Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, this is a well-intentioned but mistaken Bill, which tweaks the heartstrings of many people who do not live among nor manage animals in the wild. They seem to think that a wild animal will live a long, peaceful and contented life if left alone. I am afraid that that does not happen in the real world.

Wildlife must also be kept in balance for the sake of the habitat, or the habitat can be destroyed. I have certainly seen that happen in Africa, many years ago, when elephants wiped out the Maasai Mara for several years and it took some time to recover. So culling will take place: it is part of good wildlife management.

Often, older males who are past their prime and excluded from the herd, group or whatever can die unhappy, cantankerous and alone, while trying to upset the dynamics of the group. Those are the ones that one often wants to cull. They can also make for more interesting trophies, because of their age and seniority, so why not convert the cost of culling to an income and take money from rich people to help conservation?

A hunting safari will employ more local people per tourist, with its few visitors, than big national park photo tourism will ever do. It will also probably employ more experts, who need to know more about the habitat and habits of the animals being hunted. Most of that hunting money will also go straight back into the local economy, because it is being paid directly to the people who manage groups that run safaris. The suggestion is to replace it with government grant aid, which will go in at the top while administrative filters, or whatever you want to call them, leach out a lot of the money so that only a little trickles down into the local area. At least that is the experience of many places.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, mentioned quite correctly that there is already the perfectly good Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES. It has been in operation since 1975. This prevents the import of a trophy from any country where that animal is endangered. Very few species are endangered in every country; you cannot aggregate numbers across continents. In certain areas, there are problems with oversupply and other places are undersupplied. An example that was given to me was of a trophy hunter who might go to Chad to shoot something that is endangered there. First, CITES would not give them permission to import the trophy. Secondly, why would you go to Chad to shoot an endangered lion, when you can shoot better specimens elsewhere? I do not think that happens very often, but I may be wrong. I stand to be corrected.

Poaching, usually done cruelly, has an impact on the gene pool of these animals that is an order of magnitude more serious than that of a few controlled hunters. I am very surprised by the idea that trophy hunting will hugely affect the gene pool because of the number of hunters.

There are an awful lot of experts—and we have been sent this stuff, as well; there are a lot of international signatories to these things—who say that hunting purely for trophies is not a key threat. I have met several representatives from concerned African countries who do not think we should be interfering in their economies and are against the Bill.

Local population management and control is often essential, so why not allow the preservation of an interesting head or trophy? Another interesting thought occurred to me: could there be a new trade or business out there of 3D printing accurate, scanned replicas of trophies? They could then be legally imported or even sold as an NFT.