Veronika Wild

Cecil the lion, before he was a trophy           -  Shutterstock/paula french    Melanie Flynn , University of Huddersfield Killing animals for fun is an activity which divides opinion. It can also be a highly emotive issue, with high profile cases like the death of Cecil the lion sparking global media coverage and outcry. There were even calls for the American dentist who admitted killing Cecil to be charged with illegal hunting. But despite the strong feelings it occasionally provokes, many people may be unaware just how common trophy hunting is. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) reports that between 2004 and 2014, a total of 107 countries participated in the trophy hunting business. In that time, it is thought over 200,000 hunting trophies from threatened species were traded (plus a further 1.7m from non-threatened animals). Trophy hunters themselves pay vast sums of money to do what they do (IFAW claims upwards o...

Take photos, not trophies  -Image by TeeFarm from Pixabay The tide is also turning against the Great White Hunter. Trophy hunting has been banned in Costa Rica, Kenya and Malawi and leopards may no longer be hunted in South Africa. True there are some forms of hunting which may still be necessary – for food, for protection against predators, getting rid of introduced pests and so forth, so I won’t quarrel with those for the moment, though it would be good to see more humane ways of dealing with such issues too – for example, birth control is being proposed for our wild horses (brumbies) rather than having to cull them in our highlands where large numbers may damage fragile lands. One should also consider that one reason why species are becoming ‘pests’ in some areas is because humans have encroached on more and more of their habitat. However, as many species are in decline globally, there are strong ethical reasons to reconsider our relationship with wild animal...