Bird Fair asks Iceland’s Prime Minister to end whaling

I spent some, by no means all, of my time at the Bird Fair getting signatures, on bits of paper, to ask the Icelandic Prime Minister to bring an end to whaling in her country. 

I’m amazed by the total: we got…

1,320 signatures.

Thank you to all who signed (and see some more acknowledgements lower down this post).  Here is what people were signing:

Dear Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland

Each year the British Birdwatching Fair brings together thousands of people from all walks of life, and many different nationalities, who want to make the world a better place for wildlife.

We know, with its strong environmental ethos, that your party has a firm policy opposing whaling. We are also aware of your own wish to see it stopped and we support you in your efforts to make this happen.

Please do all you can to end this awful activity which so tarnishes the image of your beautiful country.

So, 1320 signatures from nature lovers who might come to Iceland to spend their tourist money in the Icelandic economy. Those 1320 signatures came mostly from UK citizens but also those from Iceland, France, Cambodia, USA, Spain, Eire, Argentina, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Costa Rica, Hungary, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, Sweden, Finland, India, Australia, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. A truly international call for action to end whaling.  All the signatures were gathered, on paper, over the three days of the 2018 Bird Fair in Rutland on the 17-19 August.

What happens next?: I’ll be in contact with the Icelandic embassy in London and we will be looking at the best way to get this message across to the Icelandic government.  The licences for whaling run out in September and the next few weeks are crucially important in influencing whether they are renewed or not.

A lot or a few?: The Bird Fair attendance is around 22,000 so those 1320 signatures represent about 6% of attendees (not very many in some ways). Imagine that it takes a couple of minutes to talk to someone about the issue and then for them to sign the petition and for you to thank them – sounds about right on average. 1320 signatures is  44 hours – and signature collection at the Bird Fair was most active in the 24 hours, 9am-5pm over the three days. We did well!

Over the three days no-one suggested, even in the most remote way, that they were in favour of whaling.  No-one said that they wanted more whaling in the world. No-one said that they wouldn’t sign the petition although a couple of (I thought, slightly grumpy) women said they’d think about it and probably sign after the talk about Iceland which they were about to hear.

Acknowledgements: this initiative was really a joint one between myself and several wildlife tour companies who visit Iceland (see here for those travel companies who signed their own letter on this subject). I’d like to thank Heatherlea, Naturetrek, Discover the World, The Travelling Naturalist, Wildlife Worldwide, Orcadian Wildlife, Sunbird and Greentours for their support in this and for hosting the petition on their stands over the three days of the Bird Fair.  Heatherlea and Naturetrek both invited me to give a plug for the petition in their talks about Iceland’s wildlife and that helped boost signatures a lot. Other mates hosted the petition too and I’d like to thank them: Birdwatch, Falklands Conservation, Mike Langman, ORCA and Chris Gomersall, and notably the Visit Iceland stand. Andy Jones, an ex-colleague from years back at RSPB, who lives in Iceland and my wife Rosemary also put a lot of hours into collecting signatures.  I’d also like to thank the Bird Fair, in the friendly shape of Tim Appleton especially, for tolerance and indeed support for this last minute initiative.  And a host of celebrities including Mark Carwardine, Chris Packham, David Lindo, Iolo Williams and Mike Dilger gave the petition their support.

Having said all that, none of us was working flat out to amass signatures; anyone who has a stand at the Bird Fair has invested their cash in order to meet customers and not to get signatures on a petition. And Rosemary, Andy and I were at the Bird Fair to meet mates, drink beer, buy earrings (maybe not Andy – I don’t know), go to talks, sign books, eat delicious food and not simply to persuade you to sign this petition.  What I’m saying is that with a slightly larger and even more dedicated team we could have got an awful lot more signatures, but the total actually exceeded my expectations by quite a long way.

This is not a complaint: the Bird Fair has rules (I bet they aren’t written down though!) about what you can and can’t do at the event.  Perfectly reasonably, one is discouraged from stopping people at the Bird Fair and asking them to do things, and initiatives like petitions are restricted, more-or-less, to stands. Having said that, it’s quite easy, with a smile, to get away with bending the rules a little. There were no announcements about the petition and the Bird Fair admin stand won’t host a pile of petitions either. So, the business of getting signatures is down to guile and charm, and having a few mates who can help.  Just imagine what the Bird Fair could do, if it wanted, to send a message to governments including those in the UK, that they should do more for nature.  The Bird Fair audience is a bunch of wildlife enthusiasts but everyone, including the wildlife NGOs, seems just a little more interested in their wallets than in their hearts and minds and actions (OK, so that last sentence is a little bit of a complaint).

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