Petition

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EU Petition435.7 KB
 
Petition: Stop the European Union squirrel cull
 
To: Karmenu Vella, EU Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries and
Daniel Calleja Crespo, EU Director-General for Environment

Politicians from the European Union introduced the law obliging the United Kingdom, Ireland and Italy to organise from 2016 killing of hundreds of thousands of grey squirrels every year, using methods that include poisoning them, bludgeoning to death or trapping and shooting.
 
This horrid and inhumane "program" is to be sponsored from the money of taxpayers from all EU countries.
 
Killing squirrels is to be conducted even in the time of year when females nurse their completely dependent on them kittens. Killing thousands of nursing females will cause tens of thousands of baby squirrels starve to death over several days – starving animals is a torture in breach of animal welfare standards of the World Organisation for Animal Health.
 
Representatives of animal welfare organisations like Mimi Bekhechi (director of PETA UK) and Andrew Tyler (director of Animal Aid) have stated many times that killing grey squirrels is an inhumane, ecologically & socially damaging and absolutely pointless cruelty against those beautiful beneficial animals.
 
As with the badger cull there is no logic in the squirrel cull and the only beneficiaries of such "programs" are people in the commercial business of killing wild animals.
 
Please sign the petition [1]
to tell the politicians from the European Union
to stop financing the killing of grey squirrels from the money of taxpayers of all EU countries
 
Animal rights activists also draw attention to the fact that although scientific research has dispelled myths about grey squirrels [2a,b,c], those myths are still used and grey squirrels demonised by people and groups who benefit from killing wild animals to "justify" the killing.
 
Rob Atkinson (the head of wildlife science at the RSPCA) condemning the killing of grey squirrels as pointless and ethically dubious rightly pointed out that until recently in the same way the alleged problems caused by red squirrels were demonised to "justify" their killing.
 
Thank you for your valuable vote of support which helps save these beautiful creatures from cruel inhumane death.
 
Dr Amelia Roberts, Jojo Huxster
 
Please join the FB page opposing the organisation of this massacre so that you can be informed about the day-to-day progress of the action: www.facebook.com/StopSquirrelCull/
 
[1] Please sign the petition
You can read the full EU petition here or download it as PDF at the top of this page.
[2a] www.i-csrs.com/red-squirrels-decline
[2b] www.i-csrs.com/red-squirrels-mortality
[2c] www.i-csrs.com/effect-squirrels-trees


Photo credits:
ICSRS would like to thank Graham Telford for allowing his photo to be used in the above article.