BY JOHN NASH

On Saturday 12th October, The Express sprinkled upon its online readers yet more blatant hatemongering against hunters, reigniting the Campaign to Undermine Parliament by the shyster Eduardo Gonçalves and his political stunt, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (CBTH).

In the article, a glittering assortment of Gonçalves’ celebrity donkeys simultaneously demonstrated their gullibility and ignorance by repeating his poisonous political mantra – one that has little factual base but everything to do with his playing power politics in the Westminster Asylum, no doubt earning him a few bob in the process. 

Of course, the Express will merely say that they are reporting the facts of the campaign, but, since this campaign has no connection with reality, they are propagating a clever campaign of unwarranted vitriol in which the perfidious Portuguese Prince of Propaganda fills the UK press with delicious clickbait eco-horror about trophy hunting, then collects political and actual currency by “saving endangered wildlife” from the fictitious monster he himself invented inside his insidious little noggin. 

If it concerned any other UK industry, religion, age group, gender or way of life, it could be tested in court as an open and shut case of unfair discrimination, false advertising and blatant deception.  But Eddy doesn’t fear the tar and feathers because he knows he won’t be challenged – hunters, even when acting legally, have absolutely no access to justice or protection under the law in two-tier UK and are apparently less worthy citizens than shoplifters or illegal immigrants.

To the paper’s shame, the article itself was fake – Goebellian propaganda. Readers, including MPs, absorb this rubbish and believe it because such well-known actors, singers and comedians spout it, not realising that these heroes may be famous or popular in their own fields of endeavour, but in this dismal performance, they are delivering li(n)es written by Gonçalves and talking sonorously out of their famous backsides.

Readers never check facts. Eduardo rarely uses them.

The Campaign itself is branded “Sally’s Law” (fictitious cute name to soften your heart) – apparently a tiger cub raised on a farm in South Africa (SA), where it was “bred for the bullet in a cub-mill to make her an easy target” and therefore bravely “rescued” from gun-toting monsters by Gonçalves’ fearless overseas operation.  Meanwhile, the only thing being murdered is the truth.

In reality, it was just a young tiger without a name, bred by a tiger breeder.  With the correct permits and proof that you have somewhere secure to keep it, in some SA provinces you can legally buy a tiger for any purpose from a local breeder, so it wasn’t really “bred for the bullet”.  Breeders sell tigers to collectors, zoos, other breeders, entertainers, hunting companies, rug makers, medicine dealers, museums or whatever. They might even sell one to an unscrupulous foreign buyer to use to raise funds by pretending it was “rescued by our brave undercover agents whose lives were at risk”. 

If you know anything about tigers, you will know that it is illegal to release human-habituated tigers into the wild anywhere because, without any fear of humans, they easily become dangerous man-killers. To hunt such an animal on foot (as most trophy hunters do) would not make it “an easy target” – more the other way round – a challenge that serious hunters, who hunt for the challenge, would find irresistible.  Hence the trade.  Anyway, if they were horses, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. An animal victim always has to be charismatic. 

“Ah, but they are endangered”, I hear you say. Well, regardless of what you think about tiger farmers, it is just a farming operation like any other, with better fencing – they breed animals and raise them for sale.  The animals are not wild born, so it has no negative effect on the world’s wild population. Tigers are not endemic to SA, so have no effect on conservation there, either. 

Separated from their biggest natural enemies – other tigers – they breed like white mice in captivity and many zoos around the world neuter them or give them contraceptives because of their fecundity.  Stripped of the emotional hype, captive tigers are important, not least because there are perhaps only 4000 tigers left in the wild and as many as 20,000 in captivity, representing a useful insurance population and DNA reservoir. 

Wild tigers are not safe. But not because of hunting – a billion people use Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), so every part of a tiger is valuable – a pair of eyes $200, a paw $1000, tiger bone in wine up to $30,000 a case.  Dried tiger bones come in at £2000 a skeleton, a really good skin can make $100,000 – even tiger poo has a market and a dealer is a fool if he can’t make half a million dollars out of a single tiger. 

With or without trophy hunters, the market is huge and demand is powerful – it can even cost you and your 2+2 family £50 just to look at a “rescued” tiger in the Isle of Wight’s commercial zoo.  With that kind of demand, banning trophy hunting imports won’t make a damn bit of difference to tiger farming, TCM or “rescues” around the world.

Why do we need “Sally’s Law” to stop tiger trophies being imported when none have been imported even though hundreds are available in SA?  Why do we need a ban “to save 6,000 species” when only 37, mainly common antelopes, are hunted in SA?  This campaign is about Gonçalves and his empire, more cat-tray than cat saviour. Tigers are, like the hoodwinked actors, merely his PR, props in his conjuring act.

And, talking of PR, if you think that all of the brouhaha around “Sally the rescued Tiger” is spontaneous democratic public concern, think again mes braves – read the website of London PR company, Thinking Hat, “we worked with the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting up to the Third Reading of the government bill, titled ‘Sally’s Law’, introduced by Henry Smith MP to prohibit trophy hunting imports. And the good news is, we won! The bill passed after a vote in the House of Commons on 17th March…The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting was set up in 2018 by Eduardo Gonçalves, former WWF International Director (of corporate relations) Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE, and actor and leading animal advocate, Peter Egan.” 

You are not alone – even Parliament was hoodwinked by a paid mob of truth jugglers, plus sad old fingerless Fiennes and a gobby thesp who wouldn’t know a tiger from a merkin.

Back in reality, although trophy hunters shot hundreds of tigers in Victorian times when tigers were plentiful and villagers wanted rid of them, there were still perhaps 40,000 left 125 years ago.  They were subsequently reduced in number because they are tigers, with a rather beastly habit of eating farm livestock and people (about one person killed per week even today). In the UK, a tiger is a magnificent lord of the jungle because we haven’t got any, but if you live in a jungle that does have them, that same tiger is a 400lb shredder with a super-intelligent AI-like predator brain, programmed to hunt you and your children silently and without mercy.  Venturing into that jungle for firewood or fruit is squeaky bum time.

Back here, to save you the trouble of looking in the gutter for the paper or its article, here are its gems of hatred:

“I have never understood people who want to hunt and kill wild animals. .. what is the point of that? …Trophy hunting is cruel, archaic and cowardly.” – Dame Judi Dench.  At least she admits she doesn’t understand hunters, and it shows. Hunting is not archaic – we humans have been hunters for as long as we have been humans and millions still are, many of them subsistence hunters. Hunting is the celebration of the evolutionary male calling, to protect and provide.  And as for “cruel”, there is no “cruel” in nature – tigers kill millions of wild animals violently, but it is not “cruel”, and one thing is for certain, M, stalking a tiger on foot is certainly not “cowardly” – if you try it, you will find yourself both shaken and stirred.

“It seems we are condemning wildlife to not just a cruel death but also to a needless and senseless extinction…“We should do everything we can to persuade the Government to act swiftly” – Sir David Jason.  Again the “cruel” buzzword, but a tiger doesn’t think that it’s cruel – it is, like us, a noble predator, too.  Ask any soldier – “do you think being killed by an opposing soldier is cruel?”  Of course not – on the battlefield or hunting ground, between predators, civilian sensitivities do not apply. As for the “senseless extinction” remark, that’s pure Gonçalves – there is not a single species anywhere in the world being driven to extinction by trophy hunting, and so the plea “Government act quickly” is a massive leap at a brick wall. Sir DJ is a great actor and national treasure, but his brain’s clearly not open all hours on this one.

“It’s sick and perverted. These people are psychopaths, and as a society we can do so much better than allow it to continue to happen….UK hunters think it is alright to kill a beautiful, majestic endangered species for no reason, there was something wrong with them, so laws need to be put in place to stop this kind of behaviour. Please join me in backing the ban and sign the petition, badger your MP too, we are so nearly there!” – Ricky Gervais.  A legend, but not much of a psychologist. Psychopaths hunt humans and like to hurt victims – trophy hunters don’t hunt humans or endangered species – they hunt individual animals that won’t harm the species if removed.  They also kill animals as humanely as possible and they want to see more of them. 

By stopping trophy hunting, we won’t “do better” – because trophy hunting is not the problem for tigers.  A hunting ban won’t have helped them – they will be worse off because the commercial demand for their parts will then fall on the wild population.

Gervais’ plea “Badger your MP, we are nearly there” shows that he is not only a comedian but a ventriloquist’s dummy, too.  Translated from his master’s native Portuguese, “Incomode seu MP, estamos quase lá” really means, “Watch as a small tiger devours big suckers”.

The article finished with a mention of Labour MP Bambos Charalambous, but the less you mention predators around him, the better.

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. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor.