Petition against trophy hunting in the EU Parliament

Humane Society International/Europe has submitted a petition to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, signed by nearly 50’000 citizens worldwide, calling on the EU to take action against the hunting trophy trade. The petition contains concrete preliminary policy recommendations for tightening existing EU regulations on hunting trophies, pending a ban on their import and export.

EU: Second largest importer of hunting trophies

Iconic animal species such as lions, rhinoceroses and elephants are being killed and then imported into and exported from the EU, earning the EU the unfortunate distinction of being the second largest importer of animal trophies in the world. The European Parliament is well positioned to address the EU’s repeated failure to properly implement existing statutory protective measures.

Dr. Joanna Swabe, Senior Director of Public Affairs at HSI/Europe, said: «We greatly appreciated the opportunity to use our speaking time in the Petitions Committee to refute the controversial and outdated claims of the European Commission that ‘well-regulated’ trophy hunting benefits both the conservation of wildlife and the livelihoods of local communities. It is regrettable that they have so far given credence to the false claims of trophy hunting advocates, rather than drawing on the mounting body of evidence for the assessment that killing threatened and endangered species for pleasure harms species conservation and can in fact contribute to increasing wealth inequality. We are disappointed that the recently adopted revised EU Action Plan against illegal wildlife trafficking also lists ‘well-managed trophy hunting’ as a sustainable form of income. We firmly reject this characterisation.»

EU Action Plan with contradictory signals

HSI/Europe again welcomes the latest commitment in the revised EU Action Plan against wildlife trafficking to scrutinize the import of hunting trophies more closely and to make decision-making regarding country-species combinations more transparent. The Action Plan also states that the Commission will consider extending the EU legislation requiring hunting trophies to be accompanied by an import permit to additional species.

The HSI/Europe petition to the European Parliament underscores not only the urgent need for these additional trade protection measures on grounds of animal welfare, species conservation and biodiversity, but also in response to the public, which by a large majority demands that the EU take immediate action to ban the import of hunting trophies, in line with the applicable precautionary approach in species protection.