21 March 2024 , 13:45
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African conservationists have pleaded with MPs to get behind a long-awaited new law to finally outlaw trophy hunting imports.
Labour MP John Spellar will call on the Commons to ban people from bringing back sick mementos from overseas hunts. Despite making it a 2019 manifesto promise, the Tories have so far failed to deliver after legislation collapsed in the House of Lords last year.
Mr Spellar has put forward a fresh Bill calling for the practice of bringing back animal skins, severed heads and carcasses to end. He told The Mirror he hopes the "barbaric" trade can finally be brought to an end before the general election.
And it's been supported from campaigners in Africa, where the trade has been branded "backward and colonial". Josphat Kisui, executive director of the Africa Network For Animal Welfare (ANAW): "I come from a transformed hunter-gatherer community that in the past hunted for subsistence and not for trophy or pleasure.
"My community now and most other African communities abhor sport hunting as backward and colonial. We love our animals. They are more profitable alive than dead.
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"I am yet to discover a humane way of sport hunting an animal. I therefore fully support the Government and the people of the UK in their effort to ban trophy hunting imports."
And Linda Makau, who founded Africa Climate Change Communicators said: “There is an intrinsic value that these wild animals hold, and trophy hunting interferes with biodiversity. How am I going to feel when I tell my grandchild, ‘we used to have lions, we used to have giraffes, but now all we have are pictures’? It’s going to be a hard narrative to tell.”
Zablon Ogolla, founder of Plogging Kenya added: “We would be jailed for hunting our own animals. If we don’t hunt our own animals, why should others come and do it for fun?"
Attempts to force a law onto the statute book were thwarted in the Lords last autumn. Conservative peers, including some who support hunting, delivered a string of lengthy speeches as the clock ticked towards the debate’s deadline in September - meaning the Bill ran out of time.
Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation co-founder Lorraine Platt said the support demonstrates the strength of feeling around the ban. She said: “It is clear many African organisations fully support this Bill.
"Many of them are concerned about biodiversity and conserving the remaining populations of animals like lions and elephants, who are already on the verge of extinction. It is imperative MPs turn out to vote on 22nd March and express their unequivocal support for ending our role in this vile trade."
Mr Spellar resurrected the Mirror-backed Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, which was passed by the Commons last year before collapsing in the Upper Chamber. It will be heard as a Private Members' Bill on Friday.
He said: "It sends a very clear signal it's no longer acceptable, the public really don't understand why someone would want to shoot a giraffe and bring parts back to the UK. The public has made this very clear."
Mr Spellar added: "I'd like to thank the Daily Mirror who have been raising this issue and helped alert the public to the barbarity of this trade."