I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill aims to ban the importation of endangered species body parts into Great Britain—to be more precise, those listed on the convention on international trade in endangered species, or CITES, in annexes A and B, whether from species in the northern hemisphere, such as polar bears, or species in the southern hemisphere, such as elephants. The territorial extent of this Bill is Great Britain, so let us be clear: this legislation, obviously, does not tell other countries what to do.
Seven years ago, Cecil the lion was infamously shot dead by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe. Sadly, British trophy hunters are among the world’s most active killers of endangered species. In recent years, British trophy hunters have imported thousands of body parts as macabre souvenirs back into the UK. According to CITES, the most popular trophies brought back from Africa into the UK are those of elephants, hippos, leopards, zebras and lions. The African forest elephant has recently been declared critically endangered by the IUCN—the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the African savannah elephant is also declared endangered; their combined population is estimated to be approximately 400,000. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were as many as 20 million elephants in Africa. Trophy hunters now shoot so many elephants that, when we add the numbers that are poached, more elephants are killed each year than are born. Moreover, trophy hunters are shooting the biggest elephants with the biggest tusks. That is leading to artificial selection: only smaller-tusked elephants are surviving and passing on their genes. There are now many more small-tusked and tuskless adult elephants, which will find it harder to find water under dry riverbeds at times of drought, which are occurring more frequently.
The hippopotamus, which is second on the British trophy hunters’ list, is classed by the IUCN as vulnerable to extinction, as are zebras and leopards. Leopards are believed to have suffered a dramatic decline since the 1960s, with numbers falling from 700,000 to only 50,000 animals today, according to estimates. The situation for lions is even more alarming. The population in 1970 was estimated to be 200,000, but researchers now tell us there could be as few as 10,000 to 15,000—perhaps 20,000 in the wild at best—and there are official warnings that lions may become extinct in the wild by 2050.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
This is such an important subject, and my hon .Friend is right to highlight at the start of his speech that this is about us in this country banning imports, rather than about telling other countries what they should do. Is he aware that because there is such a shortage of lions in the wild now that captive lions are being bred and released into enclosures for the trophy hunters to shoot them?
My right hon. Friend raises an important and alarming point; the so-called “canned” shooting of lions and other majestic animals bred solely to be shot by trophy hunters in an enclosure is a particularly sickening aspect of this, which this country should have no part in whatsoever.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I think that illustrates the need for the Bill, which would send a clear message that, in this country—a sovereign nation—we should choose not to accept the importation of body parts of endangered species.
The impact of trophy hunting on lions has been well documented. The scientist who led the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list study on lions states that trophy hunting is linked to “declining numbers of lions” throughout its range. An Oxford University team looking at the impact of trophy hunting said that its research found trophy hunting had the “single most significant effect” on lion populations.
The problem of trophy hunting is twofold, both for elephants and lions. As a US congressional report put it,
“Trophy hunting removes a significant number of animals from…rapidly declining populations”,
and also, the best genes are no longer being passed on to future generations at a time when wildlife faces new challenges. That makes the risk of extinction much greater. Trophy animals tend to be the most evolutionarily fit and possess the high-quality genes that a population of animals needs to adapt quickly to a changing environment. Trophy hunting can push otherwise resilient populations to extinction when the environment changes. Scientists say that lions have suffered a loss of 15% in their gene pool over the last century. The killing of just 5% of remaining pride male lions could be enough to push the whole species past the point of no return.
The hon. Member is making an incredibly powerful speech, and a powerful case on the big five. As we have heard, the Bill is so important, but does he agree that it is perhaps time to move beyond the big five, and that we need assurances from the Minister that all endangered species will be protected under the Bill?
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s support for the Bill and for her intervention. The Bill, when passed, would make it impossible for people to import trophy hunting body parts into Great Britain from all species listed in CITES annexes A and B, which is almost 7,000 different species, and there would be an ability under secondary legislation for the Secretary of State to add species as and when they became endangered. I am grateful to her for highlighting that important point.
We know that stopping trophy hunting can lead to significant recoveries of wildlife. When trophy hunting of lions was temporarily banned in Zambia and Zimbabwe, their numbers almost doubled in the space of a few years. Botswana banned the trophy hunting of elephants many years ago, and it now has one third of all Africa’s elephants—more than twice as many as any other African nation.
Kenya, which banned trophy hunting in the 1970s, is today an African conservation success story, in contrast to what is happening in other parts of Africa. In recent years, Kenya’s lion population has risen by a quarter. While black rhino numbers have fallen by 35% in the rest of Africa, in Kenya, they have gone up a fifth. Numbers of white rhinos are falling throughout Africa except in Kenya, where they have grown by 64% since 2017. Elephant numbers have doubled in Kenya, and the country has virtually all of Africa’s remaining big tusker elephants.
It is not just in Africa that the impacts of trophy hunting have been seen and recorded. According to the US Congressional Research Service, trophy hunting has been responsible for population declines in the cougar in North America, and hunters caused the extinction of the wild Arabian oryx as recently as 1972.
Many of my constituents have contacted me about this important Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing. When we hear about an animal becoming extinct, it raises so much sadness in so many people. Will he join me in paying tribute to Lorraine and Chris Platt of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation? I know they have done much to support him and many other hon. Friends on animal welfare issues.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. I declare an interest as a patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, and I certainly pay tribute to Chris and Lorraine Platt for all their remarkable work over many years to highlight the cause of animal welfare. I am personally grateful to them, and I know many right hon. and hon. Friends are also grateful for the support they have provided.
Trophy hunting is believed to be responsible for the extinction of the wild scimitar-horned oryx just a few decades ago and the near extinction of the dorcas gazelle, the Nubian bustard, the dama gazelle and the addax. Trophy hunting is more than just a contributor to a conservation crisis; I would argue that it is cruel and immoral.
Numerous studies indicate that over half the animals shot by trophy hunters do not die instant deaths but instead have slow and painful deaths. Moreover, the killing of living, sentient creatures solely for sport, selfies or souvenirs surely does not belong in the modern era. That is certainly the view of the overwhelming majority of the British public, 86% of whom say they want a ban on trophy hunting as soon as possible. Just 2% of people say that they wish the practice to continue.
I am pleased to say that the idea of banning trophy imports has enjoyed widespread support across the House, and across society as a whole. Just three years ago, I was proud to stand for election on a manifesto pledge to ban the importation of hunting trophies.
The hon. Gentleman says there is cross-party support for the measure; certainly, there is widespread support for it in my constituency. I had a concerning email the other day from an all-party parliamentary group, which said that the World Wildlife Fund was against the measure, because it thought that trophy hunters encouraged economic activity in areas where trophy hunting takes place, and that the Bill would go against that. Will he Gentleman comment on that, and try to rebut what was said in that email?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his support. Let us be clear that the WWF in the UK, Europe and the United States is very much against trophy hunting and the importation of body parts by trophy hunters. Some organisations in some parts of southern Africa masquerade as conversation charities, but even a cursory look shows that it is often the gun lobby, particularly the American gun lobby, that funds them. We must have no naivety about the forces behind those who seek to maintain trophy hunting.
No fewer than 44,000 organisations, experts and individuals, including representatives of African communities, took part in the Government’s public consultation on these proposals; it was one of the most comprehensive such consultations ever conducted. Of those, 86% agreed that measures to end imports of trophies should be introduced.
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), in Africa, for example, trophy hunting is an alien and unpopular concept that is not indigenous; it was introduced by European settlers. It now damages the reputation and the natural heritage of proud southern African nations. A 2019 study of attitudes towards trophy hunting among local communities in Africa found that the dominant attitude was of resentment towards what was viewed as the neo-colonial character of trophy hunting, in that it privileges the access of western elites to Africa’s wild resources. Most recently, in August this year, an Ipsos poll found that only 16% of people in South Africa supported trophy hunting, and that 74% wanted the Government to focus on nature tourism and photo safaris instead.
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, and I wholeheartedly support his Bill. I have had a number of pieces of correspondence from constituents supporting this work, and I am grateful to him for taking it forward. Does he agree that what he says about southern Africa is particularly important given the state visit this week of the President of South Africa, and the very strong and supportive links between our two countries?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his support. Yes, it was good to see the President of South Africa on a state visit to the United Kingdom earlier this week. Clearly, the majority of public opinion in his country wants southern Africa to celebrate, protect and grow its natural heritage, and benefit from photo safari tourism, which provides so much more economic opportunity for the people of southern Africa. Studies show that photo safaris generate many more jobs for African people in rural communities, and generate significantly greater revenues for conservation.
To repeat, the Bill is not about what happens in Africa. The Bill is about UK import policy. It is about what we, as a sovereign nation, choose to allow through our borders. It is a Bill about Britain making a concrete contribution to tackling the global conservation crisis. A British ban on imports of hunting trophies would help to save thousands of animals that are threatened with extinction. It would make a strong statement to the international community that we must act decisively to conserve our living planet.
To conclude, in the words of Ian Khama, the former President of Botswana who, during his term of office, ended trophy hunting in his country,
“With the decline of wildlife worldwide, and many species approaching extinction, all caused by man, how can there be justification in trophy hunting?”.
Now, almost a quarter of a century into the 21st century, I could not agree more. Today, we can and must act.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on bringing forward his private Member’s Bill today. I remember how exciting it was to have my name drawn in the ballot last year. Well done to him for getting this far. The Bill addresses an incredibly important issue that he has championed for some time. It has my full support and, I hope, the support of many colleagues from across the Opposition Benches.
I would also like to thank others for their work in this field, and for their determination to keep the subject high on the agenda, and in all MPs’ inboxes: the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on banning trophy hunting, for whom I have a lot of respect; Eduardo Goncalves, the secretariat for the all-party group; Dr Adam Cruise; Dr Jane Goodall; Peter Egan; Ranulph Fiennes; Charles Dance; and many other individuals and organisations. The campaign has garnered the support of public figures such as Sir David Attenborough, Michael Caine, David Jason, Joanna Lumley and Simon Pegg, to name just a very small selection.
As we often hear when we come to this Chamber to debate animal welfare legislation, the UK is a nation of animal lovers. I have received numerous emails in recent weeks from constituents requesting my support for the Bill, which is why I am here. Of course, it already had my support. The fact that the Bill still has such prominent and vocal support from the general public, at a time when so many people are focusing on more immediate concerns in the face of the cost of living crisis, shows the great depth of feeling. Public opinion shows clearly that the UK does not support trophy hunting and will not accept the exchange of trophies on British soil. As I stand here today, many more majestic wild animals will be shot by trophy hunters across Africa and around the world. Trophy hunters shoot an animal approximately every three minutes. I hope to speak for about 12 minutes today from start to finish, so four animals will have been killed in that time.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier); I reciprocate her kind remarks and endorse her comments about Chris and Lorraine Platt, Eduardo Gonçalves, Lynn Santer in Australia and many others who have espoused this cause. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on promoting this Bill, which chimes completely with the Government’s manifesto commitment to bring an end to imports from trophy hunting. It is a very good thing that it has Government support.
I will be brief. I find myself in the slightly peculiar situation of having to talk hypothetically, but were any Member on these Benches to seek to talk out the Bill, they would deserve all the public opprobrium that they received.
Let me address a couple of myths. It is a myth propagated by Safari Club International and its acolytes and subsidiaries that the proceeds of trophy hunting in some way play a part in conservation. They do not. The large sums of money—this is big business—goes into the pockets of corrupt people. Very little, if any, of the funds find their way into the pockets of the ordinary people of Africa, or indeed of any other country. We are talking about gratification of the most revolting kind, which I would compare with paedophilia. If someone is rich enough, they can go anywhere in the world and buy anything they want, and this is just another form of vile gratification.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said, the Bill does not seek to ban trophy hunting, because we have no power to do that. That is a matter for others to decide. We have to decide what it is appropriate to allow into the United Kingdom as the product of trophy hunting. That is all the Bill does.
We might hear arguments about the fact that herds of elephants in some parts of Africa are out of control, rampaging through villages, eating crops and killing babies. Elephants have to be managed in Africa, largely because man has destroyed their predators and their natural habitat. However, it would be a perverse argument, would it not, for anybody in the Chamber to suggest that there is some kind of equivalent between game management, properly conducted, and the vile so-called sport of trophy hunting?
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The animals hunted include giraffes; elephants; zebras, one of which is killed on the African continent every 15 minutes; hippopotamus; leopards; lions, whose extinction in the wild could be irreversible if just 5% of the male population are shot; cheetahs; black rhinoceros; polar bears, which are already facing extinction as a result of the challenges posed by climate change; black bears, which are native to North America and popular with British hunters; lechwe antelopes; Nile crocodiles; caracals; and, perhaps most disturbingly, primates, which have distinctly similar DNA profiles to those of human beings. Trophy hunters are on course to kill 170 million animals this century—more than two and a half times the current human population of the United Kingdom.
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of meeting former President Khama of Botswana, whom the hon. Member for Crawley mentioned. During his decade in office, President Khama recognised the urgency of the issue. In 2014, he had the courage to initiate a ban on elephant hunting in his country. His vision to focus on photographic tourism as a way to boost his country’s economy led to huge benefits for conservation in Botswana. Although the exact number of elephants in the region is hard to determine because of their nomadic roaming, it is clear that the policy had a stabilising effect on the elephant population and their numbers grew.
Sadly, shortly after President Masisi took office, President Khama’s ban was overturned and the practice of trophy hunting was reinstated, citing growing human-elephant conflict. Understandably, environmentalists have a growing anxiety that lifting the ban is simply a precursor to an attempt to legalise the ivory trade in Botswana. Legalisation of that grotesque trade would have catastrophic consequences for the African elephant population.
The decision to lift the hunting ban was certainly a political one. It does nothing for the conservation of wildlife—quite the opposite. According to Humane Society International:
“In Zambia and Tanzania, 40% and 72%, respectively, of trophy hunting areas were abandoned once wildlife populations were depleted and hunting was no longer profitable.”
The ban may be an issue that divides locals, but there is real concern about the impact on tourism of removing the ban. Tourism is the country’s highest source of foreign income after diamond mining. Many tourists were drawn to Botswana as a direct result of the ban, because they liked the fact that trophy hunters were not welcome there. Photo safaris are not just beneficial because they are non-threatening to the lives of animals; economically, they are much more beneficial than trophy hunting, both for conservation and for local communities.
This year, I also had the privilege of meeting the inspirational South African author and award-winning wildlife investigative journalist, Dr Adam Cruise. Dr Cruise specialises in animal and environmental ethics and has spent time interviewing trophy hunters to try to understand why they do it and what the appeal is. Some of the interviewees say that it is a reaffirmation of their masculinity. Recalling what they did on the hunts, they have cried at the memories. It is not hard to imagine why. How many of us could kill a wild animal and not feel the pain of that action?
Advocates for hunting tell us that it is sport—that they are going and shooting animals for leisure or for fun. It certainly is not fun for the innocent animals, who may suffer for hours on end because the hunter has failed in their attempt to shoot to kill and has only maimed their target. It is not fun for the animals who suffer dying a slow and painful death for no other reason than that the hunter wanted to have fun. It is not fun for the hunters who cry at their recollection of the hunt. It is not fun for the hunters who cannot even bring themselves to do the killing. Unbelievably, some trophy hunters pay others money to do the shooting part for them. What is even the point?
Who is this sport fun for? What do these trophies—these chopped up animal parts—really represent? Hunters take the time to wipe away the murdered animals’ blood to present a sanitised version of their kill for the ubiquitous selfie. That is barbaric. It is not the action of the civilised world that we profess to live in.
I want to touch on why we need to look more closely at this issue at home. It is not just about the trophies that end up circulating here in the UK. As we have heard, British hunters are among the top trophy hunters. It is very much an issue for us here at home, even if much of the hunting happens overseas. Trophy hunting package holidays abroad are advertised to hunters here in the UK. Safari Club International runs points-based award schemes for hunters. It offers a diamond hunter achievement award for hunters who kill animals from 125 or more different species. I will speak in more detail later about the hugely problematic lobbying that SCI has undertaken against today’s Bill.
British hunters have brought hunting trophies from at least 70 different sites’ protected species back to the UK. The CITES treaty already forbids and restricts trade in trophies for endangered species, but a legal loophole means that they are treated as personal effects, and are therefore outwith the remit of the treaty. Opponents to a trophy import ban, such as SCI, will accuse the legislation of harking back to colonialism and accuse the UK of trying to tell the rest of the world what to do, without the authority to do so. It is ironic that trophy hunting is a relic from the colonial era. In the 19th century, British hunters in Africa were responsible for the extinction of the quagga, a zebra-like animal in Africa. In the 20th century, the Arabian oryx and the scimitar-horned oryx were both hunted to extinction in the world.
SCI was recently exposed for funding a £1 million disinformation campaign that targeted colleagues across this House to block a ban on hunting trophies. It is how the SCI funded that campaign that really puts a bad taste in my mouth. Earlier this year, SCI reportedly auctioned a polar bear hunt to fund its campaign. Looking closer at the funding streams, there are significant donations from the American gun lobby, for obvious reasons.
SCI is not the only group to disseminate misleading information to try to block these measures. It is always interesting what we find when we follow the money. Let us look at the Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group. Much like SCI did, SULi had a group of experts arguing that hunting is good for conservation. One of SULi’s funders is the Russian Club of Mountain Hunters—I am sure hon. Members all know where this is going. One member of the Russian Club of Mountain Hunters is Sergey Yastrzhembsky, a former personal spokesperson for Putin. He is one of only two sponsors of the club to achieve gold level, indicating the large financial contribution that he has made to the efforts to save the cruel sport.
I do not want to hear any arguments from SCI or organisations like it. Let us not be fooled by its untruths that auctioning off a hunt is about conservation. To get that argument on my desk proves that it is not. I implore every colleague who may be less familiar with the subject matter to take the time to educate themselves on it, and I encourage any constituents listening from home to do the same.
I reiterate my full support for the hon. Member for Crawley in his quest to get this Bill through the House and the other place and, ultimately, to gain Royal Assent. I am delighted that the Minister is in her place and supporting this vital legislation. The time has come. The British public want this abhorrent practice of shooting defenceless animals for sport gone. They want the importing of bodies and body parts into their country to be banned. Only 2% of people in the UK oppose such measures. There are very few causes that can claim to have so little opposition.
Not one of us who believes in the merits of the Bill will give up until the day that all defenceless animals are protected from the despicable practices of trophy hunting. We cannot afford to lose any more of our animal species to extinction. We should know better by now. Let us all be on the right side of history. Let us in the UK lead the way and show the international community the positive impact that a ban on trophy imports could have.
In conclusion, I will cite again the instance of Ian Seretse Khama, who, as the President of Botswana, introduced a ban on trophy hunting. As a result, over a 10-year period, the wildlife population grew, conservation was enhanced, the net worth to his country of photo tourism expanded, and it was a win-win. After the fall of that Administration, the new President of Botswana reversed the ban—in the interests of what? Far be it from me to suggest that there is a strong relationship between the President of Botswana and Safari Club International, but that suggestion has been made. We now find a decline. The equation is absolutely straightforward.
Finally, I challenge anybody in this Chamber to seek to justify the unjustifiable by saying that there is any rhyme or reason for what has become known, revoltingly, as “canned” hunting. We are talking about the breeding in captivity of wild, magnificent animals purely for the purpose of being shot so that their body parts can be displayed on somebody’s floor or wall. That is what this Bill is seeking to prevent in the United Kingdom. The Bill has my full support.