Hunting Trophies

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord knows the length of time it takes for legislation to get on to the statute book, but once it is there, imported trophies will be banned. I would expect that, if the Bill comes in in the relatively near future, by this time next year the noble Lord’s ambitions will be realised.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, has my noble friend the Minister made any assessment of the possible unintended consequences of this legislation? In the late 1970s, Kenya banned trophy hunting and saw the number of its elephants plummet. South Africa and Rhodesia, as it then was, went the other way and said that, if you owned land, livestock on that land was your property. As a result, local people treated large animals as a renewable resource rather than a pest. Can my noble friend confirm whether the Government have assessed whether there might be increased pressure on the habitats of rare species as a result of this legislation?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

As part of the consultation, we heard from a number of different organisations and Governments, including those of South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Canada, Zambia and Botswana, all of which support trophy hunting as a conservation tool. There is a wide-ranging debate about the value of well-managed conservation hunting and the impact it can have on increasing the number of rare and endangered species as against badly managed hunting, which sees large amounts of rare and endangered species killed and has no value to conservation.