Dear Constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about trophy hunting.

There are strong arguments for conservation hunting, and my fear is that if we ban legal hunting we will only encourage poaching. Conservation hunting, meanwhile, brings income into countries with rich wildlife populations but poor economies.

It also provides a strong incentive to manage and safeguard wildlife populations and protect other valuable natural resources from exploitation. There is a need to cull some species to keep nature in balance and the control of predators to protect other species.

In 2019, the Government held a consultation on the scale and impact of the import and export of hunting trophies. The Government’s response to the consultation set out plans to ban imports of hunting trophies from thousands of endangered and threatened species.

The Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill was introduced to Parliament in June 2022, the last parliamentary session, as a Private Member’s Bill by Henry Smith MP to ban the import of hunting trophies from around 6,000 species, including lions, elephants, rhinos, and polar bears. This Bill failed to progress through Committee stage in the House of Lords, though I understand it has been re-tabled.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

Yours,

EDWARD LEIGH MP