BY JOHN NASH
The ‘animal rights’ tin-rattler and lynx magicker, Eduardo Gonçalves, has a long history of dodgy antics. John Nash has been on top of them for years. Seems that Gonçalves is at it again. MPs take note. And others wielding useful authority.
Eduardo Gonçalves is at it again, trying to sneak his nasty little willie into the nether regions of the Mother of Parliaments. There is a Grand Committee Hall debate on Trophy Hunting Imports scheduled for 11th November, where Eduardo – sorry, MPs – will publicise his business by dramatically stampeding a herd of willing donkeys through the room, like any Freeman driving sheep across London Bridge to assert his right to deceive the nation. It will also give those lesser mortals, the backbenchers, a very exciting soapbox to parade their importance and superior virtues through their undying love for wild animals, while the House library will dutifully produce the usual soft toilet-paper fact-sheet to wipe their consciences clean.
It is all a nonsense, of course: political theatre, a publicity stunt and a gross misuse of Parliament. You have to admit that Eduardo, with no zoological or conservation qualifications whatsoever, fields his BA in Politics & Parliamentary Studies from Leeds Uni with persistent, rat-like cunning.
His business, The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, is precisely what it says on the tin… it is a campaign… it doesn’t save or conserve any actual animals, and arguably, if he ever succeeded in banning trophy hunting, it would kill many millions of animals and destroy vast areas of the world that are presently supported by the hunting industry and thus protected from human development. His business collects money to campaign, and campaigns to collect money – a self-serving vortex with photogenic and charismatic animals on the tin. He sells piety. Simples. It’s very, very clever. It conserves only his Golden Goose.
Like any lothario trying to slip into his moist and flattered victim, Eduardo plays origami with the truth. He is to hunting what Diane Abbott is to mathematics, while coincidentally enough, he does to facts precisely what Ms Abbott MP was perhaps doing to the Honourable Member from Islington all those years ago. Here are “10 Key Facts About Trophy Hunting”, gems from his website of puffery:
Hype 1. “Around 30,000 endangered animals are killed by trophy hunters every year. About 60% are shot by Americans.” They are not endangered animals. They may be from species that are, in some way, vulnerable globally, but they are animals harvested from large populations and sustainable sources locally – and subsequently eaten, endangering nothing.
Hype 2. “Hunters from just 12 European & North American countries kill 90% of all trophy animals.” Correct, perhaps, but these are countries with the tradition, management and necessary scientific regulations to ensure proper control and sustainability. Unregulated hunters – poachers – are a real danger to wild animals, but the biggest danger is human civilisation. We gobble up the natural environment (and its animals) at an astonishing rate where it is unprotected by either consumptive or non-consumptive tourism.
Hype 3. “The most popular animals are bears, followed by monkeys and elephants. Giraffes, lions, hippopotamuses and leopards are popular too.” That’s because dangerous wild bears need management at source, monkeys are serious agricultural pests, giraffes and lions available for hunting are plentiful and raised for the purpose and consumption, and dangerous hippos and leopards, locally plentiful, are covered by very strict scientific and local controls.
Hype 4. “Hunters’ trophies include bodies, penises, feet, ears, and (elephant) trunks.” A rubbish claim about meat and curiosities (not particularly trophies) designed to upset you, prevent you from thinking rationally, and pull on your purse strings. The reality is not so different to the strange bits inside your supermarket frankfurters and hot dogs. The reality is that hunters keep the inedible bits… the “bodies” get eaten. It’s the same with deer in the UK – a lot of venison is harvested and a few trophies and curiosities get kept.
Hype 5. “Canada allows trophy hunters to shoot Polar bears. Russia and the US have banned this.” That’s because where they are locally over-abundant in Canada, very limited hunting of the surplus is scientifically managed and very strictly controlled, within Inuit tradition and the coastal economy.
Hype 6. “Trophy hunters are allowed to kill critically endangered animals such as Black rhinos.” They are, but only under extreme and necessary circumstances… old bulls, that kill other rhinos but are less fertile than young bulls. Removing them prevents unnecessary deaths and increases the birth rate. Where hunting is permitted (at up to $350,000 a time), numbers are rising, not falling, and with white rhinos, many are being sent from hunting nations to re-populate non-hunting nations who lost theirs.
Hype 7. “Wildlife populations have collapsed by 73% since 1970. Numbers are increasing in countries like Kenya, India and Costa Rica where trophy hunting is banned.” Ha-ha, Eduardo at his shitbox finest. Kenya has actually lost more than 80% of its large wild animals since banning hunting, because the wildlife became worthless outside tourist parks, while in South Africa numbers have increased twentyfold in the same period, all extra to the parks, because hunting and venison give wildlife value to compete against cows and goats. India just about lost most of its wildlife over the last 200 years, some due to uncontrolled colonial hunting but most to human encroachment. From 1972, an attempt has been made to turn the tide in India by protecting habitat, and a couple of species, including the wonderful tiger, have increased. Presently, cheetahs have been sent from hunting countries to replace India’s extinct cheetahs. Costa Rica, a quarter the size of the UK, is now a single reserve, drawing tourists from the USA and Canada – great news and very welcome, but there are not enough tourists to support the vast trophy hunting sub-Saharan Africa.
Hype 8. “Photographic safaris generate far more money for conservation and local communities, and generate far more jobs too.” It can take 100 photo-tourists to replace the revenue from one trophy hunter, and 100 tourists use 100 times more food, energy and infrastructure. About a third of the protected Sub-Saharan Africa wildlife estate is supported by photo-tourism and much of it requires huge government and charity support. About two-thirds is self-supported by hunting and requires no other support. To ban hunting in the 1.3 million sq kms of areas presently supported by hunting, and then share out the photo-tourists, even if possible (they won’t go to remote, arid or insect-ridden areas), would make all of it non-viable and the land would then be turned over to human settlement, the wildlife lost.
Hype 9. “Trophy hunters who shoot over 100 different animals get a special prize from the industry. Hundreds of hunters have been given this award.” Correct, but look at the context… in the whole of modern recorded hunting, only perhaps 300 hunters have achieved the award, all of them by hunting legally. None contributed to the extinction of any species – there is not a single scientific record of any animal rendered extinct by modern regulated hunting, and plenty of evidence showing increases. Hundreds of thousands of animals are hunted in South Africa every year, but the numbers keep rising because it is excellent (green) use of the land, with 6000 trophy hunts and 200,000 meat hunts that won’t be banned anyway. Banning trophy hunting won’t save a single animal, and may well get a lot of them replaced by more valuable cows. Meanwhile, up to five million tons of wild animals are consumed annually in sub-Saharan Africa, and according to the IPBES, a million species of plants and animals are endangered by human civilisation – because everything animal, vegetable or mineral that we consume comes from nature. Ironically, Gonçalves’ celebrities who shout “ban trophy hunting!” the loudest are those who consume the most, indirectly killing millions of animals with their lavish lifestyles.
Hype 10. “Opinion polls in Africa, Europe and North America all show huge majorities opposed to trophy hunting – including in the USA.” That, dear reader, is a testament to the sheer effectiveness of industrial-scale deceptive, parasitic propaganda of organisations like Ban Trophy Hunting, who intercept and trouser donations that would be better spent in Africa. Then they spend all their spoils upsetting people, not helping animals. Meanwhile, you can’t impose Disneyesque Western urban morality and sensitivity onto the rural lives of African people who have kept their own wild animals. It is moral colonialism.
Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to describe it, and it will be in action on 11 November. Eduardo has long form – his words: “previously, Eduardo set up SOS Lynx – a successful campaign group launched to stop the extinction of the Iberian Lynx. Since then, hundreds of Iberian Lynxes have been reintroduced back into the wild, and the species is no longer classed as critically endangered.” The campaign might have been successful (according to Deshok, his website designers, “In one day SOSLynx received over 230,000 unique visitors and continues to generate online donations”), but for who? The real lynx releases were part of a huge, multinational Programme and nothing to do with sticky-fingered Eduardo… according to the Head of the CIC in Portugal, the Programme Director of the lynx project, Pedro Rocha, said he didn’t even know Gonçalves.
You name a bandwagon, Eduardo has ridden it, including time as CEO of those recreational hooligans, the League Against Cruel Sports, enjoying “a wide-ranging career includes spells as a House of Commons researcher, radio presenter, investigative journalist, and … International Communications Director at The Climate Group”… chutzpah on steroids.
My advice to MPs? When Eduardo tries to slip a charming Russell Brand down your political trousers, just say “No”.
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.