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Animal advocacy group Direct Animal Action have launched a petition calling on the Rodney Local Board to ban the Warkworth Rodeo and all rodeo events on land under their management.
Since 2016, the group has held protests on New Year’s Day outside the Warkworth Rodeo at the Warkworth Showgrounds.
The Local Board is the decision-maker for leases at the showgrounds.
Direct Animal Action spokesperson Apollo Taito says New Year’s Day 2020 will see the group’s fifth protest at the event.
“Each year the controversy and public debate heightens around rodeo and its inherent animal welfare issues,” he says.
He says that the Board is the only local board in Auckland which continues to host rodeo on land under its management.
“They really need to catch up with the rest of Auckland. We’ve had a gutsful of having to protest animal abuse in the guise of entertainment every year.”
The petition will be handed over to the Board at its first business meeting of next year.
Neither Warkworth Rodeo nor the Board chair Beth Houlbrooke responded when Mahurangi Matters sought comment on the petition.
In September 2017, another animal advocacy group, Anti-Rodeo Action, organised a deputation to the Board also asking it to ban rodeo events on Council land.
Commenting afterwards, Mrs Houlbrooke said every year Warkworth Rodeo sought approval from the Board to stage a rodeo on Council land. Before granting approval, the Board looked closely to see if any complaints about animal cruelty had been upheld by the Ministry for Primary Industries.
She said Board members were not able to judge whether rodeos were cruel or not and relied on the information from MPI in deciding on whether to grant permission.
Direct Animal Action’s petition can be found at: our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/stop-the-warkworth-rodeo
