Guest blog – My Decathlon petition by Colin MacLennan

Well hello there, I’m Colin, living in Glasgow, passionate all my life about the outdoors and wildlife, and very grateful to Mark for the opportunity to present here on his Guest Blog.

For the last few years I’d been preparing and planning for retirement, and they were good plans. Travel, home and abroad, old favourites and pastures new; courses to learn new stuff – art, photography, teaching others – schoolkids and others. I’ve always supported quite a few charities, but wanted to get hands dirty, volunteering to get out there planting trees, fixing paths, counting eagles and more. The one thing I didn’t factor in was Covid – lockdown started the very same week I finally stopped work! Very disorienting as you might imagine, but like many others realised better just make the best of it, and very quickly I was discovering a wealth of new wild places right on my doorstep. And astonishing wildlife – over fifty bird species, plus badgers, pine martens, otters, water voles – all gems I previously thought I’d have to travel miles to see. Much of it here if you’re interested.

Any practical volunteering work was out the question, but I did have time to engage online more, and found a vibrant community pursuing numerous worthwhile causes and all appreciative of the value of nature, especially when the human world is being turned upside down. The whole Decathlon thing was sparked for me when @burningmoors posted this on Twitter –

While clearly Decathlon hadn’t planned to use this wording in the UK, it’s nevertheless a perfect translation, as I found out when I looked further at Decathlon’s European websites, and found that the wider picture is blacker than most of us could imagine. I have views on the merits of hunting and shooting in the UK, but believe me in Europe its taken to a whole other level of destruction. To understand the range and scale of the killing (legal and illegal) of precious birds in tens of millions each year, have a look online – Birdlife International reports are a reliable starting point.

Against this background, and when habitat destruction and biodiversity loss are on everyone’s lips, you probably wouldn’t expect a 12 billion dollar company, the world’s largest “sports” retailer to promote killing on a massive scale, but Decathlon do.

Throughout mainland Europe they have pages and pages dedicated to the killing of wildlife. These cartridges are just one example of multiple product ranges targeting “songbirds”, specifically and in general, as well as many species of water and wading birds, including several included on the IUCN Red List of vulnerable species, turtle doves, lapwing and more. They target birds I never imagined anyone shot, such as greenshank and oystercatcher, and consistently boast of the killing effectiveness of their products – many are designed and manufactured in-house by Decathlon and their subsidiaries. To add insult, Decathlon’s websites are packed with propaganda on how their vision is to be champions of sustainability, family friendly, and (their words) to “Protect our mother nature” and “have a positive impact on the planet”. I did Decathlon the courtesy of writing and asking to see their policy on the killing of songbirds, but frankly got lies and gibberish in response, so it was game on and this Petition was born. I’m an absolute novice in this so I’m hugely grateful to Bob, Eve and the team @onekindtweet for their help and guidance as well as helping to spread the word; likewise to Billy @FerretScot. With help from them and indeed the Change.org network, signatures surged beyond anything I might have imagined, quickly into tens of thousands. I thought we had peaked around 40,000 – despite tweeting like crazy there are obvious limits to my reach regardless of the strength of the message, but its always amazing where support appears when you need it. So again I’m grateful to the anti-hunt community on Twitter, particularly Heidi @HeidiBearKaye1 and Tricia @1221triciafln, with whose help we reached the significant milestone of 49,000. 49 was the serial of the original was the number of the original European Birds Directive enacted back in 1979 – Directive 79/49/EEC. Signatures have come from over half the countries in the world, to Australia and back again, and from every one of the United States of America – I’m quite proud of that.

Comments accompanying the signatures are heartfelt and powerful and reflect understandable shock / disappointment / anger not only at the barbarity of Decathlon’s products but at the utter hypocrisy of the company and their “environmental” claims.

So where are we now – well these signatures were presented to Decathlon at the end of October; but in an extraordinary display of corporate cowardice and cynicism, the company has not only failed to respond or even acknowledge the Petition, but is frantically trying to conceal the evidence, so we now see the extraordinary spectacle of a multi-billion dollar company ashamed of its own products. The particular cartridges which were used to illustrate our campaign appear to have been taken off Decathlon’s websites. These were previously displayed all across Europe, so clearly we have made them realise how utterly unacceptable this is in the 21st century, however this rather desperate move does not constitute a victory.

These cartridges were never for sale online as such, they are an advert for in-store products because postal services do not transport live ammunition. Taking them offline therefore is very different from withdrawing them from sale, and simply makes the products less visible. The offending cartridges were just one example of Decathlon’s anti-songbird arsenal. A check on 15th November confirmed that for thrushes alone, Decathlon’s websites still promote a wide range of products including cartridges in no less than eleven European countries. Decathlon’s French and Spanish websites still advertised a full range of lures, decoys and cartridges all for hunting thrushes. These sit within a plethora of munitions and accessories targeting a wide range of wildlife, embracing several from The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™.

It is clear therefore that Decathlon are trying to disguise their activity, rather than face up to the challenges of taking a principled review of their policy and approach.

So are we disheartened – not a chance, just means that the game has been raised. To ramp up pressure on Decathlon we are now writing to various sustainability bodies to which the company claims membership or affiliation, airing the many contradictions between Decathlon’s claims and their practices. As an example, this press release shows Decathlon making great claims in the realm of biodiversity and linking to Act4Nature and the OREE.

These are both powerful and prestigious bodies, with stakeholders including WWF and the IUCN, senior academic institutions and ultimately the French Government, so we have written to all of them with a line-by-line rebuttal of Decathlon’s performance against the membership criteria. At the time of writing, OREE’s Head of Biodiversity and Economy has commended our vigilance and confirmed that their senior executives are reviewing the situation and will respond presently. Meantime, similar reports are being presented to other relevant organisations.

Thanks to increased circulation by Mark and others among the Wild Justice community, petition signatures continue to climb, in fact as I’m writing this it’s just passed 55,555. There will be other public protests coming soon so please keep an eye on #StopDecathlonKilling.

I guess if you have cared enough to read this far, you will probably be wondering how you can help? Well appreciating that time is limited for many of us, here are various ways in which you can assist in driving this to an acceptable conclusion.

1. Signing and sharing the petition is easy here – http://chng.it/6wDnwrSPdY    Although Decathlon have not responded to date, every signature has impact not only on them but as a powerful message to other stakeholders and concerned parties.
2. Please share the petition everywhere you can, if you or people you know have a good social media following, please engage them and get the message out there. A few lines on the Wild Justice newsletter last week generated over 4,000 new signings in a matter of days.
3. My petition update of 29^th November listed all the countries from which we have signatories. If you know anyone living outwith these, how about asking them to sign up, wouldn’t it be great to colour the whole world green?
4. If you wish to make your feelings known directly, please contact Director of Sustainable Development [email protected]  with your thoughts. Please be polite, in keeping with the tone of the campaign so far, and please don’t reinvent the argument, I’ve tried to be complete and accurate with all the petition Updates, the basic plea remains unchanged – “Will you please stop promoting the slaughter of songbirds and migrating birds?”
5. If you are a member or even an official of a bird, wildlife, conservation body, if you know a journalist / politician / broadcaster / activist who might help, please write to them citing the Petition and ask for their support in circulation.
6. If you have other proposals or inspiration, please contact me in the first instance on Twitter @ColinMacLennan2 with #StopDecathlonKilling .

The killing of our precious birds is a massive, global annual catastrophe. Stopping it should be a concern to every civilised person, and as armourers in chief, Decathlon need to be held to account. Nothing is surer than if we all just wring our hands and do nothing; it will go on year after year. The really sad thing is that Decathlon don’t actually need this, they are a hugely successful global company, in many ways living up to their vision of making sport accessible for all. As they strive to establish their sustainability credentials, the last thing they need is this sordid rubbish undermining their credibility. They could easily make the same profits from much of the same equipment by promoting wildlife watching and photography.

So far it’s been an interesting introduction to environmental protest for me. I sincerely hope you will help, and I’m extremely grateful to Mark for the opportunity to share the story with you here. The campaign goes on, refreshed and reinvigorated, and I expect we can come back to you with more positive news before too long.

Thank you, and please help if you can, the scale of this slaughter every year should be a concern to everyone.

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