Trophy hunting: the government’s muddled approach confuses conservation and animal welfare

Bans on puppy smuggling, animal testing, trail hunting, and snare traps. These animal welfare commitments, made by Labour in their manifesto and recently reaffirmed by Mary Creagh¹, the Minister for Nature, have one thing in common. They centre on the treatment and well-being of individual animals. The government’s other animal welfare commitment – a trophy hunting import ban – does not. Or rather, shouldn’t.

The distinction between animal welfare and animal conservation is not just academic. While both seek to manage our relationship with the natural world, they come from very different perspectives.  Welfare assumes accountability for the health and well-being of individual animals. Conservation is more concerned with the success of animals at a species-wide level, recognising the limits of human control in the wild.

Previous attempts to legislate on this issue – a current Private Member’s Bill sponsored by David Reed MP represents the fifth such attempt in three years – have all emphasised trophy hunting’s threat to the conservation of endangered species. In stark contrast, Labour appears determined to argue that there is something intrinsic to the hunting and killing of animals for display that creates irreconcilable welfare concerns.

This sets up some intriguing questions.

For a start, the UK shoots and exports thousands of hunting trophies itself every year². If there are welfare concerns about this, it seems hard to argue that these would attach only to animals living beyond our borders, or that only endangered species should be deserving of welfare protections if the practice of shooting an animal for the purpose of display is deemed universally inhumane.

Secondly, animal welfare legislation is typically designed around domestic livestock or pets. Where the UK does apply animal welfare principles to wild animals, inconsistencies with a proposed ban on hunting trophy imports become glaring. Not only does the UK allow the shooting of wild animals, in some cases it advocates for it as a humane solution.

Badgers, which were once gassed, are now shot³. Foxes, which used to be hunted with hounds, are considered legal quarry, meaning they can be shot providing you have the landowner’s permission, aren’t in an urban area, and use a licensed firearm⁴. The government’s new deer management strategy calls for the culling of thousands of deer, many of which will be shot by hunters who will gladly display the antlers afterwards. If there is a fundamental objection to the shooting of an animal to display its body parts afterwards, the UK might consider putting its own house in order before lecturing others.

Being shot by a trophy hunter is also a far swifter and more humane death than most wild animals will experience naturally, where dying from starvation, disease, thirst or predation is the norm. If we are to extend welfare protections consistently to animals in the wild, we should consider providing water and food in times of hardship and closing obvious loopholes. For example, the UK’s most popular recreational activity, angling, is exempt from animal welfare legislation, and welfare is not considered in the preventable deaths of the millions of animals killed by vehicles on UK roads every year.

Applying an animal welfare lens to these complex issues also blinds Labour to the conservation risk of banning trophy hunting imports. Analyses by University of Oxford scientists has shown that a ban on imports is disproportionate because trophy hunting is not a key threat to any of the species imported to the UK as trophies⁵. Further, trophy hunting bans undermine the economic security of rural communities that live alongside dangerous wildlife. Deprived of the financial compensation for tolerating the risk to life and limb posed by lions or elephants, history shows that communities often take matters into their own hands. Snaring and poisoning increase, leading to the indiscriminate and painful deaths of a wide range of animals, not just those targeted by hunting. Hardly the welfare win Labour is aiming for.

For this reason, the High Commissioners from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe said to MPs in March 2024 that: “We call on British parliamentarians to recognise that Animal Welfare and Wildlife Conservation are two different subjects. The principles of Animal Welfare do not apply to Wildlife Conservation practices, which are focused on managing the ecology of populations, and on funding the preservation of the ecosystem in which they live.”

Advocates of the proposed ban argue that it does not imply any judgment on wildlife management practices in countries where trophy hunting takes place and is a contribution to conservation. Yet, legislating on animal welfare grounds invalidates that argument and is a highly paternalistic intervention that infringes on the sovereignty of countries to manage and use their wildlife as they see fit. It should embarrass the government that southern African nations have called these bans “a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem.”⁶

Trophy hunting is a conservation issue in need of evidence-based policy. A smart ban would achieve this by prohibiting the import of hunting trophies except in certain circumstances. Imports of trophies would be allowed where it can be demonstrated that the benefits of hunting contribute meaningfully to the conservation of the hunted species and their habitat, there is an equitable sharing of revenue with local people, an adaptive management system is in place, and the hunting area has good governance. This would raise the standard and scope of regulation without negatively affecting trophy hunting where it is well-regulated and benefits species and local communities.

Only by understanding the difference between animal welfare and conservation, consulting the affected countries and communities, and implementing evidence-based policy can the government avoid harming wildlife abroad and storing up trouble at home.

Dr Dan Challender is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

References

1. Hansard. Hunting trophy import ban. 2024. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-12-19/debates/7D6A1F84-9D2E-4200-8A86-CE8C6AAD3ED6/HuntingTrophyImportBan?highlight=puppy

2. Guardian. £7,000 to bag a rare deer … how trophy hunting came to the home counties. 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/13/price-list-shoot-rare-deer-trophy-hunting-woburn-abbey

3. Sage Journals. How can we do ethnographic research in a controversy? Lessons and reflections from a multi-sided ethnography of badger culling and bovine Tuberculosis. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14687941241234287

4. GOV.UK. Foxes, moles and mink: How to protect your property from damage. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/foxes-moles-and-mink-how-to-protect-your-property-from-damage

5. Conservation Science and Practice. Evaluating key evidence and formulating regulatory alternatives regarding the UK’s Hunting Trophies Import Prohibition Bill. 2024. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/csp2.13220

6. The Times. Hunting trophy ban: A threat to African wildlife. 2024. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/hunting-trophy-ban-a-threat-to-african-wildlife-zxsxhn0tl

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