5th February 2006

Greens welcome the photographic celebration of wildlife but question the new sponsorship and rebranding of the competition by Shell who this week announced a record breaking £18 bn profits.

Photo by Charles Roffey: reprinted with permission (not part of exhibition)

The prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition runs from January 24th to March 12th at the Nature In Art Museum and Art Gallery on the Main A38, Twigworth, Gloucester (i). The competition is the world's largest and most prestigious wildlife photographic competition. It is jointly organised by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine and attacts stunning images of the natural world, often featuring endangered and rarely seen species.

Bryan Meloy, a spokesperson for the Gloucester Green party said: "Shell sponsoring this event in the future is a blatant act of hypocrisy. This is more greenwash - promotion of a green image while continuing to damage the environment. After years of making green claims Shell is still causing unacceptable damage to wildlife, polluting local communities, helping to accelerate climate change and even having the cheek to ask for taxpayers money to further profit from destruction in Sakhalin Island, Russia (ii)."

Bryan Meloy said: "The Sakhalin II project is not only destroying on-shore biodiversity and the lives of the people who relied on it, but the feeding grounds of the remaining western Pacific grey whales are still under threat due to the siting of off-shore platforms nearby, contrary to the advice of an IUCN independent scientific panel (iii)."

Bryan Meloy, who has emailed James Smith, Shell's UK Chairman, to protest at the sponsorship, said: "This week Shell announced a whopping record breaking £13bn profits in the UK. Perhaps if we saw them expending energy on cleaning up it's operations then maybe they would be entitled to proudly sponsor this stunning exhibition - but as it is Shell undermines the competition and everything it stands for."

The Friends of the Earth website have a campaign to email Shell challenging their sponsorship of this competition.

Notes:

(i) The exhibition is the end result of the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. This year nearly 16,900 images from photographers in over 57 different countries were submitted. The resulting 86 winning and commended images (divided between 20 categories) represent the very best in nature photography, displaying the splendour, drama and variety of life on Earth. They also show the artistry involved in wildlife photography and aim to encourage a new generation of photographers to produce visionary and evocative interpretations of nature.

(ii) Shell wants to use public money from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to fund its environmentally damaging Sakhalin II project.

(iii) The Green Party of Russia calls for more compensation from Sakhalin Energy
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060130/43250807.html

 See also Green party 'Action' on this from February 2005