Britain should lead the way by banning trophy hunting - Ian Khama, former president of Botswana

We have seen instances when prides of lions have no males. We have seen a decline in elephants with big tusks. Hunters are well known for bribing wildlife officials to turn a blind eye to quotas being exceeded and thus contributing significantly to the decline of wildlife as hunters become poachers.

When I was the head of the army, I deployed the military to take on the poachers. Yet just down the road, you had trophy hunters shooting the very same animals. It made no sense to tell soldiers to protect elephants from poachers when they were being simultaneously shot by trophy hunters.

We knew photo safaris were a much better alternative. They protect the animals from poachers because there are tour parties out all the time. They bring more opportunities for people.

And it meant we were playing our part in preserving our planet. To kill an animal simply for a ‘trophy’ is immoral. Humans have no right to do this.

The ban worked.

Areas that had been devoid of any wildlife were now seeing animals coming back. There was less human-wildlife conflict. Elephants had come to associate people and vehicles with killing. They were no longer hostile to people because they weren’t being persecuted any more.

When I left office in 2018, Botswana had twice as many elephants as any other country in Africa. We had no less than one-third of all Africa’s elephants. We had lost just one rhino to the poachers in 10 years.

When I stood down, though, there was a great deal of lobbying by the trophy hunting industry to bring it back. The current President disarmed the anti-poaching units. Rhinos are approaching extinction in Botswana. The country now allows trophy hunting of thousands of animals each year including elephants, leopards and zebras. The new President gives out elephants' footstools to visiting heads of state as gifts.

There has been a crackdown on opponents. A tourism operator who criticised the government has left the country for fear of reprisals.

Dr Michael Chase, a well-known elephant expert, had his research permits withdrawn. His ‘crime’ was to highlight the amount of poaching going on. He had a nursery for baby elephants; they have taken those elephants away.

MPs and the UK media are being subjected to jaw-dropping disinformation. The industry recently claimed that trophy hunting has the support of African people.

Even more bizarrely, it claims that Britain saying its hunters can no longer bring hunting trophies back to the UK is ‘neo-colonialist’.

A letter to MPs argued that the right of white hunters to shoot African wildlife was just like the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.

These people are shameless. They have no sense of irony or self-awareness. Surely for a white hunter to fly to Africa to kill our endangered animals for pleasure and pose next to them grinning is the most colonial thing you can possibly imagine?

African people are not allowed to kill those animals even if they are hungry and say they need to kill them for food.

Yet rich white British and American hunters feel it is their God-given right to bear arms and kill animals for ‘sport’, selfies and souvenirs.

The industry is rich and powerful, and will stop at nothing to get its way.

We need to act now. The world’s wildlife is in crisis. There were 200,000 lions in the 1970s - now there may be just 10,000. There are fewer than 7,000 cheetahs. The number of black rhinos is 3,000.

The numbers of polar bears, elephants and leopards are declining and all face a very real danger of becoming extinct. Yet it remains perfectly legal for anyone to claim they are a trophy hunter and shoot one of these magnificent creatures for their own entertainment.

We must not allow these people to win.

I strongly support Britain’s proposed ban on hunting trophies which is coming forward as a Private Member's Bill by Henry Smith MP with cross-party support.

Britain will gain a great deal of international respect by acting on this issue. Britain should be a voice of conscience in the world. The UK should strive to do all it can to help protect our shared natural heritage.

We must all work together to halt the reckless, cruel destruction of the world’s wonderful wildlife by nature’s enemies in the form of trophy hunters.

Ian Khama was the President of Botswana from 2008 to 2018.