UK conservationists must stop spreading deceptive trophy hunting narratives
Pro-trophy hunting conservationists help elites exploit wild animals and impoverished communities.
This article was originally published in The Canary. Read my unedited version below.
The trophy hunting industry conducts large-scale public relations campaigns to defeat proposed regulations like the UK’s Animals Abroad Bill. The industry uses misleading and false narratives that a small but aggressive contingent of UK conservationists spread in opinion articles and interviews.
UK conservationists critical of the hunting trophies import ban bill claim there is no evidence bans help wildlife. This claim is false. Researchers in Zambia published a paper that showed immense biological benefits for lions in the years following a trophy hunting ban.
An issue with evaluating trophy hunting is separating negative biological consequences from positive economic benefits. Economic benefits are open to interpretation due to their unscientific nature.
The UK’s pro-trophy hunting conservationists accuse anti-hunting groups of understating trophy hunting’s economic benefits to African communities. Yet the pro-trophy hunting contingent spreads the demonstrably false narrative that 100% of Namibian trophy hunting revenue reaches local communities.
The majority of trophy hunting benefits trickle up – not down. I obtained a leaked audit report from the Tcheku Community Trust that revealed 627 households in communities near the Okavango Delta hardly benefitted from trophy hunting. Most benefits went directly into the pockets of the hunting operator co-owned by one of Botswana’s wealthiest men and a few local elites.
The hunting operator only paid the Trust $98,700 of the $179,500 it owed for hunting access to Botswana’s NG13 region in 2022. About a third of the payment went to Trust employees’ exorbitant salaries. Jobs intended for the communities went to Trust board members.
The UK’s pro-trophy hunting conservationists spread the narrative that African communities want trophy hunting and only Western animal rights groups want to ban it. This narrative is misleading.
Researchers in Namibia published a paper about a survey that showed community members supported trophy hunting and opposed bans. However, the researchers had potential conflicts of interest that reflected biases in their survey.
Researchers in Botswana published a paper that showed local communities approved of trophy hunting. But the research was conducted by American trophy hunting group Safari Club International Foundation’s partners at the Okavango Research Institute.
The lead researcher was part of a team that requested SCIF funding in 2019 for a project called Assessing the Impacts of Safari Hunting and Implications of a Hunting Ban in Botswana, Namibia, and the greater Kavango- Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area that sought to “provide support for the importance of safari hunting for wildlife management and rural communities in Botswana and Namibia.”
There is a long history of African communities opposing colonial practices like trophy hunting. Hidden away in the trophy hunting industry’s 1996 Strategic Plan for Africa is a series of admissions about African communities’ negative views about trophy hunting.
The document noted that an anti-hunting movement was “near crisis situation in Botswana” and that there was “strong evidence to indicate that high level people within DWNP [Department of Wildlife and National Parks] are anti-hunting and wish to phase trophy hunting out over 20 years.” Trophy hunting industry representatives were concerned that the Chief of Nagamiland, “who oversees one of the major hunting areas in Botswana, the Okavango Delta,” was “anti-hunting.”
The strategic plan also stated, “[T]he anti-hunting movement in Tanzania is mainly a grass-roots movement. Because people see no benefits from hunting or wildlife, they see hunters as people who are shooting out the game with no benefits to them. The Parliamentarian from Maasailand has openly stated that he will request that all hunting in his jurisdiction be closed. The message is out that “trophy hunting is destructive.”
The UK’s pro-trophy hunting conservationists claim that support for the hunting trophies import ban bill is rooted in disinformation. No evidence supports this claim.
There is only one documented case of disinformation in the trophy hunting debate. The guilty party was the trophy hunting industry.
American trophy hunting groups conducted a $2 million disinformation campaign that intentionally deceived social media users to shape “a positive global narrative around hunting and sustainable use,” according to a 2019 SCIF grant request I obtained. The campaign published content criticizing the UK’s desire to ban hunting trophies imports.
The American-led disinformation campaign attacked and helped overturn Botswana’s trophy hunting ban. The trophy hunting industry’s disinformation agents said they “reached millions of Batswana citizens” and “deployed a dual track communications strategy to educate Botswanans, NGO, hunting and grassroots communities with a top down bottom up narrative designed to educate the elites and decision makers, while simultaneously reinforcing that education with an organic grassroots echo.”
The UK contingent of pro-trophy hunting conservationists must stop spreading deceptive narratives. They risk cementing conservation as a tool for the wealthy to exploit wild animals and impoverished communities.