Sign the new petition to ban lion trophy hunting imports in the UK
The body parts of lions killed in gruesome hunts are being bought and imported into the UK as ‘hunting trophies’. To hunt these beautiful animals for fun is inhumane and wrong – but it’s also contributing to the rapid decline of lion numbers. That’s why we are calling on lion trophy hunting imports to be banned immediately.
Because of the signature we have so far, we have been able to secure important meetings with Members of the UK Parliament over the next few weeks to discuss this crucial issue – and the more signatures we can get between now and then, the greater pressure we can apply to persuade the UK Environment Minister, Michael Gove, that the time to act is NOW!
One of our directors, Dr. Pieter Kat, lived and worked for two decades in several African countries to help the conservation of lions there. As he has pointed out: The number of lions in Africa has decreased from over 200,000 to less than 15,000 within the past 50 years.
Most of the ‘trophies’ are male lions. This has a disastrous knock on effect: pride structures are disrupted, reproduction almost grinds to a halt as cub survival is severely affected, and mortality among females increases as they attempt to protect their cubs during encounters with more and more displaced males.
The UK must immediately stop its involvement in this cruel trade of lions killed for fun, like others around the world have. Australia, France and the Netherlands have already banned lion trophy imports. Why has the UK not yet joined them in doing so?
In 2010 and 2015 promises were made by British MPs about introducing a ban, but years later nothing has happened. Every single day we delay makes it more and more likely that we push lions towards extinction.
Why is this petition so important?
We launched this petition last Thursday afternoon and we have already collected a staggering 144,000 signatures from all over the world.
Lions are disappearing fast and face extinction in Africa and one of the significant contributors to that decline is trophy hunting, where lions are killed purely for entertainment. There is absolutely no way to justify lion trophy hunting as a conservation measure as has been proposed by hunters and their allies. And any country continuing to allow the import of lion trophies is condoning this cruel practice.
Just this week, Botswana has announced it is entertaining a return to elephant trophy hunting, after its admirable decision back in 2014 to ban all forms of trophy hunting in the country. How long will it be before Botswana also returns to lion trophy hunting too?
We can use this petition to also convince African lion range states that trophy hunting is not conservation and will only bring forward the date of extinction of these iconic animals.
So please sign this petition if you haven’t already done so and share it with friends, colleagues and family and let’s see if we can reach our next goal of 250,000 signatures.
