- Target:
- NSW Environment Mininster & Director NSW National Parks & Wildlife
- Region:
- Australia
Thank you to everyone who signed the petition to save the cockatoos of inner Sydney. The petition now has nearly 500 signatures (on paper and online) and your support has been communicated to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, the NSW Minister for Environment and Heritage, the City of Sydney Council and local media. We have been informed that the owners of the building in Potts Point who applied for a permit to cull cockatoos have not as yet gone ahead with the killings, and are instead currently considering humane and effective methods of protecting their property. We hope that compassion and logic prevail, and that the building owners, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and other government officials set a new precedent by using humane and non-lethal ways of deterring the wild birds from damaging property.
UPDATE: In the first week of September 2011, the property owners have decided to pull out of negotiations with the City of Sydney Council to use humane deterrants, citing building heritage concerns. Despite the property owners acknowledging in the media that culling will not work effectively, they are committed to their decision to kill. We are still calling on the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the NSW Minister of Environment and Heritage to not issue permits to cull cockatoos in Potts Point, and instead set a new precedent to protect wildlife in Sydney.
Property owners in Potts Point have applied for permits from NSW National Parks and Wildlife to kill (cull) sulphur crested cockatoos in order to prevent damage to their buildings. Culling wild birds in urban areas is unnecessary, unethical, unsafe and inevitably fails to protect property.
It has been documented that previous culls of sulphur crested cockatoos in Potts Point and other parts of Sydney have not worked. There are many humane and much more effective alternatives to culling as a form of property protection.
These beautiful, intelligent, wild birds are beloved by many residents in our wonderful community. They add fun and an innocent wildness to our highly urbanised environment. Cockatoos are part of Sydney, and they have a right to co-exist peacefully with humans. It is our responsibility to adapt our built environments to the needs and habits of native wildlife.
We, the undersigned, call on the NSW Environment Minister Robyn Parker and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to not authorise any culling of cockatoos or other birds in Inner-Eastern suburbs of Sydney, particularly Potts Point, and that humane and non-lethal engineering solutions be used instead to prevent birds damaging property.
The Stop cockatoo culls in Potts Point petition to NSW Environment Mininster & Director NSW National Parks & Wildlife was written by Lisa Harrison and is in the category Animal Welfare at GoPetition.