BY TREVOR OERTEL
The multimillion-pound British charity World Animal Protection (WAP) has built a lucrative brand around “saving wildlife.” But its own recently published study tells a very different story, one that reveals the organization’s hypocrisy, racism, Euro-American neo-colonialism and the danger of its campaigns to Africa’s people and wildlife.
In its report, “Attitudes of local communities to wildlife conservation and non-consumptive, alternative income sources, near Kruger National Park, South Africa,” WAP openly admits:
Public pressure could end trophy hunting of wildlife, potentially negatively affecting species conservation and the human communities that depend upon the revenue hunting generates.”
In plain terms, WAP acknowledges that banning trophy hunting could harm both wildlife and the rural Africans who depend on it for their livelihoods. Yet despite this admission, the organization continues to manufacture that very “public pressure,” manipulating a caring but gullible public with emotional anti-hunting rhetoric that directly undermines conservation.
This is not compassion. It is calculated hypocrisy, and it is costing Africa dearly.
WAP’s silence speaks volumes
On 27th August 2025, I wrote directly to World Animal Protection asking for comment on this glaring contradiction in their position. My email reads:
Dear World Animal Protection,
I am writing an article on the exploitation and threat to wildlife by animal rights groups, principally the WAP, referencing your recent study “Attitudes of local communities to wildlife conservation and non-consumptive, alternative income sources, near Kruger National Park, South Africa.”
Your constant call for banning trophy hunting against overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary of the value of trophy hunting to species conservation and the benefits to communities is a direct threat to species survival and community livelihoods. You are misinforming a caring, groomed public. Your focus seems to be generating and profiting from donations and not species conservation.
Your study acknowledges the conservation and economic benefits of trophy hunting, yet instead of embracing and promoting the conservation value of trophy hunting, you are trying to hoodwink the public with your false narrative and are desperate to find alternatives because of your own prejudiced views.
Your study also acknowledges the potential negative consequences and threat to species and livelihoods should trophy hunting be stopped because of “public pressure,” public pressure which, among others is created by WAP and other like-minded organizations.
Among others, your study states:
“Public pressure could end trophy hunting of wildlife, potentially negatively affecting species conservation and the human communities that depend upon the revenue hunting generates.”
And as described in the study, “the tenor of the current global debate surrounding trophy hunting is such that there exists a growing probability that trophy hunting could end in the near future in response to public pressure. Under current conditions – i.e. without measures to address any unintended consequences – many researchers and policy makers are concerned that the ending of trophy hunting could result in negative impacts, including on species conservation and on the livelihoods of communities that depend upon it as a source of income. They highlight that revenue generated by trophy hunting currently provides an incentive for rural communities (which are often relatively poor) and private landowners, and regional governments (e.g. Limpopo Provincial Government) to support conservation, and these financial incentives could be lost were trophy hunting to end. If financial incentives for conservation were to fall, a perceived risk is that local communities and private landowners may turn to alternative sources of income, such as poaching of wildlife or transformation of natural habitats to other forms of land use (e.g. agricultural uses such as livestock ranging[sic]) that provide higher return on investments but with considerably lower conservation value. Some hunting revenue may be able to be replaced by ecotourism. Ecotourists, however, typically travel only to relatively accessible areas.”
I look forward to including your comments in the article.
Kind regards
Trevor
I received a reply from WAP’s Fundraising Manager Matthew Mather notifying me he “shared your email with our press team who will be in touch with you in due course.” After a reminder and despite several weeks passing, they have not responded. Their silence speaks louder than any statement could.
The danger of ideology over evidence
WAP and similar organizations ignore history and science in pursuit of ideological purity. Kenya banned hunting in 1977, cheered on by Western activists, and has since lost more than 75% of its wildlife. Habitat conversion and human-wildlife conflict replaced coexistence. Tourism alone, centred in a few flagship parks, has failed to sustain wildlife on communal lands.
By contrast, Namibia’s 86 community conservancies, covering more than 20% of the country, in a recent period generated a total of US$125 167 327.00 in income for rural people through a combination of hunting and photographic tourism. Populations of desert elephants, black rhino, and lions have rebounded as communities once hostile to wildlife became its fiercest defenders.
Similarly, Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE program generates over US$2.6 million annually in direct benefits to local households. Since its inception in 1989 CAMPFIRE has funding schools, clinics, and food security.
Similar examples of the financial and wildlife benefits for other Southern African countries that allow regulated sustainable hunting are available in peer reviewed papers.
Besides the financial benefits to rural communities WAP’s own study acknowledges the value trophy hunting has in preserving wildlife habitat and notes that “A minimum of 1,394,000 km2 of sub-Saharan Africa is used for trophy hunting, an area greater than currently encompassed by national parks.” This is not theory. This is real, measurable conservation.
When science is silenced
Anti-hunting animal rights groups routinely vilify scientists such as Professors Amy Dickman and Adam Hart, who have spoken publicly in support of regulated trophy hunting. Not because they like hunting, but because they recognize its essential role in funding conservation and sustaining communities. Both have stated clearly that although they personally dislike trophy hunting, until a viable alternative exists, they support it for the sake of species survival. That position takes moral integrity, something entirely absent in organizations like WAP.
Despite acknowledging in their own study that hunting revenues support conservation and livelihoods, WAP continues to campaign for bans. They knowingly promote “public pressure” that could dismantle conservation systems proven to work. That is not a misunderstanding, it is a deliberate act of deception.
Western hypocrisy, African cost
This moral inconsistency runs deep. What makes the crusade of animal rights organizations so troubling is not just that it is misguided, it is hypocritical. Western nations rely on regulated hunting to manage overpopulated deer, boar, and other species, yet condemn Africans for applying the same model with stricter regulation and greater conservation benefit. Worse still, they do so while ignoring the voices of the African governments, scientists, and communities who live with wildlife and have built the most successful conservation models on Earth. At best it’s hypocrisy, at worst it borders on criminal negligence.
Sustainable hunting is not about “trophies.” It is about incentives, science, and survival. Removing it under pressure from foreign activists is not compassion, it is negligence. It is not about animal welfare, it is about control, ignorance, and the profitable business of outrage.
By denying economic incentives for coexistence, organizations like WAP push African communities toward alternatives that destroy wildlife habitat: livestock, agriculture, or even poaching. The outcome is entirely predictable, fewer wild animals, more human suffering.
When Compassion Becomes Catastrophe
Across Europe and North America, animal rights organizations have mastered the art of outrage, weaponizing emotion to win donations while sabotaging the very conservation systems that sustain Africa’s wildlife.
Armed with glossy campaigns and slogans designed to shame rather than inform, they have turned “saving animals” into a lucrative industry built on misinformation. Their relentless crusade against trophy hunting trades science for sentiment and truth for theatre, ignoring what land managers, scientists, and communities across Southern Africa know firsthand that sustainable hunting and photo-tourism together form the only proven conservation model that works at scale.
By undermining this reality, these organizations strip away vital funding, destroy community incentives, and push wildlife closer to extinction. It is destructive. We urge policymakers in Europe, the UK, and the United States to recognize this reality.
African conservation must be guided by science, sovereignty, and the lived experience of those who coexist with wildlife, not by the fundraising strategies of foreign NGOs.
Animal rights organizations are not saving Africa’s wildlife. They are endangering it. And unless the world wakes up to that truth, the next great conservation tragedy will be written not by poachers or profiteers, but by activists who mistook sentiment for science.
A call for accountability
The Sustainable Use Coalition of Southern Africa (SUCo-SA) represents landholders, conservationists, and communities across the region who live daily with wildlife and the risks it brings. We know the truth, when wildlife has value, it is protected; when it doesn’t, it disappears.
World Animal Protection has chosen fundraising over facts and ideology over integrity. It acknowledges the value of trophy hunting while driving the very public pressure it admits could destroy wildlife and livelihoods. Could the incentive for driving this public pressure be the just shy of a £1Million per week WAP’s fundraising machine extracts from the public?
By knowingly endangering species conservation and the welfare of rural Africans, WAP’s actions are not just hypocritical, they are immoral. And borders on criminal negligence.
Republished with kind permission of Trevor Oertel and the Sustainable Use Coalition of Southern Africa (SUCo-SA).