Natural England’s Goshawk Advice: You Couldn’t Make It Up

✅ Key Takeaway: Natural England’s contradictory advice to “shoot to scare” protected goshawks poses severe legal and safety risks. The agency must urgently clarify this unworkable, tangled policy for rural land managers.

Moorland managers are often told that every aspect of predator management must be evidenced, proportionate, licensed, logged and justified to the last detail.

We are told to exhaust non-lethal options, prove serious damage, demonstrate need and then wait while decisions are passed through a system that often appears more comfortable saying “no” than engaging with reality on the ground.

But a recent Natural England email concerning a goshawk licence application exposes just how confused this system has become.

The advice

The case involved a shoot suffering goshawk predation around a pheasant release pen.

Natural England’s response was not to grant a lethal control licence. Instead, they advised that because the poults would be released after the goshawk breeding season, there was “no requirement for a disturbance licence.”

They went on to state that the applicant could legally “shoot to scare the goshawk” outside the breeding season, and recommended this as one of the non-lethal deterrents that should be tried before any lethal control licence could even be considered.

Read that again. In plain English: NE is saying a gamekeeper may need to try using a firearm to scare a fully protected bird of prey before NE will even consider whether lethal control is justified.

Natural England is now advising applicants to use firearm-based scaring against a Schedule 1 species outside the breeding season, as part of the long evidential obstacle course required before it might even consider a lethal licence.

This raises some obvious questions.

What does “shoot to scare” actually mean?

First, what exactly does “shoot to scare” mean? Does it mean blank firing or other auditory scaring? Does it mean shots discharged safely away from the bird? Or does it mean live firing in the vicinity of a protected raptor?

The wording matters. If NE means lawful auditory scaring, it should say so clearly. If it means something else, then that requires a very clear explanation indeed.

A double standard on conservation?

If Natural England accepts that a Schedule 1 raptor can legally be scared using firearms outside the breeding season to protect released gamebirds, then surely the same principle must apply where the purpose is conservation.

If a goshawk can be scared from a release pen to prevent serious economic damage, why could a predator not be scared from vulnerable wild birds for conservation reasons?

The firearms licensing problem

There is also a firearms licensing angle that Natural England cannot simply ignore. If an applicant is being told to use a firearm to scare a raptor, that advice must be capable of being explained to the police firearms licensing department. This is not an academic point. It goes directly to firearms certificate conditions, safe use of firearms, and the individual’s legal exposure if anything goes wrong.

A licensing Catch-22

Why is this being treated as an acceptable precondition before licensing? The applicant had already explained that he had not used this method because of the risks. NE nevertheless said it would expect evidence that shooting to scare had been tried before lethal control could be considered.

So, the position appears to be this: Natural England appears unwilling to contemplate lethal control unless the applicant first undertakes a firearm-based deterrent against a fully protected bird of prey, despite the applicant raising concerns about doing this.

That is not a coherent policy. It is a farce.

Moorland managers are repeatedly told that the system is science-led, evidence-based and legally robust. Yet here we have advice that seems to create more confusion than clarity. It places the burden back on the land manager, while leaving unanswered the central legal, practical and firearms-safety questions.

The wider significance is important. The issue is not simply goshawks, pheasants or one application. It is the inconsistency at the heart of the current approach. Non-lethal control is demanded, but the boundaries of lawful non-lethal control are not explained clearly.

Conservation purposes are lauded in principle, but in practice those managing land for wildlife are often left with fewer usable tools than those dealing with economic damage. Applicants are expected to gather evidence, but the system often fails to give them clear, safe and legally precise instructions.

Questions Natural England must answer

Natural England now needs to answer some straightforward questions:

1. What does “shoot to scare” mean exactly?

2. What safeguards does NE expect applicants to follow when using firearm-based scaring against a Schedule 1 raptor?

3. Has NE considered how this advice should be interpreted by police firearms licensing departments?

4. Does NE’s interpretation apply equally where the purpose is conservation rather than preventing damage to released gamebirds?

5. If not, what is the statutory basis for treating those purposes differently?

6. Why is a potentially high-risk scaring method being treated as a necessary step before licensing can be considered?

Members are entitled to expect better. Rural businesses, gamekeepers and conservation managers need clear rules, not vague phrases. They need a licensing system that is consistent, practical and grounded in real-world land management.

At present, this case suggests the opposite: a system so tangled that Natural England can advise “shooting to scare” a protected raptor while still refusing to move meaningfully on licensing.

That is not good regulation. It is regulatory theatre.