BY JOHN NASH

A Private Members Bill is coming up for another airing on the 25th January – the usual theatrical performance in Sleepy Hollow, the common class debating chamber inside the Westminster Asylum. To his shame, it is the “work” of the Conservative “member from Crawley”, Henry Smith. It is a thinly veiled anti-hunting extremist trope, disguised as the “Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill 2022-23”, a deception that he explained thus:

“The world’s wildlife faces an extinction emergency of extraordinary proportions. We have to do everything we can to support conservation and to put a stop to these horrendous activities. They are unnecessary, cruel and only make matters worse”

Except that modern regulated trophy hunting has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘extinction emergency’. Banning hunting would be a disaster for conservation. Kenya banned trophy hunting in the 1970’s and has since lost 70% of its wildlife. South Africa, on the other hand, encouraged hunting and has expanded the number of its animals twentyfold and tripled the area of habitat in the same period thanks to hunter income. Modern human population expansion, loss of habitat, the bushmeat trade and poaching (much of it by governments and elites) are the real reasons for animal decline in Africa, while hunting is responsible for maintaining or increasing the numbers and habitat in many places. 

Whatever your thoughts on the subject, high value trophy hunting already supports more conservation than the Crawley MP can ever imagine, and it is his twisted imagination that produces the terms “horrendous” and “cruel”. Trophy hunting is less horrendous or cruel than any indigenous hunting methods or the horror of a natural predator or pathogen death in wild Africa, and demonstrably kinder in both life and death than intensive stock raising on a UK farm. It is part of Southern Africa’s sustainable natural resource wildlife industry and really no different to deer stalking in Scotland (from where foreign hunters take home some 20,000 trophies a year).

Smith is simply arrogant, asinine and wrong.

He is the victim of the UK’s most outrageous hustle operated by that nasty little export from Portugal called Eduardo Gonçalves. Gonçalves is a platinum quality shyster, operating his Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH), a company (not a charity) of which he is the apparent sole beneficiary, who writes “books” of deceptive eco-porn fiction to attract dosh and donations that are published by his wife and promise to donate their profits to the Campaign (er, actually, that is him too). Clever, eh? 

Gonçalves doesn’t save a single animal and never has done, but his campaign recruits thousands of willing donkeys and his donkey farm in turn generates Lord knows how much in donations that he secretly trousers (article 50 of his company Incorporation document at Companies House prohibits any inspection of its financial records – surely a “transparency” warning to any foolish MP). The whole CBTH campaign is effectively the advertising branch of his deceptive harvest festival of cash from gullible animal lovers, cash that he uses to create more advertising to get more donations to advertise more to get more and so on. Nothing to do with real animals or conservation.

With the Private Members Bill coming up for discussion and wily Gonçalves contemplating another fat bonus of undeserved cash carried by his Westminster donkeys, we were all waiting to see what cunning stunt he would pull next.

Right on cue, it appeared in the manky Mirror on January 13th, in a piece of the worst kind of despicable hatemongering, written by the Mirror’s resident gutter-sniper, Nada Farhoud, a person who doesn’t apparently understand very much, poor soul, because her journalistic nose has become a tapeworm and is now living up Gonçalves’ tradesman’s entrance.

Entitled, “Brit trophy hunter poses with dead lions and has ‘GUN’ car number plate” the Mirror ploughs into a UK hunter, Mr Rizwan, as “vile” – pretty rich coming from the Mirror whose community standards state – “no personal abuse or attacks..it is not acceptable to attack them on a personal level” and it proves that IPSO, via The Editors’ Code of Practice  – “The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” – is about as effective in controlling the Mirror’s hate mongering little kweef as a handbrake on a canoe. 

More ominously, Farhoud went on to name the hunter personally (why?), plus name one of his businesses (to invite the inevitable bullying pile-on or to scare off his customers?) and gave the area he comes from (in case animal extremists couldn’t find him).  She then added helpfully that “he takes his son hunting” (thus putting the child in danger too). To drive home the drama, the irresponsible Farhoud even turned up, without any legal justification, to harass Mr Rizwan at his home, with a damn photographer. Meanwhile, IPSO’s Code (haha) says:

“Everyone is entitled to respect for their private and family life, home, physical and mental health” and “It is unacceptable to photograph individuals, without their consent, in public or private places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy” and “Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private life”.

You’ll find IPSO’s Code here.

This kind of Mirror nastiness is typical of Gonçalves’ operation. It is not in the public interest because the “Campaign” claims to be about helping animals, not crucifying people with lies, and the only public interest is the misdirected public hysteria generated by this kind of deceitful crap – a case of peeing copiously on the unfortunate Mr Rizwan and then accusing him of smelling. This is the nasty effluent that MP Smith is swimming in with his Gonçalves-inspired, idiotic Bill and the Mirror is stirring up with its Gonçalves-made paddle. It should all be stamped on, pronto. 

It took me only two or three phone calls and emails to the South East and contacts in Southern Africa to establish that the gentleman in question is a hard working bloke with a lovely family, who works far too hard running his successful businesses.

He is a UK citizen, taxpayer and a good employer, and since he no doubt holds a UK Firearm Certificate, he is a tax-paying, law abiding Briton, proven both legally and medically to be more reliable and mentally stable than most of us.

He hunts perfectly legally, with fully qualified professional guides and the correct hunting, transport, export and import permits, in places that are government regulated and he does NOT contribute to the endangerment of any wild animal species, so Smith is lying when he says Mr Rizwan “is making things worse for threatened species”. Nothing that this good, hardworking man (who just happens to be a hunter) does is, in any way or form, illegal. What the devil does the Mirror think it is up to? By whipping up false hatred and then exposing an innocent man and his family to that false hatred is just about as bad as any tyranny gets.

Gonçalves’ little parasitic vampire claw prints are all over this article that goes on –

“If he killed his neighbour’s cats for fun, we would put him in prison without a moment’s thought…people who kill lions for fun should be punished the same way.”

For a start, it is illegal to kill cats – companion animals – in the UK, and Mr Rizwan doesn’t break any UK law or kill pet cats. Secondly, he doesn’t hunt “for fun” – hunters hunt in order to hunt, one of our oldest and most important human activities. Thirdly, a lion running around in the UK would be legally shot immediately. It’s all clever, dishonest stuff if you are not watching very closely.

Pure Con-çalves.

I am reliably informed that Mr Rizwan’s featured lion was a ranch-raised feral lion, born and bred on a private hunting reserve in South Africa, one of thousands of privately owned, raised and harvested lions there and absolutely separate, both legally and materially, from the “wild” endangered lions of Africa. Technically, it was a “feral ranched” animal, private “farm” property and so not included in the CITES agreements and Red Lists that protect endangered species. Hunted in a huge but fenced (it’s a lion, you can’t release them) expanse of bush, it offered a fair hunt, was a well-fed, perfect specimen because it had a wonderful, peaceful life in the sunshine without fighting other lions every day for survival, and when its time came, it died suddenly and unexpectedly. Its bones probably ended up in the lion bone trade (nothing to do with Mr Rizwan or hunting), a trade that protects the wild stock from the huge demand and resulting poaching for bones, and yet another benefit from hunting.

The Mirror didn’t mention that did they? 

His giraffe hunt was also a ranch giraffe, privately owned, raised naturally like a UK deer for hunting and meat and culled as part of the herd management, well understood by stock farmers everywhere. That particular species, the Southern giraffe, is increasing, not decreasing, is not endangered and ranchers can, in any case, raise as many as the market demands. So it was not endangered and like more than a million animals harvested there annually, it did not go to waste – it was at least 300 kg of very delicious meat. The same for his buffalo, ranch raised and privately owned in South Africa where they have a national “herd” of 25,000 disease free, genetically pure buffalos, separate from wild ones. Hunting and meat keeps 40 million acres of private reserves in business, otherwise they would be turned over to cattle and all the wildlife would be gone. That is the huge conservation by-product denied by sentimental animal extremists like Smith.

Mr Rizwan’s bear was a wild Canadian bear. Hunting bears in Canada has always been legal – they are plentiful (500,000) with numbers managed through hunting (about 5%) very strictly controlled by stiff laws ($150,000 fines), regulated permits and hunting tags, the trophy no different to a UK army bearskin. The wimp Smith should go and meet some Canadian bear hunters, they would tell him where to go.

Not one of Mr Rizwan’s hunted animals are those on the endangered Red Lists. Not one. A ban won’t save any of them because the ban is not about saving animals anyway. The Mirror is lying and drumming up naked hatred by deception. If this was a religious or race issue, these nappy-dwelling little hate-pygmies would all be facing a very angry judge by now. It has to be stopped. Now. 

To think that a UK Conservative MP is actually proud to assist in this outrageous deceit, bordering on terrorism, leaving an innocent man and his wife and children needing police protection, his business and employees (totally unconnected to his hunting) buried beneath a tsunami of hate emails, threats and abusive phone calls from snowflakes, nutters and rubber-heads, is beyond belief.

This rot runs right to the heart of our Parliament. Take, for example, Gonçalves’ successful infection of Parliament under the banner of the APPG Ban Trophy Hunting. He assembled a donkey farm inside Parliament, fed them on his bile, got it to publish a “report” – an inside job and an outrageous and deceitful advert for his Company that broke all Parliamentary guidelines, then they all apparently scarpered (abandoned?), leaving their Devil’s dung lodged inside Mother’s nest. 

The police, of course, can’t do anything. Heaping undeserved hatred and abuse onto and endangering a hard-working, law-abiding family is apparently nothing compared to woke crime, and I can only say this because I don’t have any gun licences to lose. 

Gun owners across the UK are widely intimidated into silence by plod’s zealous witch hunt for gun owners (to hide the fact that most gun crimes feature illegal guns they failed to seize, or to cover up the fact they allegedly and carelessly issued a shotgun licence to a raving nutter in Plymouth). This UK police threat is now fully exploited by anyone with a grudge, just like the witch burning days of yore, where a nod and a wink in the right direction got your enemy burned.

This Mirror article was, of course, a rogue plant and advertisement for the despicable shyster Gonçalves’ profitable chugging business and so it should have been labelled as an advertisement. Had it been labelled truthfully as an advertisement, however, it would have instantly fallen foul of advertising regulations. Goncalves has since tweeted pictures of the hunter’s son on a muntjac hunt (a common UK pest), having already published the boy’s surname, while accusing the father of child abuse. Is there no protection for old fashioned, law-abiding citizens left under the laws of this country? 

The nasty Mirror article carries on blindly – “British trophy hunters are among the worst in the world when it comes to killing elephants, a species that has just been declared endangered on the conservation Red List”.

But where UK hunters hunt elephants legally in the Southern range states, the hunt is not only sustainable – there are thousands and thousands too many elephants. They are destroying the habitat. They need shooting.

Here’s what CITES actually says about trophy hunting:

“Well-managed and sustainable trophy hunting is consistent with and contributes to species conservation, as it provides both livelihood opportunities for rural communities and incentives for habitat conservation and generates benefits which can be invested for conservation purposes”. 

The WWF says:

 “… legal, well-regulated trophy hunting programmes can – and do – play an important role in delivering benefits for both wildlife conservation and for the livelihoods and wellbeing of indigenous and local communities living with wildlife”.

The IUCN says:

“However, the Red List also highlights that trophy hunting is not a major threat to any hunted species at the global level – the major threats are habitat loss, human wildlife conflict, prey base depletions and poaching. Trophy hunting has also demonstrated proven conservation value for many species, through protecting habitat and incentivising landowners to protect (or at least tolerate)  hunted species”.

These are huge international bodies that conduct science-based regulation of world governments and wildlife. Shyster Gonçalves, MP Smith and the manky Mirror would rather burn an innocent man in the pursuit of their delusions and social currency. The exercise has nothing to do with saving any real wild animals.

Dear Reader, this has all gone too far. This is the UK, dammit. Although we can’t deport wily Gonçalves and send him home to Portugal in a leaky boat with a flea in his ear, it is high time to put a stop to his virulent and infectious hatemongering, posing as animal welfare in order to skim the public. 

Worse still, there is an innocent man tied to the stake now above a mountain of inflammable lies while in the shadows, the organisers count their clicks and cash. Mr Rizwan (and justice) need your help immediately.

Speak to your MP now.

John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa.