Gannet petition - Protect the Wild

Petition to NatureScot: Revoke the Licence to Kill Gannets on Sula Sgeir

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To: NatureScot

We, the undersigned, call on NatureScot to immediately revoke the licence granted for the killing of 500 young gannets (guga) on Sula Sgeir in 2025, and to take urgent steps to ensure that this outdated and inhumane practice is brought to a permanent end.

By approving this hunt, NatureScot has chosen to authorise the deliberate targeting of vulnerable, defenceless seabirds — at a time when wildlife is under more pressure than ever before.

The method of killing — using poles and nooses to catch terrified fledglings on exposed cliffsides — is cruel, unnecessary, and completely out of step with modern values and ethics. No amount of cultural tradition can justify the deliberate suffering of wild animals.

It is never acceptable to kill wild animals for taste, for ritual, or for so-called heritage.

Scotland’s gannet populations have already suffered heavily due to avian flu, habitat loss, and human disturbance. To now sanction the killing of 500 juvenile birds — many of whom will never even have flown — is not conservation. It is cruelty licensed by a public body.

You claim to safeguard Scotland’s biodiversity. You claim to stand for nature. But by enabling the guga hunt, you are sending a very different message: that some cruelty is permissible, so long as it’s traditional.
That’s not protection — it’s betrayal.

We urge you to:

Immediately revoke the 2025 guga hunt licence;

Refuse any future applications for seabird slaughter;

Publicly acknowledge that wild animal killing for custom or consumption has no place in a modern, ethical society.

Don't let the cliffs of Sula Sgeir echo  with the cries of hunted chicks, but ring with the sound of a country choosing compassion over cruelty instead.

Stop the slaughter. Revoke the licence. Protect the wild.

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Petition to NatureScot: Revoke the Licence to Kill Gannets on Sula Sgeir

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