Waiting for UK Government to decide on trophies

Background The whole issue is driven by Eduardo Gonçalves, the founder of Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting UK, which argues that trophy hunting is cruel, archaic, immoral and unjustified. Also that it can inflict significant pain and suffering, undermines genuine conservation, and brings no real benefits to local communities. He received support from Carrie Johnson, wife of British PM Boris Johnson, and MPs including Sir David Amess, who recently tabled parliamentary motion #EDM86 calling for a U.K. trophy ban. The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting was supported by former WWF International Director Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE, and actor and animal advocate Peter Egan. 

 

At the end of 2019 the UK Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) called for submissions from all stakeholders to be made in order for the British Government to evaluate and make a decision with regards to this motion.

SATTA, together with our alliance partners in the Sustainable Use Coalition – SA (SUCo-SA) -  submitted several presentations to DEFRA. A meeting with the Under Secretary at the UK Consul to discuss the ramifications of such a ban was also held.

The UK Parliament had several sittings to debate this issue. Up to now most inputs and debate were done with the activists. There is however a glimmer of hope that the other side of the story will be heard.

The implications of such a ban are possibly enormous. Although there are only a very small number of hunting trophies (if any) exported to the UK annually, it is the first step to stop trophy exports worldwide. This would impact fur and leather as well. The effect on local communities that are counting on the income from international hunters is immense.

Today, hunting is a management tool. It is vital to the well-being of Africa’s wildlife.

With regard to the present controversy in the British parliament – that is, whether or not the U.K. should allow elephant (and other game) trophies to be imported into Great Britain – makes a mockery of the real and terrible wildlife management tragedy that is actually happening in southern Africa today. And this does not just apply to elephants. The tragedy is escalating into a free-fall decline of all animal and plant species in the shadow of the too-many-elephants syndrome.

The simplistic idea that stopping trophy game imports into the U.K. will help the survival of wildlife in Africa as a whole, is based on a false premise.

It would behove the British government to confer, instead, with the real wildlife experts in southern Africa, and that it helps to convene responsible meetings with the southern African states, thereby to find solutions to the far greater elephant-overpopulation-problem that looms over everybody’s head. Southern Africa’s protected areas are truly under threat of total destruction, resultant from the ongoing and unresolved problem of ‘too many elephants’.

Southern Africa, therefore, urgently needs the British government to understand our REAL dilemma and to help us solve it. What we need is a British government that will help us to ‘save’ southern Africa’s entire biological diversity. What we don’t need is a British government that makes our problem worse.

The banning of game trophy imports into Great Britain is NOT what Africa needs! Africa needs for the United Kingdom to open its heart to honest dialogue; and to enter into honourable discussions with the people who are responsible for the proper management of Africa’s wild animal resources. (Ron Thompson TGA 2022)

SUCo-SA has requested on numerous occasions via the Wildlife Forum for the SA Government to express its opposition to this ban, however, nothing official has been submitted to our knowledge.