Swiss Motion Seeks Import Ban on Hunting Trophies

Switzerland is the depositary state of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It is strongly committed within this framework to better protection of endangered species and enjoys a high degree of credibility, writes the Federal Council in its statement published on Monday.    

Hobby hunters — including around 1,500 Swiss citizens per year — travel around the globe to kill rare animals and bring their trophies home. During hunts abroad, weapons and methods are used that are prohibited in Switzerland on animal welfare grounds (crossbows, helicopters).

Figures from 2013 indicate that in the eight African countries with the largest trophy hunting industries, only 1.8 percent of tourism revenue is generated through trophy hunting, and only 0.9 per mille of tourism revenue benefits species conservation. This is offset by land dispossession, illegal killings, animal cruelty, and smuggling carried out under the guise of trophy hunting.

Due to poor wildlife management in many destination countries, corruption, and poaching, trophy hunting cannot be justified — it is most often part of the problem! One outgrowth of hunting tourism is the so-called canned hunt: wild animals are bred for hunting pleasure, the young are separated from their mothers at an early age and exploited as visitor attractions, while the adult animals are released into fenced hunting enclosures to be shot. Ninety percent of lions killed in South Africa come from such hunting operations. Rhinoceroses and elephants are experiencing the worst poaching crisis:Organised crime has set its sights on the last of their kind.

The militant organisation JagdSchweiz also does not oppose the decadent trophy hunts at home and abroad, and instead actively promotes them, including in its print media.

Apparently, these hobby hunters are neither well-trained nor do they possess a sound moral compass.

Particularly when it comes to hunting and hobby hunters, it is essential that the public pays very close attention. Nowhere else is so much manipulation carried out through falsehoods and fake news.Violence and lies are two sides of the same coin.For decades, hobby hunting has been nothing other than a permanently costly construction site, patchwork, and point of contention for politics, forestry and agriculture, public administrations, the judiciary, health insurance funds, insurers, animal welfare, environmental and nature conservation organizations, the police, the federal government, the media, and so on.

Any other organization with so much criminal energy would have long since come under the scrutiny of the federal prosecutor's office!

Current criminal offenses committed by hobby hunters in Switzerland are listed here:Link

Only a complete trade ban on all rhinoceros and elephant products can put a stop to this madness. Trophy hunting of predators that are naturally rare and whose populations are self-regulating is equally indefensible. This applies especially to species such as polar bears or cheetahs, which are already severely threatened by the loss of their natural habitat!

A one-sided measure would not be in the spirit of the CITES Convention, according to theFederal Council's responseof 29.5.2019. A well-managed, government-regulated trophy hunt is considered a form of sustainable use of biodiversity. It can also contribute to securing the livelihoods of local communities.    

GLP National Councillor Isabelle Chevalley (VD) does not share this view. Many of the animals concerned live in very poor countries, she writes in the explanatory statement of her motion dated 21.3.2019. For these countries, the financial gain they could derive from such hunts represents a temptation.    

Corruption-related problems compound this further. Export permits for trophies can therefore not guarantee that hunting does not harm the species concerned, Chevalley writes.