Fed Up Polar Bear Disrupts National BBC Wildlife Magazine HQ

This morn­ing, Tues­day Decem­ber 11th, at 10am, two mem­bers of “Arc­tic Asso­ciates” (aka Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide), and one grumpy refugee polar bear paid a vis­it to the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine at the top of Tow­er House in Broad­mead, Bris­tol. More than a hun­dred employ­ees looked on aghast (some wink­ing in sup­port) as “J. Smith” from Arc­tic Asso­ciates, flanked by Mr. Pole R. Bear, made a long and pas­sion­ate speech about the sad and dan­ger­ous irony of allow­ing the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny- respon­si­ble for endan­ger­ing thou­sands of species through oil spills, tox­ic pol­lu­tion, and cli­mate change- to spon­sor their Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award Con­test, which is com­ing to Bris­tol Muse­um this Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 15th.

BBC Wildlife polar bearThis morn­ing, Tues­day Decem­ber 11th, at 10am, two mem­bers of “Arc­tic Asso­ciates” (aka Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide), and one grumpy refugee polar bear paid a vis­it to the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine at the top of Tow­er House in Broad­mead, Bris­tol. More than a hun­dred employ­ees looked on aghast (some wink­ing in sup­port) as “J. Smith” from Arc­tic Asso­ciates, flanked by Mr. Pole R. Bear, made a long and pas­sion­ate speech about the sad and dan­ger­ous irony of allow­ing the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny- respon­si­ble for endan­ger­ing thou­sands of species through oil spills, tox­ic pol­lu­tion, and cli­mate change- to spon­sor their Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award Con­test, which is com­ing to Bris­tol Muse­um this Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 15th.

The vis­it evi­dent­ly cre­at­ed quite a stir, as employ­ees of BBC Wildlife gath­ered around to hear what the com­mo­tion was all about, and the press team, direc­tors, and build­ing secu­ri­ty simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­verged on the pro­test­ers, who were final­ly asked to leave, after cir­cu­lat­ing through both the 9th and 14th floors of the build­ing, and speak­ing to the entire nation­al staff of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine, who are now more aware than ever of the his­toric blun­der than was made when Shell’s £1,500,000 two year spon­sor­ship deal was accept­ed.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the poster child of this year’s Pho­tog­ra­phy Award is a polar bear stuck on a melt­ing ice­berg, the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of the cli­mate-dam­ag­ing nature of Shell’s core busi­ness.

If you’d like to get involved, come to the sHELL Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­phy Exhib­it PROTEST this Sat­ur­day Dec. 15th start­ing at Noon, in front of the Bris­tol Muse­um at the top of Park St. Please come dressed as any wildlife that sHELL is endan­ger­ing, and invite all your friends- putting a stop to green­wash­ing is a key bat­tle in the war against cli­mate change, and we want to stop our pub­lic muse­ums being used for this pur­pose**

The exhib­it will remain at the Muse­um until the 13th of Jan­u­ary.

**We are hav­ing a cos­tume mak­ing party/ plan­ning ses­sion this Wednes­day the 12th at Kebele- 14 Robert­son Rd. in Eas­t­on from 1700 to 2200 or so, with an open dis­cus­sion hap­pen­ing at 1930. There will be at least one sewing machine there, so bring mate­r­i­al, (fake) fur of the Shell- dam­aged wildlife of your choice- avail­able at all fine fab­ric shops, news­pa­per, black felt, ban­ner and sign mak­ing mate­ri­als, and your favourite bev­er­age to share.**

More infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign:

Despite dozens of peo­ple con­tact­ing the Bris­tol City Coun­cil and the muse­um and ask­ing them to reject the exhi­bi­tion, these requests have been met with excus­es, buck pass­ing, or sim­ply silence. It’s clear that our lead­ers would rather not face up to the fact that our pub­lic muse­um is in fact adver­tis­ing and green­wash­ing one of the worst multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies which is wreak­ing hav­oc on peo­ple, wildlife, and habi­tat the world over (all in the name of wildlife pro­tec­tion?)

Appar­ent­ly the Bris­tol Muse­um, Bris­tol City Coun­cil, the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, and BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine see no prob­lem with exhibit­ing pho­tographs of endan­gered polar bears on melt­ing ice as part of a pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion spon­sored by Shell. Do they think we’re stu­pid?

Our goal is to put pres­sure on the lat­ter two organ­i­sa­tions to reject Shell as a spon­sor, and for Shell to decide that the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty involved with spon­sor­ing the com­pe­ti­tion sim­ply isn’t worth it any­more.

More infor­ma­tion about Shell:

http://onthelevelblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/shells-wild-lie/

Shell oper­ates in 145 coun­tries world­wide- one of the worst impacts is in Nige­ria, where Shell was com­plic­it in the 1995 mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an envi­ron­men­tal activist, as well as eight oth­ers by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary jun­ta.

Shell has been work­ing in the Niger Delta since 1956, caus­ing prob­lems to:

• local com­mu­ni­ties — gas flares burn day and night, roar­ing like jet engines and pol­lut­ing the air with thick sooty par­ti­cles that stick to almost every­thing and have seri­ous health impacts

• liveli­hoods — oil is a root of con­flict and suf­fer­ing in Nige­ria. Over 1000 law suits have been filed against Shell, yet it still refus­es to pay com­pen­sa­tion costs.

• the envi­ron­ment — pol­lut­ing oil spills and fires have occurred for decades due to Shel­l’s rust­ing pipes seri­ous­ly affect­ing local vil­lages, bio­di­ver­si­ty, and con­tribut­ing towards cli­mate change.

Come to the protest at noon on Sat­ur­day, and let ‘em know that Bris­to­lians won’t stand idly by while our plan­et is rav­aged, and our muse­um is com­plic­it in cov­er­ing up oil com­pa­ny lies.

The time for blind obe­di­ence has passed- it’s time to start dis­obey­ing.….

“Where oil reigns, life is hell”

-Oron­to Dou­glas, Envi­ron­men­tal Law­er, Niger Delta