ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS TO FIGHT FOR JUSTICE AGAINST NEEDLESS SLAUGHTER OF WILD BOAR IN THE FOREST OF DEAN

The phrase "Animal Rights Activist" has long been used to create in your mind a form of anti-social, often aggressive and bullying behaviour.  The phrase rolls of the tongues of those who wish to harm or otherwise profit from animals for their own interests.  We are increasingly encouraged to believe that the people and groups who stand up for animals are operating under a dangerous form of anarchic, tree hugging, greasy-haired and subversive ideologies just for the hell of it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Such people are activists not just because they get off their arses and attempt to make the changes they wish to see, but because they also take the time to research and understand the topic.

This is the last thing our Forestry Commission in the Forest of Dean wish you to do - to become educated. It is the time-honoured method by which our  national government wishes to keep the populace in ignorance by dumbing down the would-be dissenters.  They operate via the printed media and education system, the TV and via committees that are easily infiltrated with unscrupulous place men who are employed to push an agenda.

The worst form of "activism" may well, of course, refer to that minority of people we know must exist, whom have reached their wits end at the injustices foisted upon living creatures that have no legal protection or voices. They can and sometimes do over-react.  This is not their intention but when the red mist descends you can find yourself doing things you never thought possible.

The anger felt by well-meaning people, can and does manifest as direct action at times.  This form of direct action is certainly not limited to counter and stop the abuses upon animals, but upon humans as well.  These people will just as readily stand up for YOUR rights in a totalitarian, fascist or communist regime.

They need your moral as well as physical support, because when these people are silenced and criminalized, there will be nobody left to defend YOU when corrupt governments come knocking on your door to get rid of YOU.

Friends of the Boar understands this frustration and deep seated anger that can be created when innocent animals are mistreated by those with vested interests and low empathy - often those in positions of power who feel they are untouchable and unaccountable.

Although Friends of the Boar are NOT an animal rights group, we strongly sympathise in the case of wild boar.

Animals Rights groups are now enraged enough at the recent calls by the Forestry Commission for the unnecessary mass slaughter of wild boar that the local population and tourist industry have now come to accept, promote, welcome and tolerate.

This new emphasis of acceptance of the boar by residents in the Forest of Dean threatens the sustainability of profits and blood-lust by our government's animal "managers".

Over the last year, Friends of the Boar and other groups have been asked by the national and international media for their views on the ongoing slaughter and mismanagement of a much needed and loved animal - the wild boar.

Friends of the Boar know the proposed 2015 slaughter is unnecessary simply because the Forestry Commissions guess at a population of wild boar is absurd and a scientific fraud.

Because of this fraud, we have no choice to but to support any person who bravely converts their thoughts into actions.  The public no longer has any other recourse to justice.  The Forestry Commission is using immoral and unjustified tactics to get the unsuspecting public and the media to portray a non-existent problem of over-population of wild boar in the Forest of Dean.

We cannot but help compare these actions of injustice against innocent animals to that of a wider political type of social-engineering - that of creating terrorists due to the outrageous foreign policies of the UK Government.

Although Friends of the Boar are a conservation group and remain strictly apolitical, we do agree that action is often needed to counter a political injustice, an action that those responsible will often brand as terrorism.

This kind of verbal diarrhea comparing animal rights activists to terrorists has recently been employed by Kevin Stannard of the Forestry Commission in the Forest of Dean (Bank House) attempting to silence and distance these brave people, who will go out at night in all weathers to protect the killing of innocent animals, from the rest of society.

The Guardian newspaper is but one newspaper that has become actively involved in the debate, and we would like you to have a read so you may judge this debate for yourselves.

THE GUARDIAN