1938 - The Vasculum

5
The reason for this general ignorance is easily found. The Acts are
so involved, the Orders are so illogical and cumbersome, that they are hard
to' understand, impossible to remember and difficult to administer.
There are in all seven Wild Birds Protection Acts, besides one or
two other Acts relating to wild birds and a number of Game Acts which
apply to certain species only. Upon these Acts the Wild Birds Protection
Orders are based and their form and substance must comply with the varied
requirements of the Acts. The seven Acts, which were passed at intervals
between 1880 and 1908, display all the faults of piecemeal and illconsidered
legislation, and the Orders reflect these faults. The Orders do not
in themselves set forth the terms of the Acts or the penalties to be suffered
from the breaking of them. In law every person is supposed to know the
laws of the country and ignorance is no excuse for breaking them. So the
public is only informed in the Orders what variations in the laws are
decreed in the area covered by the Order. Each County Council or County
Borough Council frames its own Order, subject to the approval of a
Secretary of State, so no two Orders are likely to be identical. This latitude
was doubtless allowed in order that local circumstances should be fully
considered in drawing up an Order; but it has resulted in a most confusing
lack of uniformity. A man walking from Birtley to Gosforth, for instance,
passes under the jurisdiction of four different courts, each one administering
a different Order: how is he to remember the terms of each?
But the lack of uniformity is not the worst feature of the Orders.
They have, many of them, been drawn up by people without sufficient
knowledge of the distribution and habits of birds to enable them to judge as
to which species should be protected and which should not, which should be
given an extended "close time" and which should be protected all the year
round. As the specially protected species have to be named upon the Order
and as birds are known by different names in different parts of the country,
many of the birds have to be mentioned two or three times under different
names in the same Order. Long lists are therefore a necessity and very
often, owing to ignorance, these