On 14 February 2019, officers from the Customs Investigation Office Essen seized an elephant foot that had been converted into a stool from a 53-year-old suspect in Bergisch Gladbach.
The Customs Investigation Office Essen had previously received a tip-off that a stool concealed under bin bags was being offered for sale on a classified ads portal, and that it was in fact a preserved elephant foot.
The Cologne Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation on suspicion of violating the Federal Nature Conservation Act. Under the Federal Nature Conservation Act, elephants are a particularly and strictly protected species whose commercial trade is generally prohibited.
The customs investigators established the identity of the seller and, during the subsequent search of the suspect's home in Bergisch Gladbach, found the elephant foot converted into a stool in the garage. The suspect possessed neither a marketing certificate nor an import permit from the relevant authorities.
Extinction with official approval
In 2018, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation approved the import of 197 “hunting trophies” taken from animals that are specially protected under the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This was revealed by a written parliamentary question submitted by Bundestag MP Steffi Lemke (Alliance 90/The Greens) to the federal government. Among the imported trophies are body parts from 92 animals belonging to species facing acute extinction, including African elephants (48), leopards (31), cheetahs (8), and white rhinoceroses (3). Further species killed solely for trophy acquisition include hippopotamuses (34), lions (17), and polar bears (4). To ensure the protection of animals and species, PETA is calling on the federal government to finally impose a ban on the import of hunting trophies.
The sell-off of nature is happening here and now, and the federal government is complicit. Trophy hunting is nothing more than a despicable pastime for wealthy, desensitized people who have more money than morals.
Nadja Michler, Wildlife Expert at PETA
Other countries are once again far ahead of us: France and Australia at least stopped the import of lion trophies in 2015. And the Netherlands followed suit in 2016 with a comprehensive import ban covering 200 endangered species.
A bloody hobby with fatal consequences
Even at Germany's largest hunting trade fair "Jagd & Hund," trips with the goal of hunting endangered species are on offer / © PETA Deutschland e.V.
In Germany, killing animals for the purpose of acquiring trophies is prohibited and violates Section 17, Number 1 of the Animal Welfare Act, as it cannot be justified by any "reasonable purpose" within the meaning of the law. Furthermore, this cannot be considered "fair chase" — that is, supposedly responsible or even animal-welfare-compliant hunting. In many other countries, however, animal and nature protection legislation is inadequate. The prospect of foreign currency from wealthy hunters still makes it possible in many places to kill rare animals for trophies. In Africa alone, 18,000 big-game hunters from abroad kill more than 100,000 wild animals every year. Driven by greed for a prized hunting trophy, trophy hunters significantly reduce animal populations. A scientific study on lion hunting in Tanzania found, for example, that legal trophy hunting — not poaching or habitat loss — is the primary factor behind the sharp decline in wildlife.
Barely any profit-sharing with the localn population
Trophy hunters sometimes try to justify themselves with baseless arguments: The enormous sums that hobby hunters spend on a hunting trip end up not with the poor local population or a national park administration, but almost exclusively in the pockets of travel operators and hunting farm owners. An economic analysis of trophy hunting in Africa reveals that a mere 3 percent of revenue from trophy hunts reaches the local population. From an economic perspective, hunting tourism plays only a negligible role in most countries. In Namibia, for example, trophy hunting contributes just 0.27 percent to gross domestic product, while nature tourism contributes 4.2 percent. The vast majority of tourists want to see intact wildlife — and that also benefits the local population in the long term.
