I read something today on the East Anglian Daily Times website which made me mad. Really hopping mad. Assuming it is true, that is, and allowing for the tendency of news organisations to get things wrong, but the EADT is generally a pretty staid and worthy sort of a paper, not part of the sensationalist gutter press.
In Mistley on the Essex bank of the river Stour, close to the curious twin towers that are all that remain of a Georgian church designed by Robert Adam, is an animal sanctuary. I'm not a regular visitor myself, finding it quite worrying enough that our chickens can't be fully free range due to fox problems, without going to see other animals in enclosures. However, it has been there for 23 years, and I've never noticed any reports of complaints from the neighbours, or allegations that the animals are not well treated. The sanctuary is inspected annually by Defra and Environmental Health. It is open to the public, and I believe it is very popular with visitors who like that sort of thing. The RSPCA and the council both give it stray and unwanted animals that would otherwise lack a home, and it looks after around two thousand birds and mammals. It is run by a husband and wife team called Mike and Maureen Taylor who must dedicate their entire lives to their charges.
You would think that everybody would be happy. Mr and Mrs Taylor and their visitors love the animals. The animals have somewhere to live where they are properly looked after, which if they could be consulted on the matter they would probably prefer to a one-way trip to the vet. The RSPCA and council have somewhere to offload their waifs and strays. The neighbours aren't grumbling. But no, somebody has referred the animal sanctuary to Tendring District Council, asking them to investigate whether it requires a zoo licence. TDC has felt obliged to follow up on this enquiry and referred it the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, part of Defra. They have asked for a list of all the animals, and pronounced that the sanctuary is not merely a sanctuary, it is a zoo. And if it is a zoo it needs a zoo licence.
Although the EADT feature is illustrated with a picture of a rhino, it doesn't sound as though the Mistley animal sanctuary has anything so exciting as that. The article talks about hawks, owls, a rhea and a skunk, which I gather make a difference to the sanctuary's status because they are not native to the UK. I don't know exactly what having a zoo licence entails, but it seems that it would add substantially to the animal sanctuary's costs, in terms of extra enclosures and so on, and presumably a licence fee. Fortunately for the Taylors, there is a way round this. They can keep their exotic non-natives and not be counted as a zoo, so long as they don't display them to the public for more than seven days a year.
What? You cannot be serious. You really cannot be serious. Nobody is saying that the animals present a danger to the public and can't safely be kept on the site. They can stay where they are and not count as a zoo, just so long as people don't look at them for more than a week each year? That is insane. That is utterly and completely mad and bonkers, and you and I and everybody else who works or ever saved and has a scintilla of income is paying taxes on that income so that government departments can employ people to request lists of animals from an animal sanctuary which has run without causing anybody any bother for 23 years, which has passed its annual inspections, which the local council itself uses as a repository for unwanted animals, and pronounce that they can keep all their animals so long as they don't let people see some of them much, otherwise they must incur extra costs running the sanctuary differently because it is a zoo.
It gets worse. The sanctuary was referred to Tendring District Council by a Police Wildlife Crime Officer. In these days of straightened public finance it is an achievement that Essex police still have one of those. You would think he or she might be doing something beneficial to society, like preventing the theft of rare birds' eggs, or the illegal destruction of protected species of raptors, or investigating attacks on wild animals, or stopping badger baiting, but no, the Police Wildlife Crime Officer has chosen to pick on the animal sanctuary. He or she isn't even reported as being concerned that they might have birds on display illegally taken from the wild or something else that would count as a crime, merely that they might technically be a zoo. It's only the other day I was reading dire warnings from a Chief Constable (admittedly not Essex's) that with falling police numbers due to government cutbacks, crime must inevitably rise, and what do we see here? The police prioritising the persecution of an animal sanctuary which has not been causing any trouble to anybody.
It makes me spit. It makes me think I shall write to my MP about it, as being a prime example of a case where we need less government red tape, and for our public servants to exercise more intelligence and discretion. (The only thing that deters me is that I have previously written to him about domestic chickens in the context of bird flu panics, and he might think I am some sort of animal nut, but I have also written to him about libel reform, and you can't get more serious and high minded than that). Here's a link to the original story. If you think it's as bonkers as I do why not write to your MP as well?
No comments:
Post a Comment