Continuing the success of its previous four Wednesday morning webinars the National Sheep Association (NSA) held the latest event in its Breakfast Club series this week. The organisation was delighted to welcome the chairman of Natural England Tony Juniper and Natural England head of agriculture, Geoff Sansome, for an interesting breakfast discussion at the webinar called ‘Regenerative farming Vs Rewilding: An early morning discussion on sheep in the environment’. The webinar also featured NSA chief executive Phil Stocker, NSA chairman Dan Phipps and NSA Northern region chairman Thomas Carrick for a broad discussion on balancing productivity and environment, landscape recovery implementation, rewilding, species re-introduction, and how these all of these issues could impact UK sheep farmers.
Sheep farmers attack new attempt to reintroduce lynx
1 February 2021 |
A new bid to introduce lynx to Northumberland has been criticised by the sheep sector
Sheep farmers have again warned of the consequences of releasing lynx into the countryside as campaigners are set to unveil a second bid to reintroduce the animal.
Lynx UK Trust is gearing up to launch a new attempt to re-wild the Eurasian lynx in Kielder Forest, Northumberland two years after Michael Gove rejected the first proposal.
The then-Defra Secretary said it did not meet the necessary standards set out in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines.
Traumatised farmers are calling for tougher police action and more government funding to publicise the Countryside Code.
The Guardian revealed last year that successive governments spent less than £2,000 a year over the past decade on promoting the code.
Phil Stocker, chief executive of the National Sheep Association, said there was “undoubtedly” a rise in attacks on sheep because of lockdown.
“We’ve definitely observed an increase in incidents of dogs attacking sheep,” he said. “Everything we’re seeing and hearing is suggesting that there are more incidents and more serious incidents as well.
“It’s a result of lockdown and people using areas of the countryside that they wouldn’t have done previously. So many people are discovering farmed countryside for the first time and they are not aware of how they should be behaving.”
By Kevin White2021-01-28T14:36:00+00:00
Source: HCC
The Welsh lamb sector in particular is concerned about the longer-term impact the delays could have on trade
Lamb exporters are seeing significant increases in costs and bureaucracy when trying to access vital EU export markets, in a trend that could ultimately threaten the future of some processors and suppliers.
The sector had “dodged a bullet” by maintaining post-Brexit tariff-free access to the EU market through the free trade agreement signed by the UK and EU before Christmas, said Hybu Cig Cymru/Meat Promotion Wales market development manager Rhys Llywelyn.
But it was now toiling with a series of non-tariff export barriers that had the potential to create “huge problems” if they continued in the medium-term, Llywelyn warned.