Shooting news: Wildfowlers secure 17,500 acres of foreshore for shooting

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Wildfowlers secure 17,500 acres of foreshore for shooting

Wildfowlers have secured sporting rights leases and consents for wildfowling on 14 areas of foreshore.

By Shooting news

Thursday, 22 September 2011

Almost 17,500 acres of foreshore have been secured by wildfowling clubs in the past year with help from the UK’s largest shooting organization.

BASC’s wildfowling team has helped affiliated clubs to secure sporting rights leases and consents for wildfowling on 14 areas of foreshore in England and Wales in the past 12 months.

One lease was also renewed in Northern Ireland.

Twelve of the leases are for a period of 15 years, two run in perpetuity and one new lease is for a period of six years.

A further two new areas have been opened up on sites covered by UK and EU conservation designations.

These are on Anglesey and the Severn Estuary and are incorporated in a 15-year lease and a long-standing annual tenancy respectively.

Stuart Husbands, club secretary and conservation officer for the Avon-based Clevedon Wildfowling Association, said: “Not only has our previous permission been renewed but an extra area of foreshore added. It is extremely unusual to be able to take an area out of reserve and start to shoot it once again, especially somewhere considered as sensitive as the Severn Estuary.”

“As a club we are indebted to BASC’s wildfowling team for putting together such a well argued application which demonstrated to Natural England that the benefits of the club shooting and managing the foreshore would outweigh those of a blanket protection policy.”

Andy Stott, honorary secretary of the Cumbria-based Westmorland Wildfowlers’ Association, said: “Westmorland Wildfowlers’ Association recently constructed a new management plan to cover their Crown Estate lease on the River Kent estuary at the request of the Crown Estate, to bring the club’s annual lease tenancy into line with current procedures.”