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We wish Therese Coffey well in her newly appointed position as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK. She was previously a junior minister at EFRA under Michael Gove.
She will have much on her in-box – the Environment portfolio is highly challenging and complicated. All sorts of stuff like fracking, bird flu, farmer compensations, use of agricultural lands, pollution, etc.
And also the continuing trophy hunting products import issue that has been stymied by, at last count, six previous administrations. As a Secretary of State, Ms Coffey has the ability to immediately sign a ban on trophy hunting imports. That is how governments in Australia, France, Netherlands (and hopefully soon Belgium) implemented such bans. The UK has instead decided on a long drawn out process whereby there had to be public input (back in 2019, never acted on) followed by Parliamentary discussions, endless readings of proposed Bills, more discussions….
We would appeal to Ms Coffey to use her authority to announce a ban on all trophy hunting imports immediately. After she has done this, then can come the inevitable discussions on what species could be excluded, whether the ban should only involve species on IUCN and CITES list whatever, tweaks can be made.
In other words, the horse would now been properly placed in front of a cart that has gone nowhere in ten years of dither and delay. The contents of the cart that the horse pulls can be amended over time. But the horse needs to be pulling instead of standing in the stable where it has now been confined by slow and confusing progress.
There have been recently been released reports of dramatic declines in species’ populations and biodiversity. Such declines are happening every day, every minute. One source of such declines is inarguably trophy hunting, and products should be eliminated from entering the UK. The voting public wants it, conservation needs it, and Ms Coffey should act on it.
Please could you DONATE to LionAid to support our ongoing work to conserve lions which are facing dramatic declines in the wild, and to bring an end to lions being bred in captivity to feed the cruel canned hunting industry? Thank you
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