British poachers to be banned from bringing 'trophies' to UK
3 Min Read
After 2 years of waiting, the UK government has decided to ban the import of hunting trophies from endangered animals, which campaigners have welcomed.
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The government has not specified a timetable for implementing the legislation
The United Kingdom has made it illegal for trophy hunters and poachers to bring their hunting "trophies" home, Downing Street announced.
The proposed law entails preventing British big game hunters from carrying home body parts from some 7,000 species of animals, and that would include lions, rhinos, elephants, and polar bears.
The decision had been long-awaited, and it had been pending ratification from the British government for the past two years.
Environment secretary George Eustice said the measure would be one of the world's strictest, asserting that it would go beyond the government's manifesto, as it will include near-threatened and threatened species of animals, not to mention endangered ones.
Since the government had pledged to enact the ban on big-game hunting, some 300 trophies from endangered animals have been shipped to the UK, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting said.
Big-game hunting is the act of hunting large game animals for meat, valuable by-products such as horns, tusks, and oil, taxidermy, or even just for pleasure.
Trophy hunting is the hunting of any wild animals to obtain trophies that vary from fur to bones and 'unique' organs.
"We will be leading the way in protecting endangered animals and helping to strengthen and support long-term conservation," Secretary Eustice said.
Downing Street announced that the ban will apply whether or not a trophy was obtained from a wide animal or one bred in captivity specifically for the purpose of trophy hunting, and any breach of the rules could land the offender in prison for up to five years.
"The Bill as far as we've seen looks to be in pretty good shape, but it has been two years since it was originally announced in the Queen's Speech, and many animals have been cruelly and needlessly killed in that time," said Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting founder Eduardo Goncalves.
"So it is really imperative for the Government to bring the Bill to Parliament as quickly as possible," he asserted.
According to Goncalves, the Bill could come to Parliament "next spring or summer," by which time, he highlighted, "potentially another 100 or more animals will be killed and their trophies brought back to Britain."
Some of the species hunted by trophy hunters are nearly extinct or on the brink of becoming endangered.
