§ Mr. RedmondTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the organisations which are currently involved with Her Majesty's Government's working group into the Ruddy duck problem; what preliminary conclusions have been reached by the group; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. MacleanThe working group referred to by the hon. Member is drawing up a strategy to control the Ruddy duck, an introduced species, which has spread from Britain to mainland Europe and is hybridising with and putting at risk the survival of the globally threatened White-headed duck.
653WThe working group is chaired by the Government's statutory scientific advisers, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. The other organisations represented are the Department of the Environment, the Welsh Office, English Nature, the Countryside Council for Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, the International Council for Bird Preservation, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology.
My Department, in partnership with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau organised an international workshop at Arundel, Sussex on I and 2 March of more than 50 delegates from 10 countries. The workshop helped to foster mutual understanding about the scale of the problem and a recognition that international co-operation was needed to tackle it. The agreed objective was to develop a strategy to stop and reverse the population and range expansion of the Ruddy duck in order to safeguard the White-headed duck. Delegates were asked to take back to their countries recomendations for action in a number of areas including legislation, monitoring, research, control measures, public relations and captive birds. The problems can be resolved only on the basis of mutual understanding and effort.
In Spain, the Ruddy duck is undermining conservation efforts to save the White-headed duck. I am very pleased to learn that the Spanish delegation at the workshop found the proceedings helpful and that they were encouraged by the positive action being taken in Britain to address the problem.