By Khalifa Hemed
Published July 1, 2019
A wildlife conservation charity has appealed to authorities around the world to stop licensing killing of animals for recreation.
Born Free Foundation, that says ‘trophy and canned hunting involve killing animals for pleasure, in order to display part or all of their bodies as trophies’, says an estimated 300 000 trophy items were exported across the world between 2008 and 2017.
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“While trophy hunters target free-living wild animals, which are often lured out of protected areas such as National Parks,” Born Free says, “canned hunters target captive-bred animals, specifically lions and other predators … in a confined area from which they cannot escape.”
Experts define trophy hunting as the licensed shooting of carefully selected animals for pleasure so the hunter gets to keep the animal or parts of it as souvenir.
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Speaking on the eve of the fourth anniversary of a lion called Cecil in Zimbabwe on July 2, Howard Jones, Chief Executive Officer of Born Free, says, “Animals belong in the wild, not on a wall – and we want a future where no animal suffers the agonising death inflicted upon Cecil the lion. We campaign tirelessly to end the practice, working with airlines, travel and shipping companies to ban the transportation of trophies, whilst putting pressure on the UK and other governments to introduce a ban on the import of hunting trophies. But we need public support now more than ever.”
Among the trophies exported in the last 10 years, Born Free says, were nearly 40 000 items from African elephants, 8 000 from leopards and 14 000 from African lions.
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“These shocking figures are made all the more gruesome as there are only an estimated 400 000 elephants and perhaps as few as 20 000 lions left in the wild. The number of leopards is not well understood, but their populations are decreasing and they are vulnerable to extinction,” Born Free, that is registered as a charity in Britain, says.
Trophy and canned hunters, who usually pay to kill animals, Born Free says, usually display the horns, antlers, hides or heads of the slain animals on their walls or in their cabinets, and increasingly post photos of themselves next to their victims on social media and other online forums.
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“Trophy hunters value rarity, and the rarer the animal, the more they are willing to pay. Hunting fees for bushpigs or antelope may cost a few hundred dollars; a hunting safari which includes an elephant or lion will set you back tens of thousands; and in January 2014, a wealthy American reportedly bid $350,000 for a permit to hunt and kill a critically endangered black rhino in Namibia,” Born Free says.
