Perfidious Albion: Moves by the United Kingdom to Ban the Import of Hunting Trophies

Abstract

This document is based on a review of a debate which took place at Westminster Hall in the UK Houses of Parliament on the 2nd October 2019. The advocacy by Animal Rights parliamentary members was extreme: they used pseudoscientific premises that were largely false and sought to address the substance of the debate entirely on emotional grounds. In this document I challenge some of the misinformation that was prevalent, quoting Callen et al. (2020) on Compassionate Conservation. Much of the debate was taken up with trophy hunting of lions and ignored the fact that lion trophy imports by the UK are a fraction of the global imports. A common theme in the debate was that the UK needed to “move with the times” – which is another way of saying the Animal Rights lobby are shaping the political landscape. The social, ecological and economic realities of the rural population and the resource base in Africa are ignored. Zac Goldsmith (Minister for DIFD (Department for International Development) and DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs)) stated that If the scientific evidence can show that trophy hunting contributes to conservation, we will be having a different debate. I present a counter-narrative to show that there are numerous case-studies from southern Africa that demonstrate the contribution which sustainable trophy hunting makes to human livelihoods and, hence, to conservation ... and therefore ‘a different debate’ is warranted.