The UK government has voted to ban imports of hunting trophies of endangered animals and yesterday supported the passage of Henry Smith MP’s Private Member’s Bill which delivers this.
Trophy hunting is a form of hunting for sport in which parts of the hunted wild animals are kept and displayed as trophies.
The internationally agreed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) lists around 6 000 species including lions, elephants, rhinos, and polar bears as endangered.
After the debate, International Biodiversity Minister Trudy Harrison said:
This is a pivotal moment in delivering one of our key manifesto commitments on international conservation and animal welfare. Using an internationally agreed list of species, this will play an important part in helping reverse the decline of wildlife across the world. I look forward to it becoming an Act of Parliament.
Conservative MP for Crawley Henry Smith said:
At the last General Election we stood on a manifesto commitment to ban imports of hunting trophies of endangered animals. The House of Commons passing this legislation today marks an important moment in ensuring that this pledge to support conservation becomes a reality.
I’m grateful to the Government for supporting my Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill and I look forward to it now progressing through the House of Lords.
Our country does not want to be part of a trade in the body parts of endangered species. Today the Commons sent this message loud and clear.
UK ban on imports of hunting trophies is a setback for Zimbabwe which has been lobbying for the removal of the Cecil Act in America which seeks to ban hunting trophies from Africa.
The Cecil Act came to be in 2015 when Cecil the lion was killed by a US-based dentist who was trophy hunting in Zimbabwe.
The southern African nation has often argued that it was failing to conserve the parks hence the need to allow hunters to shoot some endangered species like elephants and sell some as their population was fast rising.
In 2020, there were plans to introduce birth control measures to address the ballooning elephant population in the country.