Trophy hunting: call for evidence to be launched

Trophy hunting: call for evidence to be launched

Written by Defra Press Office

As part of the Daily Mirror’s new campaign to ban trophy hunting the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove has written an article in support of the newspaper’s call to action. Calls for an end to trophy hunting imports to the UK were also featured in the Daily Mail earlier this week.

Mr Gove writes that he will “investigate this deeply troubling trophy hunt tourist trade” and suggests that tourism may offer a potential route to sustainable income for countries with rich wildlife populations.

Yesterday, Environment Secretary, Michael Gove wrote in The Mirror:

“It's deeply troubling for me that tourists can pay vast sums of money to kill some of our planet’s most precious species, plaster that image with pride all over social media and then bring home parts of the animal’s corpse to decorate their homes.”

The Environment Secretary went on to write that he will launch a call for evidence on trophy hunting:

“Some respected environmental charities make the case that culling certain species can complement conservation efforts, and that the revenue raised from ‘carefully-controlled’ hunts brings much-needed prosperity to poorer countries while encouraging them to safeguard wildlife and habitats… This is why I plan to issue a call for evidence on trophy hunting overall – to understand whether countries can prosper in other ways, and what we can learn from countries like Australia which have much tighter restrictions on their imports.

“Our previous consultation on the sale of ivory led to our introducing one of the strongest bans in the world to protect elephants.”

Defra recently held a roundtable with a wide range of stakeholder organisations on the topic of trophy hunting from all sides of the debate in order to gain a better understanding of the issues as well as to consider any further scientific advice.

There are a number of controls already in place. The UK Government will not issue an import permit for a trophy unless the importer can show there has been no detrimental impact on the endangered species and the trophy has been obtained from a sustainable hunting operation. All applications for import permits for trophies are individually scrutinised by JNCC (as the UK’s CITES Scientific Authority) to determine there has been no detrimental impact on endangered species and the trophy has been obtained from a ‘sustainable’ hunting operation.

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