We just travelled to NatureScot headquarters carrying two things:
A giant Gannet suit.
And a giant cheque representing what is now the largest petition NatureScot has ever received.
Over 163,000 people have now signed the call for Scotland’s nature agency to stop the licensed slaughter of Gannet chicks on Sula Sgeir.
Honestly, if you’re delivering a petition of that scale, it felt like the moment deserved something slightly bigger than a standard letter.
So we turned up with a six-foot seabird costume and an oversized cheque listing the growing number of signatures demanding action.
But when we arrived, we were told NatureScot would not physically accept the petition and that it would instead need to be submitted via email.
Which was… a slightly surreal response to the largest petition in the organisation’s history arriving at their front door. For a taxpayer-funded authority accountable to the public, refusing to physically accept such a significant expression of public concern doesn’t look particularly good.
Still, whether they physically held the cheque or not, the message behind it remains impossible to ignore.
Public opposition to the Guga hunt is growing rapidly.
For years, this issue remained largely hidden from public view. Most people in Scotland had never even heard that young Gannet chicks are killed each year under licence from the agency meant to protect them.
But now that’s changing. Thanks to our campaign, millions of people have now seen or heard about the Guga hunt. And that matters because NatureScot will soon decide whether to issue this year’s licence allowing the hunt to continue.
They have a board meeting this week – May 14.
And every signature strengthens the message that the public does not support beating wild seabird chicks to death for a delicacy in modern Scotland.
So help us push this petition to 200,000 and make this impossible for NatureScot to ignore.
Join the fight – Pick up a pin badge!
Support the fight to end the Guga hunt by picking up a Gannet pin badge today.
Your support will help power campaigning, political pressure and public awareness to protect these incredible seabirds from needless cruelty like the Guga hunt.