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Dear John,
We are expanding our “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign and putting the nation’s largest sporting goods retailer in the United States in the crosshairs.
The Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action are telling Dick’s Sporting Goods that it can no longer in good conscience peddle athletic shoes made from kangaroo skins.
Dick’s is selling soccer cleats from Adidas, New Balance, Mizuno, and other athletic shoe retailers made from slain kangaroo.
That decision by the giant retailer, with more than 750 stores in the United States, kills kangaroos.
It’s that simple. And it’s no longer acceptable.
Since we launched our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign three years ago, three major brands—Diadora, Puma, and Nike—announced commitments to halt the sale of kangaroo-based shoes.
Our new initiative, called “Don’t Be a Dick’s,” is intended to secure a commitment from the retail giant to stop making kangaroo-based shoes available to customers. The hashtag for the campaign is #DontBeADicks.
Today please sign a petition to signal to Dick’s to shed the kangaroo-based shoes on its shelves. The hashtag for the initiative is #DontBeADicks.
‘Joeys are still in their pouch’
Because of our gains with Nike and Puma, the kangaroo kill has dropped, by one estimate, by 700,000 a year.
That’s progress, but it’s not enough. Commercial shooters still go out in the dead of night and slaughter adult kangaroos, orphaning and killing hundreds of thousands of joeys. It’s the largest commercial massacre of native wildlife in the world. Still, 1.7 million marsupial victims.
Last month, key Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act, H.R. 4995, to ban the sale of kangaroo body parts in the United States. A U.S. Senate bill is forthcoming. We’re launching more than a half dozen bills in the states, too.
In America, we don’t allow this kind of mass commercial slaughter of our native wildlife. The idea of killing iconic wildlife to make key equipment for the most popular sport in the world is jarring. It’s archaic.
All of the athletic shoe companies make high-performance shoes from human-made fabrics and plant-based materials. The era of making shoes from free-roaming wildlife must end.
Please help us convince Dick’s Sporting Goods to get out of this business.
Please support our campaign to put an end to this massacre. Only when we collectively raise our voice will this disgraceful slaughter shut down.
Dick’s can do better.
For the kangaroos,
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Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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