So today I found out something I've never really thought about, and I'm horrified.
Did you know the RSPCA receives over 1,000 reports every year of birds trapped in netting across the UK. And that’s just the cases people actually see and call about — the real number is almost certainly way higher.
These nets are sold as a simple, “humane” deterrent to stop birds nesting on buildings; in reality, they’re typically poorly maintained death traps. Birds get entangled, injured, and left to slowly starve or dehydrate. When parents can’t reach their nestlings, the babies die too. It’s indiscriminate. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pigeon, a gull, or a protected species — they all suffer the same slow, terrifying fate.
And if that isn't bad enough? Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, it’s against the law in the UK to cause unnecessary suffering to animals. And yet this is happening on a massive scale, with almost no prosecutions or real accountability for those responsible.
We created this problem by deciding certain birds are “inconvenient,” then chose a cheap fix that quietly kills them instead of learning to coexist. That’s not a solution. It’s cruelty dressed up as pest control. We have some notion that we are more entitled to this world than other species - despite the fact that life on earth has existed long before us, and will, if things like this aren't allowed to continue, exist long after.
A petition from Protect the Wild is calling for real change: mandatory regular checks on netting, removal of unsafe installations, proper enforcement of existing laws, promotion of genuinely humane alternatives (like rigid metal mesh), and eventually phasing out this practice altogether. So, you know, offering solutions! Because they exist! We don't need to be cruel to get what we want!
If this pisses you off too (and it should), please sign both petitions. We have to do better than this. You don’t have to be in the UK to sign it and it takes less than a minute.
Sign the Protect the Wild petition here (there is some distressing imagery at the top of the page of trapped and deceased birds, be prepared):
https://protectthewild.org.uk/end-bird-netting/
And the parliamentary petition here (pretty sure this one *is* UK only, unfortunately):
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/752959
