Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the current period of prolonged frost and frozen ground on the ability of woodcock to feed; and whether she intends to exercise existing powers to introduce a temporary suspension of woodcock shooting during this period.

Managed by JNCC, the Severe Weather Scheme is designed to help with the conservation of birds listed at Schedule 2 Part 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, including woodcock, by reducing disturbance during periods of prolonged cold weather through voluntary restraint and then statutory suspension of shooting.

The threshold for the minimum number of days of freezing weather which would trigger voluntary restraint in England has not been met this winter. However, JNCC remains in regular discussion with Defra, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation, and environmental organisations on the impact to birds of the current and forecast cold weather.