Environmental activist steps back from the fight ‘disappointed’ by Labour so far
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Mark Avery to stand down from role with Wild Justice but won’t completely give up campaigning, he insists. If government ministers and civil servants are grey squirrels, they may think they can rest easy – the predatory pine marten in the Westminster jungle is leaving them in peace.
![[Patrick Barkham]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Patrick-Barkham,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
A campaigner who has “created a landscape of fear” over the authorities’ failure to protect nature is stepping back from Wild Justice to spend more time with the wildlife – and grandchildren – in his garden. But Mark Avery has vowed that the campaign group he co-founded with Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay six years ago will redouble its efforts to pounce on broken government promises and law enforcement that fails to restore biodiversity in Britain.
The former RSPB conservation director, who has become an outspoken critic of timid conservation charities, will also carry on campaigning for a ban on driven grouse shooting as a Wild Justice petition for a parliamentary debate gains momentum. “We create a landscape of fear a bit like pine martens do with great squirrels,” said Avery of Wild Justice, which he founded with Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham after meeting lawyers Leigh Day following Packham’s walk for wildlife in 2018. “You don’t have to win every legal case to make Whitehall and government agencies think harder about decisions they make, just like the pine marten doesn’t have to catch every great squirrel to create a landscape of fear.”.
Avery, who is a member of the Labour party, said he was disappointed by the government’s environmental agenda so far, attributing its lack of engagement in the biodiversity crisis to a lack of MPs who are interested in the countryside. “Grouse shooting and badger culling are two things that Labour ought to look at as ways that they could show that they are independent and also different from the last government,” he said.
