My Lords, I believe that most reasonable people, and certainly most noble Lords taking part today, support wholeheartedly the objective of conservation that the noble Baroness was just talking about. We always want to protect our shrinking wildlife on this planet, so it is always helpful to start on the areas on which we agree, and that is one of them. But the perception on which this Bill is based is that a number of the world’s most endangered and iconic species are threatened with extinction by excessive hunting, and that by prohibiting the importation of trophies taken from these animals we will set an example to other countries and, perhaps more importantly, prevent the decline in the numbers of those species.
The argument on the other side is that the income derived from hunting for these trophies—the trophies themselves do not matter, of course—improves conservation in a number of different ways. The most obvious way—and I think that my noble friend Lord Caithness mentioned it—is that, in hunting areas, the habitat is being protected. That is the most important thing, because it is loss of habitat that is the greatest threat to wildlife. On the other side of the coin, we have learned in the course of this Bill that trophy hunting is not actually a threat to any endangered species at all—it is other things that threaten them, but not trophy hunting. None of the animals that would be covered in the two annexes to which this Bill will apply when it becomes an Act are at all threatened in any way, shape or form by trophy hunting. They are threatened by other things, the most important of which is loss of habitat; that is, to some degree or another that is open to debate, protected by trophy hunting. If you have a concession, a piece of land on which you are conducting your hunting business, you are obviously going to protect it because otherwise it damages your business. That is widely demonstrated.
It is often said that this House has an expert on almost every subject. I have to confess that I am not an expert on the subject before us this evening, although I have some experience of conservation here in the United Kingdom, and I have a passion for the wilder parts of the world, some of which I visited, and the creatures that live there. I have never shot game in Africa or in other parts of the world—the Far East, or whatever—so I, too, have no direct interest to declare in this Bill.
It is clear that opinion is divided in the Committee, as it is everywhere, on which side of the argument one falls—and that is quite normal. What is interesting to me, as the noble Baroness touched on, is what has happened during the course of the passage of this Bill, in its passage to the other place and in the several months since it came here first in June—rather a long time ago. I have been involved in a lot of Private Members’ Bills over the past 35 years that I have been in this House, and I cannot remember any on which such an extraordinary deluge of information has been poured on our heads and through our letterboxes. Of course, some of it is very good and some of it is not so good—that is a fact of life.
We have had an extraordinary amount of high-quality information provided by academics. Two speakers have already referred to the letter from academics that
appeared in a newspaper. I have tried to get letters into newspapers, and it is very unusual to do so. Getting 10 Peers to sign one brings herding cats to mind, so getting 150 academics from across the world—which must also be a bit like herding cats—to sign a letter is extraordinary. These were not just any old people. It is a pretty impressive list. I do not remember it happening before.
I also do not remember another piece of legislation that does not really affect this country at all but does affect others. The way some people speak, you would think that hunting is a minority activity. Actually, 99% of the countries in the world have hunting; those that do not are the minority. It is normal in most parts of the world and cultures. I have never come across a situation where more affected countries have been so vociferous in their opposition to a Bill that affects them. I do not remember the British Government—although I am sure there is a case of it—enacting a piece of legislation like this, which has an economic, social and cultural effect on other countries, without asking or meeting them and completely ignoring their views. It is quite extraordinary.
The countries most affected by this—the southern African countries that have hunting—have, like the academics, been unanimous in their opposition. Two groups took the trouble to get on an aeroplane and come over here. Can noble Lords imagine the Minister jumping on a plane because of something happening in the South African Parliament and dealing with a group there? We had a Minister, heads of wildlife departments and an MP come to this House because they were so horrified by what would happen. The evidence we were given was extraordinary, detailed and backed by hard, peer-reviewed research.
One thing that affected me most was that one of the people who came here, an MP from a constituency in Botswana that I could not begin to pronounce, on the edge of the Okavango, told us: “It seems to me that British parliamentarians care more about animals than they do about our people. I go to funerals of my constituents who are killed because they live alongside wildlife. Their cattle are killed and their crops are destroyed. Four or five constituents every year, usually children on their way to school, are killed by animals”. That is a fact of life when humans live alongside wildlife.
We have debates about rewilding in this country—sometimes very sensible and sometimes not quite so sensible—in which people say that we do not want wolves in England because they are too big and might kill our sheep and dogs. It is quite right that we have those impassioned arguments, but can you imagine saying to someone in Surrey, “We’re going to put a couple of prides of lions outside Esher and a herd of buffalo in the Surrey Hills”? They would not be very happy about it. These people live alongside these animals all the time. This MP was saying that it looked like we cared more about the animals that we do not have to live with than his constituents who do. We need to take that very seriously.
As my noble friend has said, trophy hunting is a major force for conservation. The 1.3 million square kilometres in Africa is one-fifth more land than all the national parks combined. We need to think carefully, because this is big stuff. Trophy hunters obviously
want to continue hunting, so they preserve their quarry in those areas and actively protect the habitats and other related animals around. More importantly, the communities are therefore incentivised, economically and in other ways, to accept the animals, which are undoubtedly difficult to live with, and prevent poaching. If they have no value to those people, if they are a negative and not a positive, how on earth can we expect them to protect them? Surely, the object of this Bill is to protect them, so we need to incentivise those people. Trophy hunting is one of the main ways at the moment to do that.
Trophies can account for up to 50% of the revenue derived from hunting, as I think my noble friend mentioned. If you remove the ability to take away the trophy, you take 50% of the income away, for no real gain to anybody. After all, trophies in themselves are not important. What matters is how we manage the wildlife and the consequences to them, not the trophy. Although we have been told that you do not really need hunting and could replace it with photo tourism, we need to be clear that the overwhelming evidence we have received is this: of course you can increase photo tourism, but that will not work in the areas in which there is trophy hunting, because they are different. There is not the infrastructure and they are not the sort of places that are good for photographic tourism anyway. It simply will not work. We were told that not just once or twice but by all the evidence we received, which was detailed and explained why.
The evidence we received on the other side of the coin, which said that you could do tourism there and do not need trophy hunting, gave no specific examples at all. I found it extraordinary that I got from the JNCC—many of your Lordships will have too—nine detailed pieces of peer-reviewed research demonstrating where trophy hunting occurs, how and why it is important and the numbers, while we did not receive a single piece of specific evidence going the other way that we could rely on.
Welfare has come up in this debate. This is not a welfare Bill, but a conservation one. It is important to note that the two are different subjects. I am not a naturalist or an expert in these things, but I can give noble Lords a fact which I know to be completely true: 100% of wild animals will die. Some 99% of them will die of injury, illness, starvation, lack of water, competition with others and being predated upon—not a very nice one—while probably less than 0.01%, a tiny number, will be killed by trophy hunting.
I can also assure noble Lords that, of all the deaths that wild animals undergo, probably the one with the least welfare concerns is to be shot by a bullet. No wild animals die in their beds or have palliative care. None is surrounded by its relatives when it leaves this planet. They all die nasty, painful and long-suffering deaths. That is what nature does. The only ones that have a short, quick death are those that are hunted. A welfarist wanting to improve the welfare of animals—which is not the point of this Bill—cannot object to this on those grounds. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, shaking her head, but this is a fact. If she thinks I have got something wrong, I invite her to come in on it, because this is pretty factual.
I said at the outset that we cannot all be experts on every subject that comes before this House, although some noble Lords seem to think they are from the frequency with which they bend our ears. We must therefore rely, to a certain extent, on the information we are given. We have to decide, sift it and look at the reliability of its sources. As I have said, I have been extremely impressed by the evidence that has come to us supporting the conservation points of this Bill and making it clear that, as drafted, it does not have the conservation benefits we would want.