By Mike Swan, GWCT Senior Advisor
1st October brings new legislation on bird registration that is likely to affect every game manager in England and Wales. From that date the Defra Poultry Register, which already covers gamebirds, becomes the Kept Birds Register, and is extended to cover all captive birds, no matter how few you keep. Similar provisions have recently been put in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland too.
The concept here is that DEFRA/Scottish Government/DAERA will have a fuller picture of exactly where all captive birds are in the event of an avian influenza or other disease outbreak, and will be able to act accordingly.
The only exceptions will be pet birds in the parrot and songbird families that are kept entirely indoors. Birds in aviaries or other outdoor cages are covered too, so even taking your budgie or canary in its cage out onto the veranda on a sunny day will require registration. By the same token, decoy birds kept in Larsen or other corvid traps are also covered, so the new rules will impinge on almost every gamekeeper.
This is an update from poultry registers which have been in place covering anyone keeping more than 50 poultry, including gamebirds. Some game managers may have been unaware of this, thinking that it only applied to domestic poultry. In practice it applies gamebirds too, even when birds are only kept temporarily, therefore covering pheasants and partridges in release pens, and released ducks too.
The new system offers a simplified registration process for keepers of less than 50 birds, and there is a telephone helpline for those who cannot register online.
More information & Registration
- England & Wales >
- Scotland >
- Northern Ireland >
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