HB meeting 11th October 2024
Summarised minutes from meeting held on Zoom on 11th October, 2024.
Archived and detailed minutes are available through your affiliated club representative.
Present
Gary Biddiss (South Eastern Falconry Group)
Cameron Balfour (Scottish Hawk Board)
Sarah Calderwood (Stand-in British Falconers’ Club)
Sharon Creffield (South East Raptor Association)
Jim Collins (SUN)
Dr Nick Fox (Co-opted)
Nick Havemann-Mart (Welsh Hawking Club)
James Legge (Countryside Alliance)
Dr Gordon Mellor (Specialist Member)
Helen Fox (Specialist Member)
Tom Spink (Observer)
Martin Stanley (Specialist Member)
Mark Upton (Specialist Member)
Rachelle Upton (Co-ordinator/Treasurer)
Apologies
Tom Dutton (Co-opted)
Richard Newton (Cheshire Hawking Club)
Don Ryan (Irish Hawking Club)
Steve Smith (British Falconers’ Club)
Bob Dalton (Specialist Member)
Meeting discussion points
1) Minutes of last meeting/Matters arising
2) Stand-In Chair’s Report
Bob Dalton has sadly had to stand down as a specialist member.
A Hawk Board UNESCO Conference was held at Vowley in early July, to showcase how and why the application needs to be put together and why it is so important to falconry. A great team of speakers was put together from many government departments, including DEFRA, APHA, JNCC and the new department responsible for processing UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage bids at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. A very interesting presentation by the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey, the accredited NGO providing advisory service to UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee (NGO-90006) was listened to with great interest. We also had speakers from most falconry related activities, vets and other experts. Other field sports and Countryside Alliance speakers gave very good examples of the danger field sports are in, especially now we have a new government which has very different views to the previous government.
For the UNESCO National nominations to the ICH inventory, each country of the United Kingdom has to put forward separate applications for Intangible Cultural Heritage to their own devolved governments and Hawk Board will be helping put together independent teams for each country. There will of course be quite a lot of overlap in these applications and Hawk Board hope to work with all the groups to put together strong applications. It should be remembered that the application is for the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Falconry as specified in the UNESCO Falconry Inscription, which uses the definition of falconry “Falconry is the traditional art and practice of training and flying falcons (and sometimes eagles, hawks, buzzards and other birds of prey)”. Falconry related activities will be included in the application. The diversity of falconry and falconry related activities are an important part of the inscription because it has to be shown how falconry is moving forward culturally. The inscription isn’t just about the past and present but falconry’s journey into the future. It isn’t just about protecting the art of falconry but how falconry is part of UK culture and how it interacts within society. The international inscription doesn’t shy away from the fact that falconry is a hunting art.
Following the Conference Hawk Board held an extra meeting to put together teams for the application in each UK country. We were hoping to move forward with the applications but are held up by the body dealing with UNESCO at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who have not yet drawn up the applications procedures or forms.
The was a good discussion at the Conference on how the Hawk Board should move forward with some interesting suggestions. It was thought that we should co-opt representatives from different falconry related activities, and we will discussing this way forward at the meeting. It is important that we get more people onto HB to bring more depth to our knowledge of different falconry related activities. Communications were discussed and the need for better PR which is a position we badly need filled in the HB. Finance was also discussed and we in HB need to look at some of the ideas suggested. The idea of having a donation link on the website has already been implemented.
Avian Influenza mandatory bird registration has come at the end of September in England and is a little later in Scotland. Although I see people have complained of lack of information on social media and the BFC Facebook pages, we have issued several lots of information about this including links to the DEFRA forms on both Facebook and our new website some time ago. I have registered my hawks, and the process was very straight forward. We await to see how many bird keepers do register. We have had no contact with APHA over AI in recent months and either there have been no stakeholder meetings, or they are not inviting HB.
We have been invited to attend a CITES legislative reform stakeholder animal focus session at DEFRA Bristol on the 28th October and I am hoping to attend.
3) Treasurers Report
4) Election of Chair and Vice Chair
Mark Upton was unanimously voted in as Chair
Gary Biddiss was unanimously voted in as Vice-Chair
5) Co-Opting
At the HB Conference there was a lot of positivity about co-opting some more people onto the HB. These people would be able to help in various ways but will not have a vote. Existing co-opts are Nick Fox for UNESCO; David Fox as Eagle Specialist; Tom Dutton as Veterinary Adviser, Peter Gill as Hawk Breeders representative and Mark Upton as IAF representative. It was suggested we look at people for the following areas:
BoP Centres
Breeders
Display Givers
Events
Furniture Makers
Pest Control
PR
Scientific Adviser
After some discussion it was decided that Hawk Board should Co-opt:
Sarah Calderwood - PR
Charlie Heap - BoP Centres
Charlotte Souto Hill - Displays
Angie Chick - Fund raiser
Steve Halsall - Furniture Makers:
Michael Taylor - Pest Control
Prof. Mark Fielder - Scientific Adviser
A vote was taken and unanimously agreed for MU to approach potential co-opts on their willingness for the roles.
6) HB Conference
Very positive feedback and requests for more conferences in the future. Shame it was poorly attended, partly due to negative publicity.
7) UNESCO Meeting
A meeting was hel after the HB Conference to talk about how to move forward with UNESCO. It's overseen by Hawk Board with a separate group for each UK country for individual applications.
It is being held up by the slowness of Department for Culture, Media and Sport in organising procedure and application forms.
8) Female Falconers Club
A letter was received from the Female Falconers Club requesting a meeting with Hawk Board and a list of questions to be answered.
It was decided the new Chair would reply saying we were happy to meet with them and answer their questions.
9) Wild Disabled Birds and APHA
A complaint had been received by a member of APHA about a post on Facebook. It was decided that it should be replied to stating we were sorry that an unsubstantiated post of this nature had been posted but it didn’t reflect the behaviour of the majority of falconers.
10) Avian Influenza
Happily there have been very few cases.
We are keeping people aware of the situation with posts and posted information about the monitory registration of birds.
11) SUN Update
There is an important DEFRA meeting at the end of October on Proposed Regulatory Reform of the UK's CITES Regs.The outline proposals from DEFRA were placed in the public domain a couple of weeks ago.
12) Scottish Update/Mountain Hare
The Scottish Government have announced that they are going to be doing the Wildlife and Natural Environment Act of 2024, which will turn into a Wildlife or Natural Environment Act of 2025 mostly to introduce changes to their management. But that's as good an opportunity as any to get an amendment to the Wildlife and Countryside Act to allow falconers to apply for licenses to hunt the hare.
13) IAF Update
The IAF held its Council of Delegates Meeting in Mongolia in September. There were votes for a new President and Vice-President for Europe. Mark Upton was voted in as President and Michael Greshake from Germany as V-P Europe.
14) Countryside Alliance Update
15) AOB
Next Meeting: TBC January 2025