Six southern African countries have started lobbying the UK’s new Labour government in the hope of stopping it from passing a law banning the importation of wildlife hunting trophies into the European country. The African countries that are home to oversized populations of some endangered wildlife species in the world are opposed to the proposed law, which they see as detrimental to their conservation efforts. 

In March this year, the House of Commons, the lower tier of the British Parliament, passed a bill to outlaw the importation of hunting trophies into the UK. The bill is now awaiting debate in the House of Lords before it can possibly become law. The lobbying by African states and pro-hunting groups has appeared to have worked previously as the bill has twice failed to get through the British Parliament since 2021. It was only resuscitated this year by (now) former Labour MP John Spellar. Keir Starmer’s new government has already binned an equally controversial UK-Rwanda asylum deal, and the African countries are hoping for a similar result.

Trophy hunting lifeblood for conservation

The High Commissioners of six African nations, namely Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, are opposing moves by the UK toward the ban. The countries have always argued that the move puts a huge strain on conservation efforts due to a cut in the much-needed revenue from hunting fees that keep hunting areas in Africa open and the animals protected from poachers. It has also been argued that trophy animals, such as lions and elephants, can also be pests in many African communities, devouring livestock and crops – sometimes even killing human beings – thereby necessitating the need for paid conservation through hunts and the exportation of trophies and other related products.

The United States and some European countries are also trying to impose similar bans on hunting trophies. The US is Africa’s largest source market for trophy hunting tourists followed by Europe. In Europe, Germany is the leading importer of hunting trophies.

‘We have better conservation record than Europe’

Namibia’s High Commissioner to the UK, Linda Scott, says her country, together with the other affected southern African nations, are concerned about the possibility of the bill becoming law. 

“Such a Bill would certainly undermine the strong and positive contribution that environmental conservation has made to the development of those communities, to tourism in those areas and to environmental conservation,” she told The Namibian. 

Scott said the Labour Party had committed to consultations with affected countries in southern Africa to examine the crucial role that hunting revenues play in funding conservation programmes, local communities, and anti-poaching measures. 

“Namibia and other countries in the region that have a much better conservation record than much of Europe, emphasise that an anti-trophy hunting law would undermine the strong and positive contribution that these communities make,” she said. 

Namibia earns about $15 million annually from trophy hunting, money that goes toward funding conservation projects in the country.

Wildlife overpopulation headache

Elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, buffaloes, hippos, giraffes, and dozens of other wildlife species are the targets of Western hunting tourists to Africa. While most of these wildlife species are threatened with extinction in other parts of the world, they are found in such abundance in the six southern African countries to the extent of posing serious problems. For example, Botswana and Zimbabwe’s elephant populations of 132,000 and 100,000 respectively are not only regarded as ecologically unsustainable but are also blamed for increased cases of human-wildlife conflict (HWC).

For many years, these countries have relied on revenue generated from trophy hunting to pay for conservation needs, such as fighting poaching, provision of water, fencing game reserves, and paying compensation to victims of HWC, among other expenses. The growing global trend to move toward the banning of trophy hunting is therefore seen as a threat to the lifeblood of sustainable conservation.

Protests in Botswana

In March, thousands of Batswana (citizens of Botswana) marched to the British High Commission in the southern African country to protest against the bill. In the course of the protests, which included the dispatch of a high-powered delegation to make presentations to the British parliament, Botswana’s Environment and Tourism Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu had threatened to send 10,000 of the jumbos to London’s Hyde Park, just to give the British people “a taste of living alongside them.” Shortly later, Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi also threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in his angry reaction to a suggestion by the European country’s Environment Ministry for further tightening of restrictions on the importation of wildlife hunting trophies.  

An emotive debate

The bill roils the long-running emotive debate between hunters and biodiversity experts over whether trophy hunting harms or benefits wildlife. Although trophy hunting is endorsed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a wildlife conservation method, some groups such as the Centre for Biological Diversity and Humane Society International insist that it is not a sustainable conservation practice. These organizations view trophy hunting as “an industry built on cruelty for the purposes of entertainment and bragging rights.”

Research by Professor Joseph Mbaiwa of the University of Botswana on the effects of a five-year (2014-19) trophy hunting ban in the country concluded that it was not a decision informed by any scientific evidence.

“After the hunting ban, communities were forced to shift from hunting to photographic tourism. Reduced tourism benefits have led to the development of negative attitudes by rural residents towards wildlife conservation and the increase in incidences of poaching in Northern Botswana,” Mbaiwa said in a report.

“The implications of the hunting ban suggest that policy shifts that affect wildlife conservation and rural livelihoods need to be informed by socio-economic and ecological research. This participatory and scientific approach to decision-making has the potential to contribute sustainability of livelihoods and wildlife conservation in Botswana,” he added.

Even in Britain, there are also opponents of the ban such as academic Professor Amy Dickman, the Director of Oxford University’s Conservation Research Unit WildCRU. 

“The Parliamentary debate today was riddled with misinformation,” Prof. Dickman said after the bill was passed in the House of Commons in March.

“MPs pushing for a blanket import ban demonstrated that they were willing to ignore scientific evidence, major risks to conservation and animal welfare, and the rights and livelihoods of affected people.”

‘It is beneficial to our communities’

In addition to reducing elephant numbers, trophy hunting is regarded as a source of income for communities that co-exist with the wildlife. Batswana communities get about $5 million annually from trophy hunting.

Chieftainess Rebecca Banika from Botswana’s Chobe district says the UK’s anti-hunting bill is a socio-economic issue to communities like hers that co-exist with wildlife because hunting is the only tool that is used to reduce the numbers and at the same time provide employment, meat, and financial benefits to them.

“The revenue generated is used to assist community members with funeral services, provide shelter for those who cannot afford to build themselves decent houses and pipes for clean water, pay school fees, transport and other necessities, to mention just a few,” she said.

Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) says trophy hunting has made a significant impact on local communities that live adjacent to wildlife areas. 

“This isnʼt just idle speculation… schools, clinics and roads have been built from the proceeds of trophy hunting,” the authority says. “Regulated hunting creates employment for skilled and unskilled locals in the form of professional hunters, trackers, skinners and general camp attendees, provides protein (meat) doing away with a major reason for poaching, ensures community buy-in on wildlife conservation programmes through community participation, controls wildlife populations and reduces animal spillage.”

However, opponents of trophy hunting cite another research that concluded that the practice is of no meaningful benefit to the communities, saying it was not uncommon for some community members in Botswana to get as little as two Pula ($0.15) each per year from safari hunting.

Search for alternative markets

Countries such as Botswana and Zimbabwe have started searching for alternative markets for their wildlife resources.

“We can always come up with an alternative market,” ZimParks director Fulton Mangwanya said. “We have to look for other markets from the East,” he added, without mentioning specific countries. “We should be allowed to be hunting more so that we do the management of reducing these animals which are killing our people,” he added.

Botswana’s Environment and Tourism ministry secretary, Boatametse Modukanele, said, “We are looking at the Middle East. We are also looking at the United Arab Emirates, as an example. We are looking at those countries because they also have a hunting culture, and they do not have the many restrictions that we have currently.”

Allegations of ‘colonial meddling’

President Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe – a country struggling with over 100,000 against a 50,000 carrying capacity – accuses Western countries that are opposing trophy hunting and other forms of trade in wildlife products of double standards.

“It is disheartening, most unfortunate and unacceptable that those who are opposing our conservation philosophy have themselves failed to manage their own wildlife populations, some to the point of extinction,” Mnangagwa said. 

“In contract, we in Southern Africa, and more specifically in the KAZA have managed to grow our wildlife populations substantially. We should never allow those with dubious agendas to dictate the way we manage and utilize our own God-given resources as well as the conservation models we deploy within our own jurisdictions.”

Botswana’s Masisi and Namibian officials have accused Britain and other Western countries seeking to outlaw trophy hunting of “colonial meddling”. 

These countries are also locked in a dispute with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (or CITES), which has repeatedly denied them permission to sell off their abundant ivory and other wildlife products.