Crows and Flowers on Arthur's Seat
6 hours ago
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Petitions to Help Secure Future Funding from Government for the National Wildlife Crime Unit
The National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU)was set up in 2006 to investigate and prosecute wildlife criminals who commit crimes or cruelty against wild animals. The Unit does vitally important work investigating crimes such as badger baiting, hare coursing, illegal persecution of birds of prey, deer poaching, rare bird egg theft and trade in endangered species.
In 2014 the Government announced funding for just 2 years to support the NWCU. Sadly, this Unit may be forced to close in six weeks as the Government has, so far, not confirmed that it will continue to fund this crucial Unit. The Government has always seemed exceedingly proud of its commitment to end international wildlife crime and illegal trade in wildlife products setting aside £10 million pounds for this purpose. Surely, it can, therefore, find just £427,000 per annum to fund the NWCU?
If you would like to sign petitions to ask the Government to continue funding there are two available:
Government e-petition
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/118005
38 Degrees petition
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-and-protect-the-national-wildlife-crime-unit
More information about the National Wildlife Crime Unit can be found at their website
http://www.nwcu.police.uk/
and another link to an article in the Guardian last week:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/18/national-wildlife-unit-to-close-within-weeks
which gives further information.
Please also consider writing to your MP urging them to ask DEFRA to continue funding the NWCU.
Thanks so much.
Apologies that the ancient version of Blogger that I use refuses to put in links that actually work - please just copy and paste above links.
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16 comments:
It's so important, I don't know what they are doing!
Simon Douglas Thompson - Thanks Simon. Feel so strongly about this -it will be a total disgrace if NWCU has to close due to lack of funding. But bearing in mind Govt's attitude to wildlife and environment nothing would surprise me :(
Hello Caroline. Thanks for highlighting and sharing the links. I wrote to my (Tory) MP about this last month; his reply was to proudly repeat that it has Govt funding until the end of March. I've seen a letter from another local MP who said the same thing. I really hope that people do urge long term funding for it from March. I feel strongly about tackling crimes against wildlife, too.
Wendy - Thanks so much Wendy- sorry I couldn't get the links to work tried for about an hour without success.
Very disconcerting the replies you mention from MP's :( I emailed mine and, so far, haven't had a reply. There again they have failed to respond to many of my messages on environmental/wildlife matters although I did have responses when I wrote several letters about the badger slaughters.
The more people that sign the petitions the better - with the Govt e-petition I believe a response is required after 10,000 signatures. Would be such a tragedy for our wildlife if the Unit was too fold up :(
Thanks for supplying web sites about this issue. Have a lovely weekend.
Margaret Adamson - Thanks Margaret - hope you have a good weekend too :)
A vitally important cause Caroline and one just hopes that the unit can be saved. However the government have tried to abolish the unit before and I just feel that the demise of the NWCU is depressingly inevitable, conservation issues within the British Isles themselves not being particularly high on the agenda for the current government!
Still here's hoping the government will listen if enough of us sign this crucially important petition!
David - Thanks so much David. It does worry me that possibly few people know about this threat - to be honest I only found out about it due to Twitter.
As you say all we can hope is that the Government will listen if enough sign. It costs so little to run considering the important work it does (it also seems very unfair to me on the staff involved that they still have no idea on what will happen).
I'll sign x
Countryside Tales - Thanks CT :)
Just to say I will be signing too..
Amanda xx
Amanda Peters - Thanks Amanda - the more the better :)
I have already signed and written to my Tory MP. He is good, he always responds when he has time but sometimes his response is not the one I want. Is there no way of getting Lottery funding for something as important as this?
Toffeeapple - Thanks and so pleased to read of the action you have already taken! Interest thought about Lottery funding although I am not really sure how that works. I think at present NWCU is half funded by DEFRA and half by the Home Office.
Would be a very sad day for wildlife if it did close :(
That's terrible news!!! This kind of stuff NEEDS funding. If they even care about preserving what's left around the country, they need to continue with this group. I hope they are able to save it.
Chris Rohrer - Thanks so much for the support Chris. Sadly, our present Government would appear to have little interest in conserving our wildlife. I don't think a decision has yet been made or not one I've heard of and the number of people signing the petitions is rising.
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