The petition to reduce the use of bird deterrents on buildings in the UK has zoomed past 34,000 signatures. Thank you!
Please sign and share the petition with your friends or on social media to make it one of the most popular petitions in the UK. The petition link is below.
#Nature #birds #NoToBirdSpikes #NoToBirdNetting #NoToBirdDeterrents #LetTheBirdsFly
Stopping the death or injury of birds on roofs
I recently saw a poor Herring Gull dangling dead from a roof top caught by a strip of spiked bird deterrents. I’ve also seen birds caught in netting set up on roofs to deter birds. I questioned why is it we don’t value our roof top birds more. That’s why I started the petition.
Last week you may remember I sent a request to Julie James MS of the Welsh Government for an initial meeting about cruel bird deterrents. Let’s hope Wales can lead the way on limiting the use of bird deterrents, and that the UK Government will follow.
I also explained, based on a recent report, how every small & helpful thing we do will contribute to mitigate against the two mega crises of biodiversity and climate change.
You are cordially invited to join the Rooftop Bird Club
The Rooftop Bird Club was inspired by the petition support. I hope for it to become a place to celebrate not only birds but plants and other wildlife that make their homes on our buildings and in our gardens and green spaces. I hope it will also be a place to record our contact with amazing nature and sometimes too the downsides where nature is threatened by the actions people or companies do to wildlife.
Joining is easy. Search on Facebook for the group, then join and share your urban/garden nature pictures and stories.
This week (in a rather lengthy and hopefully interesting post) I aim to show how doing small things like treating rooftop birds kinder directly relates to how we produce our life sustaining food and even our global economy.
How even the small birds on our rooftops matter
The stunning photo of a glossy looking Starling is shared with kind permission from ©Maït Foulkes who donated brilliant nature images.
Starlings are regular visitors to many of our house rooftops. Thankfully, being smaller, they are less in danger from bird spike deterrent strips yet can like pigeons be injured or killed by nets used as deterrent measures on roofs.
Famous for their eye catching en masse flights; known as ‘murmurations’, Starlings are known to nest not in large colonies but in isolated pairs on our buildings.
Starling numbers have been reducing drastically in recent years. They are another bird species that is red listed meaning they are a bird of high conservation concern. You can welcome them with nest boxes. They contribute to our food supply as they eat large numbers of invertebrates many of which are pests on crops. However, they do come into conflict with farmers as they also damage winter crops.
Starling numbers expanded originally in line with the development of farming as land was cleared for crop production. This early success in adapting to man’s changes to the environment now perhaps threatens their future. Since the 1980s, land use has changed. Modern agricultural practices producing food for international ever more competitive markets sometimes damages precious soil, reducing its inherent biodiversity. Starlings it seems may depend on healthy soil for their food source of invertebrates like earthworms, leatherjackets and spiders. Simply put, just as we depend on healthy soil for our mass produced food so probably does the Starling.
According to the RSPB, in the past, one in three juvenile Starlings survived their first year of life but this has now reduced downwards to only about one in six which may be linked with food supply. Starlings often choose to use the holes in our homes to nest so are well protected from predators. According to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) numbers of starlings have reduced by 66 per cent in Britain since the mid 1970s.
Please help now
Sign and share the petition with your friends or on social media to get it landing safely. #Nature #birds #NoToBirdSpikes #JustWhoisTrespassing #LetTheBirdsFly
'Small is Beautiful' and why even one dead bird matters…
In the 1970s E. F. Schumacher's book ‘Small is Beautiful’ was published. His views at the time were seen as radical with its mix of philosophy, environmentalism and economics and over time the book’s influence has become enormous.
Schumacher challenged the 20th century's intoxication with what he described as ‘gigantism’. In the 70s mass production methods were producing more and vastly cheaper goods than ever before. Mass media and mass culture opened up new markets with ever widening audiences. As bigger markets and bigger political entities grew he believed these new scales of production and consuming led to dehumanisation of people and the economic systems that ordered our lives. It also made our relationship with sustaining nature more remote.
With workers on the production line now no more than, as he saw it, anonymous cogs in a huge machine, craft skills became less important. The quality of human relationships were declining as decisions were increasingly based on profitability rather than human need. Seeing the economic system as dehumanising, Schumacher demanded a people-centred economics as that would, in his view, enable human and environmental sustainability.
Small is beautiful is now positively blooming. Today for example we are assured that every little bit we can do for the planet makes a difference with regard to climate change even if the multinationals fail in doing their bit.
As local and international communities we have hopefully been drawn closer together in our collective response to the pandemic. We have had to realise how we are interdependent. The pandemic too has for many of us increased our yearning for an economics that is less remote with a reinvigorated idea of neighbourhood that can actively enable the much needed quality time and space for human interaction that can engender real community. We have even been forced to find ‘home’ in nature and realised it sustains us mentally. Schumacher flagged up ahead of time that natural resources were not infinite. He thought that economic growth should not be the most overriding preoccupation of our leaders.
The wellbeing debate today demonstrates that despite increased shared wealth since the 70s, are communities are not necessarily happier. Schumacher warned against exactly the issues we are now dealing with in the pandemic; inequality, depression, anxiety, panic and stress. These were all things that Schumacher feared. By going back to "small is beautiful", to a more human scale; to wellbeing and communities, he also believed we might also begin to realise our interdependence with our shared natural environment and be good stewards of it.
All this may sound like radical idealism. Perhaps nature is not there to forever be extracted from or to simply be managed as if we own it. As Schumacher thought it is all about 'enoughness'. It is not finite. Nature is instead there to build an enduring and mutually life sustaining relationship with. In the big world picture the odd dead bird on our house rooftop absolutely does matter just as ensuring the biodiverse health of our soil under competitive agricultural production matters and just as we and our rooftop birds mutually depend on the health of the fish in our oceans to feed us all.
What now?
Let’s welcome and encourage birds to our roofs rather than try to deter them. Please join the campaign to ensure that installation of bird deterrents including bird spikes & netting is used only in extreme circumstances, at the right time & is of the most appropriate design.
Build Back Greener
Building back can now be about welcoming feathered biodiversity to the roofs of our homes and offices with enhanced education, reducing the use of bird deterrents, better pest control operator licensing, appropriate planning controls & better funding for wildlife crime teams and prosecution.
This petition calls upon the Welsh and UK Governments to urgently review & take steps to stop the killing and injuring of birds across the U.K. due to the use of bird deterrents.
3 things you can also do to help:-
If you have helpful contacts or ideas on how this petition can be won or further strengthened, please kindly let me know at @joboxer12.
Tweet this update or share the petition on social media using the hashtags #Nature #birds #ReduceBirdDeterrents #NoToBirdNets #NoToBirdSpikes #LetTheBirdsFly
Join the Facebook group: Rooftop Bird Club
Our birds don’t deserve to be killed or injured. Let’s tip the balance in favour of biodiversity. Thanks so much for all your support. Let’s keep soaring to success!!