithological staff were snowed under dealing with bird flu. However David agreed to place the issue on the agenda of the snappily-titled Inter-agency Ornithology Liaison Group in September 2006. Following that meeting, I finally received feedback in March 2007 from Helen Baker, which in summary stated that the agreement from this meeting was that JNCC should not be in the business of applying pressure to BOU, but that an "alert" would still be appreciated. My last communication from JNCC on 30 March 2007 said "I have been in touch with Steve Dudley and he will inform BOURC, etc. I think that there is only one outstanding change to category C - to add Muscovy duck - and he has indicated that he will inform the committee that they should consider publishing this change as soon as possible."</blockquote>

Verification