Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate. I have no interest to declare except that I have a passion, just as great as that of my noble friend Lady Fookes, for nature, conservation and biodiversity. As I had no knowledge of what trophy hunting was really about, I sought to educate myself over the past months. What were my conclusions? First, there is far too much focus on Africa alone. Secondly, rational discussion is impossible—the sides are too embedded—but I will come back to that. Thirdly, no one really seemed to understand what we are talking about with this Bill.

As some have said today, the Bill talks about just over 600 species, but the only species that have been mentioned are lions, elephants and markhors. What we import is 0.1% of the 6,000 species subject to CITES control. It is therefore no surprise that my noble friend Lady Fookes did not wax lyrical about the tree snail, because it is extinct—it is still protected by this legislation but we are talking about a past species. Another conclusion that I came to is that canned hunting should be banned, and one good thing we could do is alter the Bill so that it reflects that wish.

During the numerous conversations I have had with both sides on this, I was sad that so many of the arguments are contradictory and how much they change as soon as facts are provided. I am in good, detailed discussions with the Born Free Foundation at the moment, and have received another letter from Dame Virginia, which is highly contradictory; I will reply to it as soon as I get time to get back to my computer. Having contradictory arguments does not help the case of those who wish to stop trophy hunting.

I will pick up some points that have been mentioned. My noble friend Lady Fookes mentioned the letter. It was very sad that the so-called experts said that the case for trophy hunting is

“promulgated by certain conservation scientists, many of whom have proven funding ties to the trophy hunting industry”.

That is not an accurate statement. Also, those in glass houses should not throw stones. A lot of the pro-trophy-hunting NGOs fund scientists. I believe that our scientists, whether they are funded by one side or the other, in large or small part, are above being influenced by that organisation.

My noble friend also talked about elephants producing smaller tusks. There are a lot of problems with the number of elephants killed—96 a day—while we import, under CITES control, about six year a year. What a huge difference.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, talked about the derisory 0.06% of GDP. That is twice what the UK fishing industry brings into this country. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister would be very happy to say goodbye to the fishing industry using the same argument as the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, fell back on an argument that has been put to me so many times: that, as soon as one is challenged on fact, one relates back to an ethical argument on a moral issue. The moral issue is that there should be no shooting. When I put that argument in relation to red deer in Scotland to the NGOs, they do not want to discuss it with me.

My noble friend Lord Selkirk talked about ecotourism. Tell that to those in Tajikistan. They do not have a wildebeest migration that brings in 300,000 people a year; they do not have the roads that my noble friend Lady Sanderson thinks that one can get access to; they do not hunt in the way that you do in a tame place in Africa, where you can walk for miles and might not get a shot at all. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Hannan referred to the markhor. It is by local conservancy set-ups and hunting in Tajikistan that the snow leopard is thriving in a way that it has not done before. That is because there is now enough food for it.

We know there are three basic ingredients to good biodiversity management: habitat, feed and predation. We in this country are talking about increasing and making wild belts as the green lungs for our national parks. The hunting conservancies in parts of the world are those green lungs that we wish to establish—1.3 million square kilometres, one-fifth more than national parks. We do not want to destroy that.

Trophy hunting is not, and has been proved not to be, a major threat. Habitat and prey loss and conflict among people are much more important, and the Bill does nothing to help with that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I have been called many things in my time, but to be referred to as a neocolonialist is a new one for me. I would have thought it would be applied more appropriately those who wish to perpetuate the trophy hunting culture, but I will leave that aside because we have had a long debate. There have been wind-up speeches from the Front Benches and, of course, from the Minister, who was almost doing my work for me, so I will not detain the House too long.

However, I want very firmly to challenge the view that the revenue gained from trophy hunting contributes greatly to local communities. My understanding is that very little percolates down to them, and that is something I stand by.

I was also challenged on why I was not meeting the high commissioners whose letter appeared in the Times yesterday. They are joint signatories to a letter. One of them is the high commissioner for Tanzania. Tanzania is engaged in a bitter dispute with its own people, a Maasai tribe who are being forcibly evicted from their lands. They have even sought help by coming to Europe as a delegation and going to various European countries and the European Parliament. So if trophy hunting is of such benefit to local communities, I wonder why the Maasai are taking that action. I suggest that there are far better ways of dealing with the problems of cohabiting with animals, crops and so on. There is no time now, but there are plenty of opportunities and plenty of examples whereby careful, thoughtful management of land can get animals and people to cohabit.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

I was told on the question of the Maasai that it also involved ecotourism.

[Baroness Fookes]

I have no knowledge of ecotourism. My concern was that they were being forcibly evicted from their land in a way they did not wish. Beyond that I cannot comment.

I can see that there will be no great meeting of minds on this one, so let us be quite frank about it. I believe that the Bill has a modest and useful part to play, and I am encouraged in this by a letter I received this morning from the former President of Botswana, Lieutenant-General Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama. He writes: “My experience based on facts over 23 years as head of the Defence Force, as Vice-President and then as President, are that hunting contributes to the decline in wildlife populations as hunters in several cases also poached. They corrupted the system to obtain higher quotas of animals to shoot. They seriously undermined the gene pool of male lions, elephants and other species by only shooting the most magnificent species in each category”. He adds that he believes that photographic safaris contribute far more in the creation of employment, revenue streams and so forth. I accept that is not possible everywhere in Africa, but I think we should be looking far more to schemes which allow animals and people to cohabit.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.