An International Lawyer’s Field Guide to Trophy Hunting

Abstract

Although some research suggests that legal, well-regulated trophy hunting programmes can positively contribute to wildlife conservation efforts, surprisingly little legal scholarship has focused on the regulatory framework that governs trophy hunting, and remarkably little guidance exists for the development and improvement of regulation in this area. With this article, we aim to start bridging that gap. We dive into the regulatory web in an attempt to start disentangling it. In so doing, we provide an overview of the different legal issues that converge in trophy hunting, and of how international regulation addresses those issues. We successively outline the legal instruments that govern the following questions: (i) whether trophy hunting is allowed under international law, (ii) when and where trophy hunting is allowed, (iii) what animals may be hunted, (iv) how the transport of trophies across international borders is organised, and (v) what weapons and ammunition may be used. We find that at present, trophy hunting is governed by an intricate, multi-layered web of regulation in which a variety of actors (e.g., international bodies, national governments, wildlife agencies, local communities, private landowners) are enmeshed. We demonstrate that, because there are so many different actors and governance levels that intersect in the regulation of trophy hunting, it is by no means easy to regulate trophy hunting “well.”