The petition to reduce the use of cruel bird deterrents such as mesh netting and metal spikes on buildings is hitting all the right buttons. Thanks to your signatures and sharing the petition to stop cruelty to our rooftop birds has been in the Welsh news and has many thousands of signatures.
Now, rooftop birds need your help to catch the eyes of the wider UK media so the UK Government takes action.
Can you go the extra mile? Get arty. Share a selfie holding a placard with any two of the hashtags below. Please be sure to add the petition link below to share with friends and on social media.
#NoToBirdSpikes #BanBirdNetting #ReduceBirdDeterrents #LetTheBirdsFly #Biodiversity #GullsAreGreat #ClimateAction #PigeonsDeserveBetter #Nature
I’m all set to have a meeting with MP Geraint Davies to discuss rooftop bird deterrents. It’s holiday time so things are a little slower. I’m also hoping to meet with Julie James MS soon. She is my local member of Senedd and Minister for Climate Change here in Wales.
Rooftop birds need you to get them in the UK wide media. Ripples you make can grow into waves…
Stop the death and injury to rooftop birds.
I started the ChangeOrg petition after seeing a dead Herring Gull seemingly killed by bird deterrent spikes on a rooftop.
Having grown up near the coast, I was shocked to find out that though Herring Gulls still seem common, their populations have actually plummeted by a staggering 50 per cent just since 1970. Now defined as vulnerable, these rooftop birds that help define many of our cities and coasts are on the red list of birds of conservation concern.
Herring Gulls are not the only rooftop birds affected by these cruel bird deterrents. For example Kittiwakes are red listed, the Lesser Black-backed Gull is also on the amber list and swallows and swifts maybe declining. Rooftop birds like gulls, pigeons, birds of prey, crows, swifts and swallows are all vulnerable to being injured or killed by the bird netting & spikes sadly still used on our buildings and garden walls.
Be a Rooftop Bird Champion…
Be arty. Share a selfie holding a placard with any two of the hashtags below. Please be sure to add the petition link below to share with friends and on social media.
#NoToBirdSpikes #BanBirdNetting #ReduceBirdDeterrents #LetTheBirdsFly #Biodiversity #GullsAreGreat #ClimateAction #PigeonsDeserveBetter #Nature
Birds really don’t deserve to be cruelly killed or injured. Apart from helping maintain life-giving biodiversity the bottom line to this issue is that cruelty should be designed out from the choice of deterrent measures used against rooftop birds. In the face of the climate and biodiversity crises let’s help tip the balance the right way in favour of #Nature , #Climate and against #AnimalCruelty.
Every small action we take; even to save a seagull, pigeon or swift helps!
Save the seagull?
I’ve been struck by the mixed reaction to gulls and pigeons from those commenting on the news coverage. It’s definitely a bit of a marmite; love them or don’t care at all for them reaction. People either really care for birds in general; and this, for them, includes ‘common’ birds. Others point to bird mess, the birds protecting their young during breeding season (who wouldn’t!), stealing of ice creams (we’ll get over it?), the noise they make & that in their view there are ‘too many of them’.
We humans depend on the incredible diversity of nature for our very existence.
Many of us are now beginning to experience the effects of climate change & biodiversity loss. I’m a gardener so I really have noticed it. I’m reminded that all this diverse nature, however common, is part of a bigger jigsaw worldwide. Each species or puzzle piece contributes to the whole; often in ways we haven’t begun to understand. It is this that makes this crazy planet we live on thrive so we survive.
Let’s leave a functioning planet behind for our children. Let’s include the squawking gulls and other common birds of our rooftops too.
3 suggestions you can also do to help
Join the Face book group: Rooftop Bird Club
If you have photographic evidence of injury or death to birds caused by bird deterrents please consider sharing photos with the petition link on social media with your reaction and the relevant hashtags. If you are on Twitter do DM me at @joboxer12.
Any helpful ideas, research or contacts please kindly let me know also at @joboxer12 or at the Rooftop Bird Club.