Animal welfare advocates fight against hunting trade fair «Jagd und Hund»

The Greens on Dortmund City Council are also supporting the call by 11 animal welfare organisations to no longer allow providers of hunting trips that violate animal and species protection laws to exhibit at the «Jagd & Hund» trade fair in future.

Ingrid Reuter, spokesperson for the GREEN party group:

More and more people no longer consider the hunting of exotic and endangered animal species to be acceptable. And rightly so, because studies show that even legal trophy hunts are a significant factor in the decline of certain wildlife species. Hunting trips where the acquisition of a hunting trophy is the primary objective should therefore no longer form part of the programme of a trade fair held in the city-owned Westfalenhallen venue. Dortmund has been recognised on multiple occasions as Germany's most sustainable major city and as a Fair Trade Town. The Office for International Relations and Sustainable Development established by the Mayor is an expression of the global responsibility that Dortmund is committed to upholding. This also applies to animal welfare, and speaks in favour of no longer permitting the promotion of hunting trips that violate animal and species protection laws on municipal premises.

In a letter to the party group, 11 animal welfare organisations — including the German Nature Conservation Union, Pro Wildlife and the German Nature Conservation Ring — had pointed out that such trips continue to form part of the programme of the «Jagd & Hund» trade fair, which opens this week at the Westfalenhalle from 29 January to 3 February.

Even the killing of endangered and internationally protected species such as lions, leopards, polar bears, rhinoceroses and elephants is included in such offerings. In the view of the animal welfare organisations, such offerings are utterly incomprehensible, particularly against the backdrop of an increasingly intense debate about the extinction of animal and plant species.

In Africa alone, 18,000 foreign big game hunters kill over 100,000 wild animals every year, significantly reducing wildlife populations. The argument that such hunting trips contribute to the protection of the hunted species is also untenable, as the considerable sums that hobby hunters spend on a hunting trip generally do not end up with the local population or a national park administration, but predominantly in the pockets of tour operators and hunting farm owners.

Ingrid Reuter: “We therefore want this to no longer be supported by the city through the provision of premises. The goal must be that such offerings are no longer found at the next «Jagd & Hund» if at all possible. We will therefore hold a discussion about this at one of the next meetings of the supervisory board of the Westfalenhallen.“

Hunters stop at nothing and even shoot baby elephants

Trophy hunters repeatedly attract negative attention when they also put themselves on display, grinning foolishly with their “prey.” This “bloody pleasure” has now even cost elephant calves their lives. What on earth did this little baby elephant do to deserve a bullet in the head, ask the Netzfrauen.