News story

24th May 2004

MP Demands Answers on Dead Robins

Click here to listen to the story run on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme (audio file)

Northavon MP Steve Webb has expressed concern that a Thornbury garden centre was able to call in pest controllers to kill a family of robins.

Two chicks and their mother were shot with an air rifle after claims that they had been setting off burglar alarms. The garden centre also said that the birds were flying in and out of its 200-seat restaurant and posed a health risk.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which licensed the cull at Wyevale Garden Centre, has ordered an inquiry.  Experts said that the robins, which had been living in the centre for weeks, would have flown the nest within the next few days.  But the pest controllers were called in and angry staff tipped off the RSPCA.

Killing robins and other wild birds is allowed as a last resort when there is a genuine public health or safety risk and other methods have failed.

Now Steve Webb is raising the issue with the Government to find out why a licence was granted for the culling.

He said: "Defra should have blocked this application and I want to know why they let it through. The killing of wild animals is only allowed "in exceptional circumstances" and I simply do not believe that these were exceptional."