NB: these letters can be found on the EAR Face Book page also
Back in 1999/2000 my work on The Red Paper: Felids was complete. I had all the information and evidence I needed based on standard naturali history and wildlife research criteria.
However, I knew that if I released the full report it could be used by illegal hunting groups and even the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for its "eradication" (killing) programme and I even had written affidavit from people who had witnessed this first hand.
I think the letter says it all (we were still using typewriters back then!). Unless there was full acceptance that these animals were out there and that despite (in some cases) a couple hundred years living in the UK countryside there had been no attacks on humans and it could be proven based on testimony that these animals had a positive rather than detrimental effect on the countryside then I was not going to publish.
And A-Z guide on where to find and kill was not going out there, And so I contacted the EU (which was aware of my work) and tried to ascertain how things were and whether they could be changed.
22 years on we know the situation has not change. I think the EU letters from 2000 shows that there was no real interest in openly accepting that exotics had become native and it was far easier to just kill anything that "didn't fit" in with some bureaucratic national view -some "native fauna" in the EU as well as UK are "native" only for convenience as they, like todays "new fauna", were set free or escaped because of human activities.
Interestingly it was during this period that I was referred to by an EU official as an "environmental conservationist" (and we were not using the term "Citizen Scientist" back then).
Here is my letter plus the EU response that shaped my decision.
The EU Responses
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