Schedule 1 - Exempt Hunting
Hunting Bill
10:30 am
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to wait for the next paragraph before he dives in. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman tries to disturb the flow of my thoughts. I am rather enjoying watching him in the hole into which he has dug himself.
The Hebridean mink project is a five-year project funded by a partnership of EU-Life III Nature Fund, Scottish Natural Heritage, Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar, Western Isles Enterprise, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department and DEFRA's Central Science Laboratory. The project is managed by Scottish Natural Heritage but the trapping of mink and the assessment of different measures is largely conducted by the CSL, an executive agency of DEFRA.
The project aims to eradicate mink from North Uist and Benbecula to reduce the population in South Harris by the maximum extent possible and to use the information gained to predict the costs of mink removal in the Western Isles. The work is in its second year and is primarily based on the capture of mink in live traps. Captured mink are dispatched with
high-powered air pistols while in the traps. Dogs are used by some of the trappers to help identify areas in which mink are active so that traps can be set in the vicinity, which is in accordance with Scottish legislation on the use of dogs.
A separate small study has been conducted by a gentleman named Mark Miller-Mundy, a local landowner, and MESH, which is not Government funded. In that study a pack of mink hounds were brought to the islands and used under trial conditions to locate mink. In summary, the dogs were shown to be able to identify areas in which mink were active, including signs of mink activity in areas where traps had been set.
Press reports quote Mark Miller-Mundy and MESH as arguing that their work demonstrates that the Hebridean mink project's eradication strategy for mink, based on trapping, cannot succeed as a proportion of the mink will remain untrapped. They argue that dogs are a more efficient method of catching mink—they do not define how dogs would be used to assist in the mink capture—and that their use is essential for the success of the eradication programme. The phrase in the press article is
''a strong case for allowing mink hunting to continue as a form of pest control''.
On the basis of the evidence available, I am advised that that is a flawed conclusion, which is not supported by the evidence. MESH has not demonstrated that a trapping-based eradication scheme cannot succeed.