Hi Jan Marie,
I think Fay and BHPS have been doing a fair bit of promotion re. the petition, etc. including the thunderclap. For some reason that didn’t get as good a response as I was hoping. I wonder whether it is not all that easily understandable what the problem is. There are other traps around which can catch hedgehogs if not suitably located, etc. The difference with this one is that it can kill hedgehogs on a more industrial scale. Chucking them out and resetting itself, so that a population could be wiped out quite rapidly. Also the fact that it is used intentionally to kill hedgehogs in New Zealand. It is not easy to explain all that and the legal aspect, etc. in a short way.
When the petition was started the first time (before the general election), I seem to recall people like Brian May and Chris Packham supporting it. Now, as you mention, Brian May is involved with an animal rescue, which started another petition re. hedgehogs whilst this one was still running. Not the best idea, I didn’t think as, rather than people just signing both, they appeared to compete. But Chris Packham has supported the Hedgehog Awareness Week thunderclap and last time I looked (if I interpreted it correctly) the message re. that had been retweeted over 800 times. That may have contributed to the petition going up in the last couple of days. They were directed to BHPS site where they would hopefully see about the petition.
The 38 degrees petition was started by an individual – I believe a BHPS member who didn’t know the other one had been started again. I don’t know why it has stalled, but only needs 3,000 to reach the target of 200,000. Fay might know, but I don’t like to disturb her in Hedgehog Awareness Week, as I expect she is extremely busy. Maybe we should publicise that on the Forum more now(?) although a lot of people will already have seen about it and it might just become too confusing when we are still promoting the ‘parliament’ one. Also they may have access to more potential ‘signers’ but be planning a particular timing, or something.
The problem is that if the 48,000 people registered on Hedgehog Street (who you would assume had an empathy with hedgehogs) haven’t signed the BHPS ‘parliament’ petition (which they clearly haven’t all), what hope is there for it! I have been doing my best to make sure it is fairly prominent. I expect some are fed up with the sight of it by now! But, there are new people coming onto the Forum all the time, so you never know when someone might see it and sign.
As I have said many times before, if everyone just got at least 5 others to sign (which is really easily do-able) the total would be reached in no time.
