Since the 1970s we’ve been slowly exterminating wildlife around us. Here are five facts about UK wildlife which are plain spooky.

1. 41% of the UK’s biodiversity has declined.

The main contributors are (1) agricultural practices, (2) climate change, (3) pollution, (4) woodland management, and (5) invasive non-native species introduction for shooting.

In the UK, 72% of the land is managed for agriculture — devastating natural habitats everywhere. Climate change has caused the Kittiwake (gull) population to reduce by 70% and the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has been releasing and is due to release 50 million non-native birds to British natural sites each year. This is purely for fun — shooting as a sport — but the impacts are devastating: vegetation relied on by native birds is invaded and natural food webs are broken as native insects and invertebrates such as snakes and lizards are devoured.

2. 15% of wildlife is threatened with extinction.

In 2019, 70 environment and nature-based organisations produced “State of Nature”, the most comprehensive report on wildlife species in the UK yet. They studied 8,431 species using the Red List criteria: a system to classify species at high risk of extinction. 15% were classified as threatened whilst 2% are extinct.

3. 500,000 Grouse are shot for fun each year.

To increase Grouse numbers available to kill for sport, more than 260,000 animals are killed each year. These include natural wildlife predators like foxes, stoats, weasels, and crows; over half that needlessly meet their deaths are non-target species such as hedgehogs, dippers and mistle thrush. Peatlands, which lock 3.2 million tonnes of CO2 in the UK alone, are regularly illegally burnt, killing millions of wildlife plants and animals and contributing to climate change as CO2 is released into the air.

4. Turtle Dove’s are nearly exterminated. Between 1970 and 2015, populations depleted by 98%.

Turtle Dove’s are on the Red List. Their population is continually decreasing and it is estimated that during their migration routes, 2 to 4 million turtle doves are shot and killed for sport each year. In the UK, they’ve fallen from an estimated 125,000 pairs to 45,000 pairs. Their main food source (weed seeds) and habitats have been ravaged as a result of intensified farming.

5. £50,000 each has been handed to several hunting groups as loans or grants from taxpayer money as Coivid-19 bailouts.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds — who ride horses to kill stags and deer were given £10,000 in grant (no repayment) and £50,000 in loans. They already had £40,000 in their bank. The government scheme was set up so that local authorities could help small businesses stay afloat during this period. Whilst locals have faced difficult times, Shropshire County Council has given £50,000 of taxpayers money to fox-hunting groups. More shocking is that the Hunting Act of 2004 has banned fox hunting.

6. Hen Harrier numbers have decayed by 27% between 2004 and 2016.

Hen Harriers are scarce despite ample suitable land for them to breed on. Their distribution in the UK is unbalanced, with Scotland homing most Hen Harrier pairs. England is nearing complete extinction. The fifth Hen Harrier survey showed 460 pairs residing in Scotland and in England pairs fell from 12 in 2010 to four in 2016.

Imminent changes are needed to reverse the damage we have caused to our wildlife and stop more species from going extinct. Poor land management, shooting, habitat destruction, climate change and deforestation are making wildlife disappear.

Animal Rebellion joins XR Scotland’s Wildlife Rebellion today to highlight these issues in a march from DEFRA to Buckingham Palace. We’re living with horrors right now and they aren’t just for All Hallow’s Eve.

The post 6 Haunting Facts About UK Wildlife first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

Have you heard of The Butterfly Effect? No, not the Ashton Kutcher movie but the theory itself. It goes back to 1800, in The Vocation of Man, Johann Gottlieb Fichte says “you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby … changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole”. The same can be said for our ecosystem- push one section of our natural world too far and the effects can be untold.

This Hallo-week, climate justice movements: Animal Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion, are demonstrating to the British and Scottish governments the need to impose legislation that will protect and uphold our homes, habitats and country. This will happen by marking the end of archaic sports which involve the hunting and killing of our wildlife along with the vast swathes of natural land that are burnt and destroyed in order to prime acres for the game.

The annual depletion of up to 260,000 wild animals that are native to Scotland alone are wreaking havoc on local animal societies and food chains. Coupled with the CO2 gas released from the burning of our peat soils, which annually emits more greenhouse gasses than all of the oil refineries in the UK, has created an ecological disaster in the name of an ancient and often inaccessible sport.

Through a series of safe, peaceful and family-friendly actions in both Scotland and on the footsteps of Buckingham Palace, the climate justice movements are informing the public of the action that needs to be taken in order to protect our homes and planet. In the spirit of Halloween, we may not be able to go trick-or-treating but we can remember the animals that have lost their lives by dressing up, creating art work and speaking out against the sports that are engaged within their homes and our beautiful countryside that is being laid to waste.

This Halloween simultaneous demonstrations are taking place outside of Holyrood in Edinburgh, Scotland and a march from Trafalgar Square right up to Buckingham Palace in London dubbed ‘The Hunted Haunting of Buckingham Palace’. Everyone is invited to take part in both actions, and implored to be creative with it! There will be speakers, art, banners, posters, pavement chalk art, face paintings and costumes, lots of costumes.

If you want to join other activists and interested parties for the demonstrations here’s how you can prepare and help out.

For the demonstrations numbers are the most important factor, everybody is welcome and is encouraged to bring friends, family and anyone else you can. Come in your own costumes, preferably animal themed. You can be as elaborate and creative or as simplistic as you want; a white sheet over your head to represent the ghosts of animal lives lost is a popular choice; just make sure it represents the loss and destruction of animals and their homes, particularly those native to Scotland. Bring out your artistic spirit, make banners, paintings, posters, cutouts and bring soft toys; anything you can think of that helps get the message across to protect our natural countryside and wildlife. Show the extent that has been lost and make the government know the demands they are facing.

Alongside people, equipment is also required to ensure the rebellions’ presence is felt. Anything from torches, high- vis vests, placards and flags to ensure that you are seen and safe to sound systems and megaphones to ensure that you are heard.

Above all it has to be said that among these strange and unfortunate times please make sure that you bring face masks for yourself and everyone you’re coming with. Along with remaining socially distant from those who are outside of your household or support bubble. Your voice needs to be heard whilst you are keeping yourself and those around you safe at the same time.

That being said, if you or anyone you have been in contact with lately has any symptoms of COVID-19 then please stay at home, you can still make your voice heard by sharing your thoughts and the demonstrations on social media however for the safety of yourself and everyone around you it is essential that the demonstrations are COVID secure.

It’s no secret that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure the protection of our planet and its inhabitants, however, one step at a time real difference can be made. Through demonstrations such as these and the many others around the world. From climate justice movements to individuals making every day choices, however you choose to participate, your voice can be heard and will not be forgotten. The right and necessary changes will come and our planet and all of us who call it home will benefit from it.

Demonstration Information:

The Hunted Haunting of Buckingham Palace.

Time/Date: Meeting at 5:30pm, Saturday 31st October 2020

Place: Meeting at DEFRA and marching to Buckingham Palace.

Holyrood Demonstration

Time/Date: TBA, Saturday 31st October 2020

Place: Holyrood, Edinburgh

The post Animal Rebellion Prepares for a Terrifying Halloween — Climate Justice Movement Demonstrates Against Grouse Shooting first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

Ever since one certain animal has found a way to start fires, it has become their main tool for creating warmth, cooking food and keeping darkness at bay. But as with some other advances associated with our civilisation and technology, it has simultaneously become our favourite weapon of mass destruction and to this day, it still is. Millennia ago, we used fire to do the dirty work of mass-erasing nature off the surface of this planet, only this time there is not so much left to burn, comparatively.

And just as during the first pages of the human’s pastoral history, the most likely reason for burning nature is to give way to animal agriculture, whether it is for grazing or for growing animal feed.

The issue of the intentional burning has hit the international news because we all thought that we had been doing enough to contain deforestation in Latin America, but this year we were proven wrong. The profit hungry individuals in both political and agricultural circles decided that there is yet more money to be made by transforming forests into “useful assets”. And the Amazon is not the only hotspot — we are struggling to put out “mega blaze” in Australia and fires in Indonesia further exacerbate Climate Crisis. And this is not only an issue of losing natural ecosystems and priceless hubs of wild animal activity, but also of creating a massive source of pollution and GHG emissions. Considering that animal agriculture actively destroys nature and replaces it with barren land, it is quite clear why the impact of animal agriculture on the planet is so high.

And as if that’s not enough, remember that once a forest is lost, it is lost forever, and the land is used for grazing or growing animal feed until it can sustain it no longer. In some cases nature fights back, like it does here in the UK, where heather and moorlands need annual burning to allow grazing and grouse shooting, otherwise the land would become too wild and “too natural” for these activities. But in most cases human influence prevails. It is now believed that the great desert of Sahara, which was a mix of grassland and woodlands once, has turned into a near-lifeless sand patch because of our historic pastoral lifestyle, livestock grazing and, by extension, human-started fires.

But let’s take a step back and ask ourselves — what exactly is happening during and after the fires? Without going into gory details, let’s just say that the lucky ones miraculously manage to escape, hide well or die quickly from suffocation. The others are doomed to suffer in pain for days to come. But even those few who escape or hide will have to adjust to the new environment — be it in a completely new place (hopefully away from humans and other predators) or find their home turned into an unrecognisable and grotesque black and grey desert. And by the way, this is exactly what we were so scared of just a few decades ago when we talked about nuclear holocaust.

Intrinsically, and just like the rest of animal agriculture, intentional forest fires are a tool of speciesists — discriminators against non-humans. They obliterate huge numbers of animals for the benefit of the few and convenience of the system. They use the logic of racism and fascism, saying that otherness implies inferiority and therefore yearns for iron glove dominion. They apply different values, based in many cases on financial considerations, to different species of animals and kill them accordingly — with fire, a chemical spray, a rifle, a trap, a fishing net, or a butcher’s knife.

Forest fires are allowed to happen because it is in human nature to value short-term individual gain over long-term common good. But a different approach is needed — if only we evaluated, what’s left of the natural world, not as an exploitable opportunity that happened to be within some imaginary boundaries of a ”state”, but as a planetary asset, essential for the existence of life, then we wouldn’t need to look away in shame, when our children demand to know why they are being born into ecological and biodiversity poverty.

It goes without saying that the only way to stop the mass destruction of nature is to stop animal agriculture entirely — a seismic and urgent shift in the food production system is needed — we all must demand that the animals are no longer used as a commodity, that the system becomes much more efficient at feeding the human population and that wanton destruction of nature ends immediately.

There are positive signs, of course, even as Amazon burns twice as hot — Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion and others have been tirelessly hammering the message to international communities and the public. The World Bank is urged to intervene and withdraw support for the meat industry that benefits from the fires; scientists are calling for phasing out animal products; the new anti-speciesist initiatives aimed at reducing the suffering of wild animals question the existing dogmatic environmentalist approach of “No Intervention”; people selflessly saving animals from fires credited as heroes; tree planting is now universally accepted throughout political spectrum as not just essential for combating climate change, but also as a hugely popular measure. There is no better time than yesterday to acknowledge that there is no tomorrow without forests – and we know it. They are a key to the earthlings’ survival and to healing the wounds that we inflicted on our living and breathing, marvellous and forever majestic planet, our home.

The post As Forests Burn, Our Voices Must Be Twice as Loud first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

Ask someone in the street for their views on dolphins, tigers or polar bears — used the world over to symbolise majesty and grace — and you’ll likely be met with an enthusiastic, awed response.

But cows? Sheep? Chickens? Not so much.

Wild animals somehow elicit more passion in people. We all feel we have a stake in nature; wildlife is viewed by most people as part of ‘their’ world, something that ‘belongs’ in a sense to us all. Wildlife visits our gardens and is seen in our fields and on our streets, whereas the 10.6 million pigs farmed annually in the UK are rarely seen. As Compassion in World Farming chief executive Philip Lymbery explains: “In Britain, a nation of animal lovers, most of our pigs are in factory farms in conditions that in my view can only be described as utter depravation”.

Is it that we don’t see them or that many people accept these individuals to be the ‘property’ of others, making their suffering easier to ignore? It doesn’t appear this bias can be logically explained.

Of course, some wild animals are presented more favourably than others. The badger, for example, is synonymous with the British countryside and immortalised in the writings of Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Graham’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’. The emblem of the Wildlife Trusts seemed to be one of the few fortunate enough to be winning in the PR stakes, despite a long history of appalling persecution by baiters.

However, the lovable mammal that gained legal protection from persecution upon the passing of the 1973 Badgers Act has more recently become a victim of the animal agriculture industries. Many claim that the species acts as a carrier for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), a disease primarily affecting cattle. The government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency advises that, ‘Badgers present a particular challenge to cattle farmers’, despite stating earlier that, ‘Bovine TB can occasionally infect humans, wildlife and other animals too’ — but more on that later.

Political, wasteful, cruel and ineffective

Current reports estimate that more than 60,000 badgers could be killed this year across England. This is despite the fact that TB levels in cattle have risen in the two areas of the country where the badger cull was piloted over the past five years. Many are convinced that the cull is political, wasteful, cruel and ineffective.

A less anticipated consequence of the badger cull has been a rise in public awareness of the damage the meat and dairy industries are inflicting on our wildlife. A Guardian article published this month quoted vet and former government scientist Dr Iain McGill saying, “Defra have manipulated and hidden scientific data to such a degree that it amounts to systemic scientific fraud.” Support for the cull has come primarily, and predictably, from the meat and dairy industries, spearheaded by the National Farmer’s Union.

The cull, according to critics, is bad science. It hasn’t reduced bTB, which currently costs taxpayers £100 million annually. The total cost of the cull up until last year was estimated at about £40 million — thought to equate to around £1,000 for each animal killed. Cattle, too, have been slaughtered in their thousands. The Chairman of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, Professor John Bourne, said “Now farmers will realise the strength of the science and will recognise that culling has no part to play.”

Fierce opposition

Pushback against the cull from groups, including the Hunt Saboteurs Association, has been fierce. A change.org petition opposing it currently stands at 291,000 whilst a petition on the government’s website attracted 304,255 signatories before it closed in 2013.

Opponents of the cull come from every corner of the UK, including demographics not traditionally associated with the growing vegan movement, such as the National Trust. As Dominic Dyer described in ‘Badgered to Death’: “What started to worry backbench Tory MPs and whips in Parliament was the broad coalition of people from all walks of life and backgrounds who joined the Badger Army marches. Doctors, nurses, vets, teachers, architects, retired RAF and commercial pilots-this was not your stereotypical animal rights, far left anti globalisation movement’…the simple fact is that badgers got this disease as a form of industrial pollution from intensive farming systems’.

The plot, however, thickens. In February 2017, Hounds Off, an organisation which supports those suffering from hunt trespass, discovered via a loose lipped hunt supporter who mistook them for fellow hunt enthusiasts, that the Kimblewick hunt hounds were infected with bTB. They immediately submitted a Freedom of Information request to DEFRA, which confirmed that bTB had been discovered in hounds. It wasn’t the first time either — the disease had also been found a few years previously in Irish foxhounds.

The request was submitted on 21st February 2017, and once the press was alerted and began to ask questions, it was clear that the outbreak had been discovered.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble, Defra’s Parliamentary Secretary of State at the time, is the former deputy chief executive of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance and an honorary member of the Kimblewick hunt. This may explain DEFRA’s reluctance to act. A report published in July 2018 confirmed the full extent of the outbreak: 97 hounds killed, missing hounds and records, and confirmation that hounds were a ‘real and plausible risk’.

Despite this, all DEFRA did was implement a ban on feeding hounds offal from ‘fallen stock’ (animals who have died on farms due to natural causes or disease, or who have been killed for reasons other than human consumption). The report left many wondering why there was, and is, no moratorium on hunting when 21 veterinary surgeons wrote to the official journal of the British Veterinary Association saying that, ’There is now a great deal more evidence that infected hunting hounds are spreading bTB, both across species and across county lines, than there has ever been for badgers doing so’.

Threat to biodiversity

The links between animal agriculture, hunting and the badger cull are strong. Disease, lax bio-security, the huge costs to the taxpayer in a time of austerity, wildlife crime, TB infected meat, fallen stock, foxhounds routinely shot and disposed of at hunt kennels with no checks and accusations of cover-ups, are some of the seediest sides of animal agriculture, sides which many remain unaware of.

Wild animals make up a mere 4% of earth’s mammals, humans 36% and farmed animals a staggering 60%. Since the rise of human civilisation, 83% of wild mammals have been lost, with 60% of the world’s wildlife having been wiped out since the 1970s. A UN report recently found that around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. Many of these are forecast to occur within decades. These figures are extraordinary and represent more life lost than ever before in human history.

Killing thousands of badgers is a threat to biodiversity. Conservationists have warned the government that eliminating badgers from certain areas has serious consequences for other species and habitats within the delicate ecosystem. An increase in other predators is a likely consequence, and has negative impacts for prey animals, disrupting the entire system. All this despite data showing that 94% of bovine TB infections were due to cattle to cattle infection (worsened by intensive farming practices), not badgers.

The Badger Trust is one of several groups advocating vaccination as a solution. Vaccination is also far more cost effective for the taxpayer, costing an average of £200 per animal compared to an average of £1,100 to cage trap and kill a single badger. The ultimate costs of animal agriculture are high and impact all species.

Animal Rebellion seeks to tackle these issues from the top down. We know that a mass extinction is already underway and that while animal agriculture continues, climate change is inevitable. But wild animals are also paying a huge price for animal farming.

If you care about wildlife, if you oppose the cull, if you’re a taxpayer, if you want to combat the climate emergency, if you care about science or justice — rebel. Join Animal Rebellion.

Act now to demand system change.

Join the October Rebellion

The post Rebel for the… Badgers? Animal Agriculture’s Lesser-Known Impact on Biodiversity first appeared on Animal Rebellion.