Our e-petition to ask the Westminster government to ban driven grouse shooting, reached 20,000 signatures last night. That took less than two and a half months.
Last year, the similar e-petition took six and a half months to reach the same milestone.
And remember, this has been done by you and me, and 19,998 others – not by the RSPB nor the Wildlife Trusts nor the National Trust.
We’re not half way to the end of the six months now allotted to all such e-petitions on the parliament website. What do you think the final total might be? I really don’t know. But I do know that I can feel the wind in our sails!
Thank you to everyone who has signed and promoted the e-petition .
We are making ripples. They are bigger ripples than last year. They are already almost small waves.
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Thankfully more and more of the British public are now waking up to the disaster taking place on moorland where protected raptors are being illegally destroyed with impunity in a misguided policy to support red grouse. There is now no doubt the tide is now beginning to turn in our favour thanks to a lot of caring and supportive individuals. It’s now very important to maintain the momentum we have already achieved.
Still a chance that big organisation such as Greenpeace could come on board and directly ask their supporters to sign the petition, we didn’t have that last time and it could add thousands even tens of thousands of signatures. Would the RSPB again give space in Nature’s Home to Mark speaking about the petition and the Moorland Association saying their piece, with updated info such as the ‘missing’ five harriers, the CA attempt to get Chris Packham sacked etc to incorporate it would be justifiable to repeat this exercise. It means the RSPB is retaining it’s impartiality – but the grouse moors are hardly going to come out of it well, suggestions re licensing for grouse moors seem to have gone quiet.
It was interesting, Mark, to notice the sudden surge in signatures following Mark Cocker’s support for your petition on his Facebook page yesterday. Only continuing exposure and presentation will keep the numbers rolling in.
I share your frustration to a degree about the RSPB. However, you had significant support from Mike Clarke and Jeff Knott at Hen Harrier weekend and Jeff is presenting a talk on HH at the AGM on Saturday. It is the RSPB wildlife crime team that spends days and nights out on the moors protecting the birds and their legal department that pursues any criminal activity. From our experience the RSPB has not attempted to suppress advertising the petition and you have been welcomed in many local groups as an advocate. Our own local group newsletter (we sent you a copy: http://www.rspb.org.uk/groups/oxford/news/406864/) has a link to the petition and had to be scrutinised by the regional office before publication. I wonder how different the RSPB’s approach would be had you remained Director of Conservation? Martin Harper has been outspoken on his several blogs on the subject, his latest here: http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/b/martinharper/archive/2015/10/04/hen-harrier.aspx
Sorry that you won’t be at the AGM on Saturday, could your alter ego Henry, perhaps be there? Looking forward to it.
Jeff Knott posted a guest blog on RSPB’s Skydancer blog on 14 Sept; among other things he mentioned his forthcoming AGM talk and promised:-
“While I’ll certainly be covering the ongoing plight of one of our most threatened birds of prey and the pernicious effect of illegal persecution, the talk will also be focusing on the reasons we can be positive and why I honestly believe we will save our hen harriers.
I can’t tell you too much more detail right now. We’re busy preparing things at the moment and I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise, but I can promise it will definitely be memorable – we’ve got a trick or two up our sleeves that should make it unique”.
True, all done by us, not the RSPB, Wildlife trusts, NT or HOT. But why not??
What is stopping these ( our) charities from supporting and promoting this petition? this would reach over 100k in no time if it were.
How about if all 20,000 of us wrote to our charities and asked that very question.
Mark, how about you supply the names of who to ask at each one?
I concur with what Paul has stated, what a pity politics rather than common sense has dictated the RSPB’s lack of support for this important petition. At the very least the Society should have informed members about the existence of Mark’s petition and the reasons why the petition was launching in the first place. Members should have been advised Michael Clarke, the RSPB’s Chief Executive, did not wish to see grouse shooting banned but members were free to make up their own minds based upon the evidence alone.
It was exactly the same with the forest sales fiasco from which the conservation lobby appears top have learnt little. There still seems to be a belief that this Government is going to do good things for the environment despite all the evidence to the contrary – including being described as the ‘green blob by SoS Defra and ‘green crap’ by the PM. Equally, as the forest sales showed, it isn’t just about protest – though in cases like grouse & HH that is probably the only serious route now: the real challenge is to project a positive and inspiring vision of the future in contrast to the nihilism of Osborne’s greed and envy politics. And I’m convinced the building blocks are coming into place with the sort of work the natural capital committee have been doing – the question is whether the institutions – political parties and conservation/environment NGOs can harness the ideas into a convincing narrative.
I am off to see Rory Stewart MP and DEFRA representative,face to face this thursday,so I will have to have a quick re-read of Inglorious to arm me before I go. Trying to make the points calmly will be the challenge!