July 4, 2023 • 54 mins
This past Sunday marked eight years since the killing of Cecil the Lion. Cecil’s death started a debate over the humanity of trophy hunting, the killing of wild animals for sport. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits with Daily Show writer Joseph Opio and author of the book “Undercover Trophy Hunter,” Eduardo Gonçalves, to break down the history of trophy hunting in Africa and the growing opposition to it.
Original air date: April 19, 2022
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast
that goes a little deeper into segments and topics that
originally aired on The Daily Show. This is what this
podcast is. This podcast is like you have go get
a haircut. You get a fresh haircut, right, and then
at the end of that haircut, you lay down and
they give you that hot towel and the steam just
seeps into your pores and just for a couple of seconds,
(00:29):
life is perfect and none of the problems that you
were thinking about were permeating it to your subconscious and
then they snatch that towel off and you're back out
into the world with your problem. That's what this podcast is,
the wonderful hot towel of progress. Today we are discussing
trophy hunting in Africa. This is a topic that Trevor
(00:49):
covered during the segment we call if you don't know,
now you know? Play the clip.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What's interesting about trophy hunting is that we all assume
people do it because they don't care about the animals.
But according to the hunting community, they do this because
they care too much.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I know it sounds contradictory, but hunters love animals.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Hunters are the ones that are giving so much back
to preserving these wild species.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
A lot of people talk about the conservation that hunters
are the real.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Cos everybody thinks that the easiest part is pulling the trigger,
and it's not. That's the hardest part. But you've gained
so much respect and so much appreciation for that animal.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Wow, that's one hell of a way to show you
appreciation and respect. Another argument trophy hunters use is that
they're actually getting rid of the slower, weaker animals who
are holding back the rest of the herd, but that
might not be the full story.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Trophy hunters kill some of the biggest, most magnificent animals,
which is bad for.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
The health of the species because genes may no longer
be passed on to future generations. By kicking those guys
out of the gene pool, it weakens the genes of
the entire population. Over the last thirty years, the average
size of a male lion has dropped, specifically because of
trophy hunting.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
That's right. Despite what they say, trophy hunters actually like
to target the strongest specimens, which I don't support, but honestly,
I mean I understand it's called trophy hunting.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
For a reason.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, you want it to look like you battled an
alpha male to the death, not like you snuck into
its nursing home and then smothered one of the lions
with the pillows.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
It's like, go to sleep, sca, go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Joining us to help break down this topic. I have
two people. One of them is a Daily Show writer
and the Pride of Uganda, one of the most stylish people,
and he is the first person on the last person
off the dance floor at the Daily Show Christmas party,
not that that detail has anything to do. Get the
expertise on this topic, mister Joe opio Jo, How you been, brother, I've.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Been doing great.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
We're back in yourfice, as you probably know, so we're
slowly easing back into and the pandemic.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
You know, it was tough.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
It was tough, but nothing that someone who grew up
in Africa hasn't faced before. So yeah, I'm happy to
have the pleasure to discuss this particular topic.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Joe. I'm happy that you're that we're back in the
office as well, because now we have somebody to help
you with technology to get you on the show. That's
why it's been so long. We've been trying to get
you on the show, but getting you to set up
a microphone at that again a topic, then that's nothing
to do with what we're discussing today. Also joining us
is an anti poaching activist and the author of the
book Undercover Trophy Hunter. He is Eduardo Gonsalvez. Eduardo, how
(03:38):
are you doing over there? You're over there in the UK?
Where are you joining us from? Right now?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I am in the cold and great UK, and and wow,
it's it's pretty grim over there. And yeah, but look,
I'm very happy to talk about this issue. Great fan
of the show. We do actually get to see it
every now and again here in the UK. And yeah,
I mean whatever you want to know, I'm going to
see if I can answer this questions.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Well, I appreciate you for joining us from somewhere as
grim and as dark, you know, Like that's why I
like Europe. Europe it's just grim and gray. Now America
we have a grim and gray future, big difference, but
nice and sunny. So Joe, I'll start with you. A
lot of topics on the show usually come from writers
(04:22):
that are close to the issue or have some level
of connection to the issue. In the real world. How
did trophy hunting in Africa come into play? And whose
idea was it to do a segment on this.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
It's kind of had to attribute a credit to a
particular person. But I think this was mainly Trival because
the topic had been pocolating in the air. People had
been talking about it for some time. And this is
if you know Treva, this is a classic Triva segment.
It's global in scope, it's complex in nature, It's very
(04:56):
very nuanced because Treva hates things that are black and white,
loves exploring the gray, and this topic like gave him
that and so so of course about Africa mostly so
that was close.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
And there to his heart.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
But I think it the conversation was in there, especially
because pictures had themaged of Dawn and Eric pausing with
these animals they had killed, they had slaughtered, and then
like a few years before that, there was of course
talk about the dentist and Ceci the lion. So it
was a topic that was in there, and it was
the kind of topic that usually because of the qualities
(05:32):
are discuss resonates with Trevor, and so he set about
him or cracked him of researchers they tagged him to
work on it, and they brought the research in and
it was still as engaging as I thought he would be,
and so we sat down wrote it and then came
up with the great ender, which was the sketch about
(05:54):
a rich African coming to New York to hunt down
white people's pets. And the segment was a goal, but
it was a tough, tough segment. It was a tough
segment to do more than more simply because it involved
the slaughtering of animals. And the thing is, the Daily
Show is a comedy show, so we have to make
(06:14):
the thing funny.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
And that was tough.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
That was really tough because it's like trying to do
there's got a segment about the war crimes that Russia
is committing in the Ukraine. You have to make people laugh.
You're not a straight news program. People have come for
the comedy, so that made it tough. But it was
I thought, and Trevor thought, and the entire Daily Show
team thought. An issueth exploring.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Now see for me being dumb American and my scope
and knowledge on this. It's basically hunting video games where
you go on some big game reserve where you know,
you pay money, and you pay for whatever you kill.
But then there's also the aspect of poaching, which is
a little like it's all abhorrent, but one version of legal,
one version stuff. What were some of the reasons that
(06:59):
you all started discovering as to why people participate in
trophy hunting.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
When we started doing the research and when the tag
team got into it, we found that it's a sport.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Two people they call it a sport.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Of course, the argument that people are against it say,
this is a sport where one team has no idea
that they're participating. If it's a sport, then both teams
should know that they're competing, and both teams should accurally
be on a level competing field.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
But we animals need yeah, yeah, we realize.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
That so many people were passionate about it. So many people,
like both pro and anti were passionate about it. The hunters,
of course, have their reasons, and among the reasons, I
think the two that really stuck out to me were
one that actually, trophy hunting is one of the most
effective ways.
Speaker 6 (07:52):
This is what they said.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
It's one of the most effective ways to conserve and
then get species and animals. I see it word or
laughing because they thinks that's laughing about. But there are
these people really genuinely believe this. They go like, hey,
it's like I feel like it's like you know when
it's like if it's like if your parent was abusing
you and then he was going like, yeah, this is
(08:14):
the best way to raise you. So they were saying, actually,
one of the things they said is we'll love animals.
The hunters genuinely say this and they believe it. They say,
we'll love animals and that's why we hunt them. And
then they say, actually, they had this thing is shooting
the animals, and of course the joint that would be,
you know, you can just shoot pictures of the animals
you love them so much, so they said they had
(08:35):
the thing is to pull the trigger.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
And again it feels like an abusive.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Parent telling you this hurts me more than it hurts you,
but I have to do it because I love you.
But they genuinely believe this, and of course they also
genuinely believe that every money they pay to hunt these
big game animals actually hopes conserve the animals. So for me,
that was very, very surprising, and it was it was
the genuine belief that they have that they love the
(09:01):
animals and they're helping conserve the animals by hunting them.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
That surprised me most well.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I am appreciative that I was able to be in
a sketch with you on this and show off my
inauthentic African accent. You're authentic, first of all. Now, what
you're not gonna do is disrespect my accent that I've
been working on. I've been I've been trained at Julio.
Now you say Julio, it's next door.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
I'm saying your accent gives cultural appropriation and badening.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Dear America, for the past few decades, you have come
to Africa to shoot our animals. I must say, you
do this to help us, and we are so grateful.
We want to return the deva. You see all of
these straight dogs and cats that are running across your country.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
I'm going to cure them.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's right. As part of a new program, rich Africans
will pay to hunt straight dogs and cats in America.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
How are you so terrible?
Speaker 5 (09:59):
I know white people have better African accents, and.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You're insulting, and I do not appreciate your insults.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
But I always always always love I always love doing that.
And we've done a.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Badge of sketches with you where like you have to
do the African voice Afghan accent, and because people laugh
at me because they think I can never don an
American accent, It's impossible.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
I can't.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
And then I look at Roy and I go like, well, okay,
at least it also goes the other way.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Because you know, my African, my African accent is so
terrible that Africans don't even get offended by it, Like
they send me messages on Twitter and stuff, and it
just goes that was terrible, Roy, well done.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
They treat you the way a kind of getten teacher
treats a kind of getting as drawn a stick man.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
Well done. It's very because I'm.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Like, even they have, you know, the other African who
normally they are very patronizing towards you. And this is
because everyone assumes, everyone assumes that an African accent. Everyone
assumes that Troy, you know, stand up comedy next door
ordinay I should be able to do.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
An Afghan accident. And then wow, absolutely yeah, we know
why he went to a knockoff Goodyad.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Juliad Eduardo, Now you swimming waters on this topic where
there are no punch lines, there are no jokes. It
is straight up stop this action from happening, you know,
as an advocate for the cars to ban trophy hunting.
How did you feel watching the segment? Because I always
(11:30):
feel like with issues this serious, you could always watch
it and go oh, but you didn't mention the thing
the other thing. So how did it feel seeing the
segment air?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know, trophy hunting. I don't know if it stopped
shocking me. I mean, it shocks me, and it doesn't
shock me because I've now spoken to and read the
accounts of so many trophy hunters and the things that
they say as if it was a normal thing to say.
I mean, there's one guy who was a president of
Safari Club International talking about how the most intimate and
(12:05):
most moving thing you can do in life is to
hunt an elephant, and he talks about the joy that
he feels when he sees a lion's head blow up
in a cloud of smoke, you know, And they talk
about it's like losing your virginity when you shoot your
first animal. It's like it's beyond parody. It's almost if
these people exist on a different plane, they are not
part of the human race. And you know what, that
(12:27):
actually makes it sometimes a bit of a difficult issue
to engage because it is so I mean, it's so
disgusting for a lot of people, it is so upsetting
to see these essentially defenseless animals killed just for fun
and whatever. The trophy hunters say that retroactively try to
justify it. They don't fly halfway round the world to
kill an animal for anything other than the pleasure of it,
(12:50):
because that's what they enjoy doing it. And we actually
sort of thought, well, look, I mean, there are some
people who just turn away from the issue because it
is so distressing. I mean, is there another way we
can engage with them? So we actually set up a
fake trophy hunting company. It's got a website. It's called
Trophy Hunting Holidays dot com. It's kind of like the
Amazon of trophy hunters. These are the click and kill
(13:11):
travel firm specialists. And we've recorded these mock TV adverts.
So we've got a couple of actors in there, and
you've got these guys there, come and earn you are
stripes shoot a zebra today, just one thousand dollars. We've
got a series of these adverts going out there and
we thought, you know, is this a way to engage
with you. But all of the stuff that it was
in there, it was all based on one hundred percent fact.
(13:34):
There is actually a website. It's a bit like the
Amazon for trophy hunters. It's called bookjorhunt dot com. You
can literally go on there and check an animal that
you want to shoot. So it's got three hundred different
different species, three hundred and fifty different species. You can
choose from everything from squirrels and skunks to lions and leopards.
I mean, you name it. You want to shoot a kangaroo,
(13:56):
a wallabee. I mean it's all there, and yeah, it's
got all the details how you get there, how and
then you know they'll help you find somebody to skin
it and preserve it and take it home for your Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
They still treat their employers way better than Jeff Bezos
streets is.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
I guess they have that going for them, you know, in.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The trophy hunting world. This is one of the things
that because I've spoken, you know, to people in Africa
who are village headman their community chiefs, their local MPs
and counselors and ask them what they think about it,
and they say, look, whatever these guys say, we don't
get to see any of the money. They say, you know,
money comes from trophy hunting back into the communities, Well,
(14:40):
we ain't seen a cent of it. And the only
people who are employed by these but in terms of local, local,
rural communities, you know, they've got a menial job as
a skinner or a cook, or as a cleaner, they'll
only have two or three. The money stays either in
the US or Europe, because a lot of European American
(15:00):
companies own these trophy hunting outfitters, that's the name the
companies that do this, or of course you know, they
sell these holidays in the big conventions in Las Vegas,
in Germany and Spain, and the money stays in those
accounts in those countries. So the amount of money that
ever reaches somebody at the end in the community is zilch.
(15:21):
I mean, everyone I've spoken to says, look, you know,
it's crazy. We don't see any of it, and we
simply don't understand this because look, even if somebody here
is really hungry or really desperate. They cannot go and
touch that animal. But a big, fat white American can
fly halfway around the world and kill that same animal
(15:43):
just for fun, because that's all it is. It's for pleasure,
it's for entertainment, it's for joy. And when you talk
to the trophy hunters, as I have, I pretended to
be a trophy hunter to sort of get behind the
scenes if you like to actually say, look, come on,
you're talking to one of one of us. Now we're
the same, we're both what do you really think about this?
And you know they're telling me, lookay, it's great, it's
(16:05):
so much fun. You know, we'd go hunting in the
day and then at night we'd grab a few beers.
Can we go and shoot some of the monkeys out
of the trees just for fun? And I actually say
this as if this is a normal, acceptable human thing
to say, this is their mindset, their mentality.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
That almost feels like the craziest undercover operation, because what
if they go like, oh, you have to kill an
animal to prove that you're not a fed The thing
for me, one of the problems I have on Fast value.
Forget the moral and ethical questions. The big problem I
have with it is the optics as an African, the
optics of a white man with a gun storming Africa
(16:42):
just isn't great without history with colonialism. The thing is
Africans have a lot more pressing issues right now, so
maybe trophy huntings they're not exactly at the top of
the list, but the optics, if I want a trophy hunter,
I would say, the optics just doesn't save my cause
(17:02):
it's the.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
History of the continuation.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
With the history of colonialism, white men coming into Africa
with guns and then saying we're doing this for your
own benefit, for your own good.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
The optics isn't great.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And then also there's the fact that who is the
fast of trophy hunting in the West.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
It's done Junior and Eric Trump.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And I'm saying, if the first of your platform, or
if the first of the thing you're doing is don't
Junior and Elk Trump, you need to change the damp post.
You need to find you need to find someone more
like Cable, like you know, get Dolly pattern.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Baby, You'll do something.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
After the break, I want to get into it with
you at WAD on the history of trophy hunting and
how you got into this because I'm always interested in
how people find the thing that's their thing, you know,
Like for you, it's trophy hunting. For me, it's winning
askers for wonderful accent work in many many American films. Uh,
(18:03):
it's beyond the scenes. Who will be right back, Yes,
we'll come back to beyond these scenes. I am Roy
Wood Jr. We are discussing trophy hunting in Africa with
us an anti trophy hunting activists Eduardo Gonsalves and Ugandan
Daily Show. Right at Joseph Opio.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Hello, Joseph, your accent is more facive.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
It's like you're putting on African face, but like in audio,
like folm, it's it's offensive to me as an African.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's I speak from blacker face, not black face, blacker face,
sword water. How far back? Let's go back, Let's let's
just dig it to the origins of trophy hunting. How
far back does the history of this terror go? I
refrain from calling it a sport. That's the other thing
they try to do to get people to get society
(18:55):
on board. I'm a big game hunter and sport like, No,
how far back does this horrible shit go? And what
got you involved in it.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And they also call themselves outdoorsmen. That's the other kind
of yeah, And they talk they don't talk about killing animals.
They call about harvesting, harvesting game. There's all kind of
ways that they used to you know, it's sort of
smoke and mirrors to try to deflect from the reality
and anyway, going back to the history of it, yet
there's little bits of it going back, you know, a
few thousand years, but really it begins with the Brits
(19:24):
in Africa and in Asia. So it's the beginning of
the British Empire, the colonies, the colonization of Africa and
of Asia, and they exported this sport. It was to
give the officers something to do as a nice hobby.
It was to sort of give them a bit of
a break, something positive to do. And then it got
quite interesting because they would write about it. And so
(19:46):
then the Times in London would you know, carry these
epic tales of these adventurers, et cetera. And that was
the nineteenth century and then that and you had guys
who were taking i mean huge numbers. You know, there
was one trop He hunt alone, which involved the British
royal family actually including the then Prince of Wales, and
they engaged in this absolute blood bath of a hunt
(20:08):
during which they actually extinguished a species. So the last
remaining member in the wild of the quagger, which is
a species a bit like the zebra, is thought to
have been shot by the Prince of Wales and they
literally had blood up to their elbows. There's these graphic
accounts of the hunt. Come the twentieth century, then the
Americans get involved, thanks largely to Theodore Roosevelt. So he
with the help of the British colonies, he goes on
(20:31):
this train trip and they laid on that the Brits
lay on this luxury train for him and his son
Kermit to go around Africa, and during that year they
shoot over five hundred animals, including lions, lots of lions.
He loved, loved lions. Theodore Roosevelt loved lions. And they
actually built this seat that would be stuck on the
front of the train, so and he would sit there
(20:51):
with his rifle training would be chugging on this year
animal line or whatever. He'd shoot it, they'd stop the train,
they'd get the lion's body on board, skin it cetera,
and he would carry on on this great festival and
it just grows into this industry.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So something built like a jump seat at the front
of the train. Yeah, like one of those side cars
on a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
I don't remember that scene in Night at the Museum,
but wow, when you say the thing about the British
reform actually leading to the extinction with species, and I'm
right now thinking wow, So Prince Andrew is not the worst.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
He's got competition that gets you thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, so he's on the train, he's shooting lions, and
walk us through more of the evolution of that.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
It just becomes this organized industry and it really takes
off in the seventies when a guy called C. J.
McRoy sets up Safari Club International. Now you've got this
major industrial lobby group. And it's also you know, it
creates an awards system. I mean, it's got about eighty
different prizes that you can get for shooting lots of animals.
So one of these prizes is called the Hunting Achievement Award.
(22:02):
Now it's got all of these different levels. To get
to the Copper prize, copper level, you've got to have
shot animals from at least ten different species, Bronze, twenty
different species, Silver fifty. Then you go up to get
to gold medal, you've got to shoot animals from at
least one hundred different species. And that's not the end
of it, because there's a diamond prize as well. To
(22:25):
do that. Yeah, you've got to shoot animals from at
least one hundred and twenty five different species around the world.
And they've got to be big animals, not just little ones.
They've got to be big enough to count. And so
it's this organized, I mean mass slaughter. That This is
the thing that really gets me about trophy hunting. It
is not meeting any human need of any kind whatsoever.
(22:46):
You can't argue it in the same way as food
or for skins or whatever. This is just to feed vanity,
because that is these people. They take selfies and they
take the souvenirs, and that for them is sport. That's
what makes it fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
If it's so fundamentally wrong, why do the governments in
African countries support it. You just can't be moving through
Africa without the paperwork, so you damn sure just can't
be walking around with a did tiger in your carry
on bag, acting like you didn't come to the country
to murder animals. So why do they support it, edwardal.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Well, simply corruption. I'm afraid to say it, but you
know there is a lot, you know, when there are
those trophy fees paid, those fees do not go to conservation,
They do not go to local communities. They either stay
in the hands of officials or they just disappear. Look,
let's take the example of Cecil the lion. He was
a beloved line, had this wonderful black mane, and he
(23:39):
was radiocollared. He was being researched by Oxford University scientists.
They were looking at what they were actually looking at
the impact of trophy hunting on wildline populations actually, and
they found that about a third of the lions they
were studying, even though they had radio collars on, were
being shot by trophy hunters. So even the fact that
were visibly part of an official government research program didn't
(23:59):
protect them the hunter's bullets. So Walter Palmer, this American dentist,
he goes and shoots this line where he shouldn't. He
didn't have a permit for it. And you know then
they tried to conceal the radio collar. There's all sorts
of shenanigans, and there's a guy called Johnny Rodrigues who
was a Zimbabwean conservationist. He blows the whistle on it.
It gets out into the wider world and it becomes
(24:20):
one of the most talked about stories in the world,
largely because, in my view, people didn't know trophy hunting
was still going on. It was a shock. It was
thinking people think, hey, surely this ended with the colonies,
with imperialists, with all of that. You know, this ended
in the days of empire. People shooting lines for fun.
And you know, the trophy hunting industries were very hard
to actually keep this quiet. You know, why isn't this
(24:42):
talked about. They work quite hard actually to keep it
under wraps, and yet the numbers of animals that are
being shot enormous. You know, a trophy hunter shoots an
animal every three minutes. Even during COVID when people can't
fly around the world there's all these travel restrictions. Americans
were flying to Africa. They were shooting black rhino cheetah elephant,
(25:02):
who are now endangered. By the way, there's only seven
thousand cheaters left in the world. There's less there's about
three thousand black rhinos. This is going on even when
supposedly we're under lockdown, people can't travel the world, and
it's just so so nonsensical. But it's barbaric. It's barbaric,
and I'll tell you why, because again, this is one
of the things that doesn't often get talked about, the
(25:23):
pain and the suffering that the animals undergo. Right, these
people who shoot animals, they're not professionals, they're not snipers.
These guys. These are guys who have you know, they
shoot a gun every now and again. And what they
do is they're shooting these animals from two hundred yards
away because they don't want to get hurt by you know,
a lion or whatever coming anywhere near it. So they're
shooting through the scope and they're not shooting them in
(25:44):
the head, which would be you know, an instant's brain.
The shot exactly kills shot, because that would make the
trophy look ugly. All right, you can skin that and
put that on your wall. It looks pretty rough. So
what they do is they try to do this heart's
lung shot through the shoulder. Now, if you're an amateur shot.
You're trying to do that from two hundred yards, and
(26:04):
you've got to count on the animals staying still. You've
got to count on there being no wind right moisturing
right now. There's been actually a number of state authorities
in the US that have looked at trophy hunting in
the States, and the numbers about to say over half
of the animals that are shot by trophy hunters, they
don't die instantaneously. They die these slow, painful desks like Cecil,
(26:30):
you know, because Cecil, right, what's his name, Walter Palmer.
He was trying to win this prize from Safari Club International,
which is for shooting big game with novelty weapons like
crossbows and bow and longbow and handguns, because they actually
want you. They give you a special prize if you
shoot an elephant with a handgun, okay, And he was
trying to get one of these prizes for shooting a
(26:51):
lion with a long bow, and he shot Cecil. But
Cecil didn't die instantaneously, and he managed to somehow crawl
under the bush and couldn't find him, and he wouldn't
take a shot with a rifle to put him out
of his misery because he wouldn't then be eligible for
that prize. So he thinks, Ah, I'm gonna go home,
have dinner, you know, have a sleep, kind of come
out and see if the animal is dead in the morning.
(27:12):
He goes back out in the morning with the professional hunter,
that is the guy who takes him out. They can't
see Cecil because he's still kind of hidden under the book,
but they can hear him. They can hear him because
he is gasping, is gurgling. He is literally drowning on
the blood in his lungs. That is the reality of
what happens with most animals. And I know because when
(27:35):
I spoke to a lot of trophy hunters when I
was under cover, and they were telling me about the
absolutely shocking injuries that they were inflicting on animals, and
they were laughing. They were laughing as if this was
a funny thing and you could actually just talk about
this normally.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
When I was reading up on Cecward's case, I was
shocked that initially he was in a protected alia area
where he couldn't be handed, and then they lured him out.
They actually used the bait to lure him out, and
then of.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Course into an area where he.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
Could, yes, why he could be shot. And then when
he did that, he didn't die. So it took twelve
hours for him to find it, for them find to
find him and then kill him. And I was like, frankly,
like that that seems that seems like endless agony, like
twelve hours of.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
When I was talking to conservations about it, they were saying,
you know, the hunters, they treat these national parks as mines.
They're mining the animals because they're protected and they're you know,
healthy and so on. So they lure them out literally,
these national parks like the Harangi National Park, which is
where Cecils had his territory. All of these national parks
they surround they surround them with these estates and so yeah,
(28:48):
they lure them. And but well that's what they do
with so many animals. They do that with leopards, they
do that with you know, they set packs of dogs
on on these creatures as well. And the numbers that
are being shot, you know, some of these big trophy
hunters that are shooting hundreds of lions each right, this
is where we're at with some of these species. We
are in an extinction emergency Lions experts are telling me
(29:09):
that there's probably fewer than ten thousand lions left on
planet Earth. In nineteen seventy the number was around two
hundred thousand. Okay, so in fifty years the lion population
has absolutely collapsed. In Africa from two hundred thousand to
ten thousand elephants. You look at what's happened to the
elephants in Africa. There were twenty million when the British
turned up in Africa and started shooting them. There's now
(29:32):
four hundred thousand. And actually this is how I got
into the issue, because this was the president of Botswana,
the outgoing one seretzi Ian Karma, and he banned trophy
hunting in Botswana because of what was happening to elephants
throughout Africa. And because of that, Botswana now has a
third of all the remaining African elephants on the planet.
(29:52):
One third are in this one country, which is the
side of well size of France, so it's not it's
not a big country. It's got twice as many as
any other country Africa. And they protected them and the
alful populations they're stabilized. The only other place where there's
good news for elephants is Kenya? Why because Kenya banned
trophy hunting in nineteen seventy seven, and we're saying this
(30:13):
pattern rights across the board line. Populations are collapsing excepting Kenya.
Elephant populations collapsing excepting Kenya. Rhino populations are collapsing, excepting Kenya.
Speaker 6 (30:24):
One thing at or raised Alia was the issue of corruption.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Right.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
One of the things I noticed when we even did
the segment.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
One of the reactions from Trophee Hunders was we would
like hope conservation, but we can't hope that Africans are corrupt.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
That should be Africans to fix.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Right.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
There was saying you can't.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Hold that they are just stopping hunting, just don't hurt.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
Yeah, it's the same reason people went like, oh, we
want petronized companies which use sweatshops, because it could have said, oh,
as we just buy, it's up to Apple, it's up
to Nike to actually pay people. Well, but people went like, no,
we can't actually more support the company when we know
the money we paid doesn't trickle down to the walkers.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
In this case, the big game companies that take you
out on the hunting.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Yeah, it's exactly and what has shown you s shows
the money doesn't trickle down.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
So Eduardo, to that point when you wrote this book,
when you you go on this journey of being an
undercover trophy hunter, you know, there's a lot of questions
that I have a lot of it You've already touched on.
But I want to talk to you about you man,
like getting first hand accounts from trophy hunters and they're
just talking about animals like they nothing. Talk to me
(31:35):
a little bit about the emotional told that that journey
took on you and how were you able to kind
of deal with that? Like, how did how do you
how do I say this nicely, Joe? How did you
not kill some of these folks when you was on
the hunt with them, pretending that you was cool with hunting?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Well, do you know what? I was saved from having
to actually go out and hunt by COVID because there
were these travel restrictions, so a lot of the British
hunters they couldn't actually travel. So instead what they were
they were telling me about the hunts that they had
been on the previous year, and they were telling me
in a lot of detail. But yeah, you know it
does drive you to the point of madness because you
kind of think this is like a parallel universe that
(32:16):
you're inhabiting or invading. Even do you just want to
scream out and say, how can you say such a thing?
How can you even use that language, use those words
as if it's a normal thing to say. But you
know it's really because I've been doing some more research
on writing another book at the moment, and I've been
speaking to a lot of psychologists and criminologists, and they're
telling me, you know, these people isn't just you know,
(32:37):
it isn't just sad. This is bad, This is dangerous.
These people are potentially dangerous. I mean, there is this
proven link. I mean, that's why the FBI in the
US right has now class serious animal cruelty as a
Grade A felony. Why because of all the links that
people who involved in that have got to drug running,
gun crime, and so on. So you know, there's a
(32:58):
lot of very serious crime involved here. And you look
at for example, in the US, I mean, the guys
who are behind that terb tragedy, the Columbine High School massacres.
You know, they started out as animal abusers. The Boston strangler.
He was a guy who started out as an animal abuser.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
You're saying the lack of empathy isn't just limited to
it spreads all across. But then won't some of your
hunters say you're using like the few selective bad animal abuser.
Can you know add cruel adults when they say you're
using them to paint the whole hunting community.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, I'm not a poacher. I hunt mine, yes, proper money,
in a proper reserve. I go to a reserve. I'm
not like those hoodlums out there.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
I'm not like because I.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Know I say, is that that's one of the indicators.
That's like one of the behavioral indicators, like when a
kid is growing up. If a kid is cruel towards animals,
then you need to intervene immediatey orders. But then want
trophy hunters say, you're actually, you know, you're using like
a very selective rare and small sumple size to paint
(34:10):
the hall.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Look, I'm sure there's some very nice people out there
who go trophy hunting. Okay that in many ways I
see bit respectable and so on. But this is the
facts of the data. So when you look at the data.
And this is the criminologists and the psychologist who are
telling me this, right, and they're showing me the data saying, look,
you are seeing that people who involved in trophy hunting
are more likely to be involved in domestic violence, They
(34:33):
are more likely to be involved in child abuse. You know,
there is even in the cycle of the year, so
just before the hunting season begins and you get that
kind of buck fever thing, that's when domestic violence also peaks. Exactly.
So it's the same kind of I don't know how
to describe it, with these kind of emotional drives, these urges,
(34:54):
and again you've got to read about some of the
crazy stuff that trophy hunters actually write and say as
if it was normal. About how you know, there's one
guy he's I mean, he's a respectable guy. He's a lawyer,
he's involved in different international organizations, and he's saying that
trophy hunting should be made to write a passage for
all men. He's a guy who's actually talked about you know,
the first time he killed an animal it was like
(35:15):
losing his virginity. It had the same feeling how I
am sometimes lost for words with im, often not as
you can tell. But you know sometimes when you just
try to get into psychology in the minds of these people,
you know they're dangerous. They are dangerous people. This is
a dangerous mindset. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
It was striking.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Roy I would have to say when we did this
cage at the end with reach Africans coming over tour,
we turned the tables.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
It was striking tool not to hurt rich people.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
Yes, had the audience reacted to that, because that really
brought it home.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
For every dog we shoot, a portion of the prophets
will go to American communities, up.
Speaker 6 (35:56):
To three percent.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
And I know what you are thinking, what my pets.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
I'm going to kill them too.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Yes, pet said rich old age will also be hunted
by rich Africans. No more watching fluff struggle to climb
the stairs, instead be shut and mounted in the Nigerian's
man cake.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
It would be intriguing for me because most of these
trophy hunters, as Edward I said, you know, they have
disposable income. They're pretty well off. They are respected professionals,
they're very successful in their chosen careers.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
It would be intriguing for me to ask them how
they would.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
React if Africans were coming over not to hunt big game,
but to hunt their pets.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Yep, if enough, and said I love dogs so much.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Yeah, so for me turning the tables because that would
be very intriguing for me too. And then you went like,
as we said in the skate, we were doing this
for you because their benefits are paying you and we
love dogs so much.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Chris, you have too many dogs. We need to shoot one.
Let's talk a little bit after the break about, you know,
ways that we the general public, Eduardo, can help to
stop this, help to bring awareness to this, and I
want to talk more specifically about the work that you're
doing doing now to ban trophy hunting. This is beyond
(37:12):
the scenes. So Eduardo, you've done your work as an
author to bring awareness to this issue, but you're also
the founder of the campaign to Ban trophy Hunting. What
are some of your outreach strategies, you know, to get
people to join the college. You've already done the work
of studying the hunter, now the laban, how do you
(37:33):
get people like us who think that trophy hunting was
just poaching rhinos for ivory, but clearly it's layers and
layers deeper than that. What are some of your outreach
strategies to get people to join your cause.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The main thing we want to do is just tell
people the truth and tell people the whole story, the
whole shocking story, because a lot of people don't know,
you know, and I talked to government ministers as well
as members of parliaments and members of the public and
they don't know. I mean, it was government minister I
spoke to just the other day and she was saying
trophy hunting. But I thought all of that was finished
with years ago, and I'm saying, no, it's happening, and
(38:09):
it's happening here in the sense that there are British
trophy hunters. And that's the thing I mean at the moment,
I'm trying to get people to understand that this isn't
just you know, the guys like Walter Palmer, that American
dentist who shot sees all the line. There are people
from Britain, There are people from China, there are people
from Russia. You know, there's a Russian Mountain Hunters Club,
so it's their trophy hunting group. Some of its directors
(38:32):
have got very close links to Putin. You've got a
growing number of Chinese people going out to Africa now,
and they're using the laws because this is the weird
thing about the law. Okay, so you cannot go and
shoot a black rhino or any kind of rhino in
order to take off its horn and take it away,
to grind it up, to sell it as afrodiziak to
(38:54):
do all of that. That is a league. Well, that's
called poaching. However, you can turn up and say, hey,
I'm a trophy hunter and I'm going to import this
as a hunting trophy. So you can shoot the same rhino,
you can take its horn, you can take it back
to China, and you can grind it up and take
it into the black market. Right, And this is the
crazy thing about so the international regulation societies, the Convention
(39:17):
on International Trade and in Dangerus Species, Okay, this is
the law that's supposed to stop poaching and protect endangered wildlife.
But there's this loophole. And so at one point, you know,
a huge proportion of the rhino legal hunting trophies that
were then going back into China and Vietnam and into
the black market there was through this loophole. And exactly
(39:39):
the same as to being happening with and you've got bears,
including polar bears, right we're talking about climate change, polar
bears being on the threat of being threatened with extinction.
You can still go to Canada and shoot polar bears.
You can go to Canada shoot pretty not much any bear.
They shoot about twenty twelve thirteen thousand bears a year.
Trophy hunters do from America and from elsewhere. But you
can shoot a polar bear if you're one of these
(40:02):
wildlife traffickers and claim that you're a trophy hunter, and
then you can take it's god bladder because they like
the goal. They use that for all of these traditional
Chinese medicines, which of course have gotten not proved. They
even shoot bears for their and let me use the word,
they're penises, right for the baculum, that the penis bone,
because that again is supposed to have aphrodisia values. This
(40:24):
is all done legally, because that's the law on trophy
hunting says, Okay, you can't shoot that animal to traffic
it and to sell them. But yeah, if you say
that you're a trophy hunter, you can go and shoot
the exact same animal, take it back home, So.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
They're basically saying, your claimate gene, you can't wipe out.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
That's our job.
Speaker 7 (40:45):
For me.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
The thing Roy that intrigues me about this whole thing,
and I think Edward or like, the biggest killing you
have is to get the people on the ground. I think,
to care as deeply and as much as you do,
because as I say, Africans have more pressing issues and
the government is obviously governments are produced. When Sisa the
(41:06):
lion was killed, it wasn't big news in Zimbabwe until
actually it hit like the big time in the UK.
Speaker 6 (41:13):
The babasicapt the story and.
Speaker 5 (41:15):
Then they oh we had this iconic They did not
have been killed so before the ground for them to
care as much, I think they care a lot more
about poaching these days, but trophy hunting maybe not so much.
It's the same thing with I think climate climate change.
But the irony of this whole the thing that got
as yastronomy is so many people thought trophy hunting was normal.
(41:37):
Tear trophy hunters started posting pictures of themselves.
Speaker 6 (41:42):
With the animals theirs social media. Yes, so for me,
that's that's a very interesting like well, so.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Some African citizen issue. Let me tell you why. It's
because it is perpetuating poverty, is perpetuating exploitation, it's perpetuating
land ownership by a wealthy minority elite, and so on.
There was a study done by economists in South Africa
that showed that if there was a wholesale switch from
trophy hunting to photographic safaris, that would create eleven more
(42:10):
jobs for people in poor rural areas in South Africa.
And that's the case because you know, again the numbers
don't add up. You shoot a line like Cecil, you know,
maybe ten thousand dollars is going to end up supposedly
in the conservation fundel though it never does. The cost
of conserving a line like Cecil and its habitat is
a million dollars a year. Ten thousand dollars doesn't is
(42:32):
a drop in the ocean. But what does work for
conservation as well as for local people cause photo safaris
because they you know, an average line like Cecil, akay,
he's going to generate something like one hundred thousand dollars
a year. So over an average life span of fifteen years,
that's a million and a half dollars he's paying for
his conservation by staying alive. These photo safari industries, they
(42:57):
employ so many more people, they pay them best, and
they work all year around because hunting is largely a
seasonal activity, and they're working in management jobs, you know,
instead of in menial skivvy jobs as a skinner or
a track or you know, a Yeah, this is why
it is good for the economy of Africa's You know,
(43:17):
when presidents came a banned trophy hunting in Botswana, it
wasn't just because of the conservation issues. It was because
he was seeing that photo safaris was doing so much
better for local people in Botswana and some places were
just switching before there was any law from trophy hunting
to photo safaris because it was better for local people.
Speaker 7 (43:39):
Full s.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
The thing was asking about the African like the people
on the ground, like you know, how the climate change.
Even then, they're still having a problem because you know,
people still ban chackal and they still do all these things.
And I'm thinking, like how would you because the thing
has to be so praising that people go like we
need to stop this, Like I wish Africans were as
(44:03):
passionate about this issue, like the way you're passionate about it,
like I wish, I wish He's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 6 (44:10):
I wish it was a voting issue. If that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Well, look for some Africans it is no.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
But I'm going because you need a so like when
it comes to politicians, for you to move the need
of politically, you need like a critic com mass. People
have to feel like their jobs are in danger, like
the local area.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Empty yes, yes, personal issue, yes, other wise the issue.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
Otherwise you're going to need every African government to be
like Coma, which can't happen because he was. He's a
visionary like his dad, like he comes from I know,
like I know it about him, like even I went
to People admire him a lot because it comes from
a line of like almost statesmen, but not every like
African leader, especially the local leaders. You know, they struggle.
(44:55):
It's the same thing like in America they're getting. If
I'm an African politician and the trophy hunt is paid
part of my campaign money or they're sponsoring my campaign,
it's very hard for me to So I need to
almost choose between do I take the money from the
trophy hunting globist or do why risk losing my so like,
how can your.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Most environmentalism in America? It's like you take the oil money.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
Yes, why do you tin it? Incrove like a voting issue.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
It's do you know what it's about the dollar in
your pocket? Because trophy hunting is holding Africa back. Yes,
it is perpetuating the old economic structures, which deliberately, you know,
we're set up to keep a certain class of people.
Speaker 6 (45:38):
Certain racy people obviously and minority exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
You know, so a part that might have ended in
South Africa. But actually you know, you look at the
if you look at the industry of trophy hunting, So
who are the people who own the land where the
trophy hunters go, where the trophy hunting goes up? Who
owned the companies? At least these are the same people. Yeah,
(46:02):
it's all those people, but you know there are some
and you know, partly our responsibility here in the West
is to give a platform to those powerful African voices
who have a view to I once went to Downing Street,
which is where the Prime Minister of England lives with
a seven foot tall senior elder from the Massai tribe.
It was January. It's so cold, and he was in
traditional but you know that he was able to address them,
(46:26):
and he told the Prime Minister how in olden days,
actually part of the Massi warrior ritual was to kill
a lion to show that you were a warrior. They
had now abandoned that and in fact they were now
they had taken pride in becoming custodians of their natural heritage,
and that actually part of the whole warrior ritual is
(46:48):
much more about that now. And also, of course in Kenya,
every single Massi high school kid or high school aged
child gets a high school education thanks entire to the
photo Safari.
Speaker 6 (47:03):
Yes, yes where it, yes, yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
And we've got to give people like Karma, like you know,
the Massi elders, et cetera. We've got to give them
a platform. I mean, at the moment they you know,
then then for reasons we all understand, they're excluded from society.
They're not given, you know, the same access to the
media and so on. So we've got to give these people.
And you know, because I tell you I've spoken to
a lot of you know, village headmen and community leaders,
(47:29):
and they're all scathing about trophy hunting, largely for the
economic reasons rather than necessarily conservation ones. They say, where's
this money.
Speaker 6 (47:38):
We're not, Yeah, we're not. There's money. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Whenever I go to the you know, to us, look,
you know, we need a new roof for our health
center or our school or whatever, they say, Oh, there's
no money. They've been telling me that for twenty years.
And yet they've been conning us to say that.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
But in terms of you know, changing mindset globally here
in the West, the US government has actually.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
Because I feel like I feel like the it's the
thing you said about nine out of ten people, the waste.
Speaker 6 (48:03):
It feels like a voting issue.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
It feels like if you if there was a congressman
and you went like, this congressman is a trophy haunter.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
There's no way they are winning re election.
Speaker 5 (48:14):
That's that feels like that feels like an issue you
could hit them with, especially like in liberal cities.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah, yeah, well the moment you see, SCI is one
of the biggest packs on Capitol Hill. So, I mean
their pack is bigger than General Motors, It's bigger than
Delta Airlines. I mean, it all goes to Republicans obviously,
but their pack is one of the biggest on Capitol Hills.
And they've set up this thing called the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation,
and it's basically to hoover up members of the House
of Reps, the senators or so stay governors, and they've
(48:42):
all brought them into this club. It basically says, you
keep towing our line, we'll keep giving you money at
election time. So one half of all governors, Reps and
senators are members of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, which is
the congressional presence of the trophy hunting industry. So they've
got their claw into the system. But yeah, it does
(49:03):
change politicians when you tell them the numbers. So about
three weeks ago here in the UK, the government started
briefing political editors that they were going to drop the
bill banning trophies, and so obviously they got in touch
with me, the political editors, and said, hey, listen, we're
being told this. I said, okay, very good timing. I've
(49:24):
actually just had an opinion poll done tells me two things. Firstly,
ninety two percent of Conservative Party voters, the government's own supporters,
want this bill implemented as soon as possible. Only one
percent disagree. Second, thirty four percent of Conservative voters say
they're going to ditch the party if they don't follow
through on this manifest So I publicized one of those
(49:46):
big article in the Times and the Guidian, blah blah,
and I briefed ministers privately on the second because it
could have been a bit anyway, but in cendjury if
I put that in the newspapers anyway, big coverage. And
then I get a call from the Government ministry from
one of my contact. They're saying, wow, that story about
the poll, it's like a nuclear bomb. The minister is
about to declare in an hour's time that they're going
(50:07):
to do a U turn on the U turn. They're
going ahead with a ban after all. And sure enough,
an hour later a statement given to the BBC, the
government say, of course we're always going to do. All
of these rumors about us not doing it, what were
they doing?
Speaker 6 (50:20):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
And the figures are really really strong, you know, and
getting stronger because we've been polling consistently for about two
three years. I mean, they sound like election results in
North Korea. They're so good for us.
Speaker 5 (50:34):
You know, that's the only thing I feel like poeticians respond.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
They're for re election, you know, yeah, they don't want
to lose their jobs. So one of the things we're
actually doing at the moment, we're actually doing a road
show around marginal conservative constituency, so where the conservative MP
has got a majority of less than five percent.
Speaker 6 (50:55):
Yes, yes, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
We're going to them and we're saying, now, you support
the government policy, don't you come on out and come
and do this photo up with us. And we've got
a great quote from you know, Dame Judy Dench and
Joanna Lumney because they're amongst our supporters, say what a
great campaign this local MP is doing. They get great fame,
you know, right.
Speaker 6 (51:13):
Up, that's what you see. That's that's what I was saying.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Now, if you have done junior endosing you, it's not
good if you If you if you have THEMN Judy Dench,
then it's good for if you have.
Speaker 6 (51:23):
That's what I was saying. The optics just doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Yeah, let's let's end here. What are some campaigns that
we could donate to and where are some companies or
organizations that you're part of atwater that people need to
be aware of on this issue.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
So the campaign's Band Trophy Hunting. It's an international organization.
You can find us at bantrophy Hunting dot org and
you can find all the information about us there and
all of the issues. And we you know, we've we've
actually named and got photos of trophy hunters so we
can give them, you know, a name and the face.
Because these people they want to remain faceless. Well we're
actually putting some names out there so people can actually
(51:58):
understand what is really happening. And we're at the moment,
we're you know, we're coordinating campaigns in a number of places.
We've got an international foundation. We've been helping our colleagues
in Belgium, who the Belgian Parliament in the last few
days past the resolution unanimously to ban trophies. Right, so
this is this is hot news. We've just done an
opinion poll here in the UK. It shows nine out
(52:21):
of ten voters want trophies banned as soon as possible.
And in fact, there's been poles in the US that
have shown similar figures around elephant trophies. You know, nearly
nine out of ten voters in the US. Thing gets
wrong for people to go to wherever Africa and shoot
elephants and bring those trophies back. We are on a
journey here. We're wanting countries like Britain, the US, et cetera,
(52:43):
to stop imports of these trophies. But ultimately as our
goal is the abolition of trophy hunting. Because look right,
you know, we've banned bear baiting, We've banned cock fighting,
we've banned dog fighting, We've all of these different things.
They've been kicked into the dustbin of history, which is
the only place they deserve to be. How come trophy
(53:03):
hunting has fallen through the gap. Well, we're trying to
make sure it doesn't and its next. And in the
same way that we have tackled as a human society,
great social moral evils like apartheid, like slavery, all the things,
we catabolish trophy hunting. We can change that mindset that
says that it is somehow okay to abuse, torture, mate,
and kill animals, defenseless living creatures, sentient animals, as if
(53:28):
they're just a pile of rubble.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Well, I cannot thank you enough for being excuse me
tate that again. Well, I cannot thank you enough, Edwardo.
Speaker 7 (53:39):
This is.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
For being a part of the show. The book is undercover,
Trophy Hunter.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
No one is going to buy the book because it
feels like it's being sold by a Nigerian prince.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
The problem the book is under over Trophy Hunter. Also
thank you to Daily Show writer Joseph Opio Joe Opio,
I will I will see you around the building and
we can take some dialect classes.
Speaker 6 (54:10):
I'll see you around HR. This is now an HR issue.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
That's all the time we have for today. Hopefully we've
taken you beyond the scenes. See you next week.
Speaker 7 (54:25):
I can't believe it or not my accent right.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast
that goes a little deeper into segments and topics that
originally aired on The Daily Show. This is what this
podcast is. This podcast is like you have go get
a haircut. You get a fresh haircut, right, and then
at the end of that haircut, you lay down and
they give you that hot towel and the steam just
seeps into your pores and just for a couple of seconds,
(00:29):
life is perfect and none of the problems that you
were thinking about were permeating it to your subconscious and
then they snatch that towel off and you're back out
into the world with your problem. That's what this podcast is,
the wonderful hot towel of progress. Today we are discussing
trophy hunting in Africa. This is a topic that Trevor
(00:49):
covered during the segment we call if you don't know,
now you know? Play the clip.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What's interesting about trophy hunting is that we all assume
people do it because they don't care about the animals.
But according to the hunting community, they do this because
they care too much.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I know it sounds contradictory, but hunters love animals.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Hunters are the ones that are giving so much back
to preserving these wild species.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
A lot of people talk about the conservation that hunters
are the real.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Cos everybody thinks that the easiest part is pulling the trigger,
and it's not. That's the hardest part. But you've gained
so much respect and so much appreciation for that animal.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Wow, that's one hell of a way to show you
appreciation and respect. Another argument trophy hunters use is that
they're actually getting rid of the slower, weaker animals who
are holding back the rest of the herd, but that
might not be the full story.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Trophy hunters kill some of the biggest, most magnificent animals,
which is bad for.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
The health of the species because genes may no longer
be passed on to future generations. By kicking those guys
out of the gene pool, it weakens the genes of
the entire population. Over the last thirty years, the average
size of a male lion has dropped, specifically because of
trophy hunting.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
That's right. Despite what they say, trophy hunters actually like
to target the strongest specimens, which I don't support, but honestly,
I mean I understand it's called trophy hunting.
Speaker 6 (02:17):
For a reason.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, you want it to look like you battled an
alpha male to the death, not like you snuck into
its nursing home and then smothered one of the lions
with the pillows.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
It's like, go to sleep, sca, go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Joining us to help break down this topic. I have
two people. One of them is a Daily Show writer
and the Pride of Uganda, one of the most stylish people,
and he is the first person on the last person
off the dance floor at the Daily Show Christmas party,
not that that detail has anything to do. Get the
expertise on this topic, mister Joe opio Jo, How you been, brother, I've.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Been doing great.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
We're back in yourfice, as you probably know, so we're
slowly easing back into and the pandemic.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
You know, it was tough.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
It was tough, but nothing that someone who grew up
in Africa hasn't faced before. So yeah, I'm happy to
have the pleasure to discuss this particular topic.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Joe. I'm happy that you're that we're back in the
office as well, because now we have somebody to help
you with technology to get you on the show. That's
why it's been so long. We've been trying to get
you on the show, but getting you to set up
a microphone at that again a topic, then that's nothing
to do with what we're discussing today. Also joining us
is an anti poaching activist and the author of the
book Undercover Trophy Hunter. He is Eduardo Gonsalvez. Eduardo, how
(03:38):
are you doing over there? You're over there in the UK?
Where are you joining us from? Right now?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I am in the cold and great UK, and and wow,
it's it's pretty grim over there. And yeah, but look,
I'm very happy to talk about this issue. Great fan
of the show. We do actually get to see it
every now and again here in the UK. And yeah,
I mean whatever you want to know, I'm going to
see if I can answer this questions.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Well, I appreciate you for joining us from somewhere as
grim and as dark, you know, Like that's why I
like Europe. Europe it's just grim and gray. Now America
we have a grim and gray future, big difference, but
nice and sunny. So Joe, I'll start with you. A
lot of topics on the show usually come from writers
(04:22):
that are close to the issue or have some level
of connection to the issue. In the real world. How
did trophy hunting in Africa come into play? And whose
idea was it to do a segment on this.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
It's kind of had to attribute a credit to a
particular person. But I think this was mainly Trival because
the topic had been pocolating in the air. People had
been talking about it for some time. And this is
if you know Treva, this is a classic Triva segment.
It's global in scope, it's complex in nature, It's very
(04:56):
very nuanced because Treva hates things that are black and white,
loves exploring the gray, and this topic like gave him
that and so so of course about Africa mostly so
that was close.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
And there to his heart.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
But I think it the conversation was in there, especially
because pictures had themaged of Dawn and Eric pausing with
these animals they had killed, they had slaughtered, and then
like a few years before that, there was of course
talk about the dentist and Ceci the lion. So it
was a topic that was in there, and it was
the kind of topic that usually because of the qualities
(05:32):
are discuss resonates with Trevor, and so he set about
him or cracked him of researchers they tagged him to
work on it, and they brought the research in and
it was still as engaging as I thought he would be,
and so we sat down wrote it and then came
up with the great ender, which was the sketch about
(05:54):
a rich African coming to New York to hunt down
white people's pets. And the segment was a goal, but
it was a tough, tough segment. It was a tough
segment to do more than more simply because it involved
the slaughtering of animals. And the thing is, the Daily
Show is a comedy show, so we have to make
(06:14):
the thing funny.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
And that was tough.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
That was really tough because it's like trying to do
there's got a segment about the war crimes that Russia
is committing in the Ukraine. You have to make people laugh.
You're not a straight news program. People have come for
the comedy, so that made it tough. But it was
I thought, and Trevor thought, and the entire Daily Show
team thought. An issueth exploring.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Now see for me being dumb American and my scope
and knowledge on this. It's basically hunting video games where
you go on some big game reserve where you know,
you pay money, and you pay for whatever you kill.
But then there's also the aspect of poaching, which is
a little like it's all abhorrent, but one version of legal,
one version stuff. What were some of the reasons that
(06:59):
you all started discovering as to why people participate in
trophy hunting.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
When we started doing the research and when the tag
team got into it, we found that it's a sport.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Two people they call it a sport.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Of course, the argument that people are against it say,
this is a sport where one team has no idea
that they're participating. If it's a sport, then both teams
should know that they're competing, and both teams should accurally
be on a level competing field.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
But we animals need yeah, yeah, we realize.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
That so many people were passionate about it. So many people,
like both pro and anti were passionate about it. The hunters,
of course, have their reasons, and among the reasons, I
think the two that really stuck out to me were
one that actually, trophy hunting is one of the most
effective ways.
Speaker 6 (07:52):
This is what they said.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
It's one of the most effective ways to conserve and
then get species and animals. I see it word or
laughing because they thinks that's laughing about. But there are
these people really genuinely believe this. They go like, hey,
it's like I feel like it's like you know when
it's like if it's like if your parent was abusing
you and then he was going like, yeah, this is
(08:14):
the best way to raise you. So they were saying, actually,
one of the things they said is we'll love animals.
The hunters genuinely say this and they believe it. They say,
we'll love animals and that's why we hunt them. And
then they say, actually, they had this thing is shooting
the animals, and of course the joint that would be,
you know, you can just shoot pictures of the animals
you love them so much, so they said they had
(08:35):
the thing is to pull the trigger.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
And again it feels like an abusive.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Parent telling you this hurts me more than it hurts you,
but I have to do it because I love you.
But they genuinely believe this, and of course they also
genuinely believe that every money they pay to hunt these
big game animals actually hopes conserve the animals. So for me,
that was very, very surprising, and it was it was
the genuine belief that they have that they love the
(09:01):
animals and they're helping conserve the animals by hunting them.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
That surprised me most well.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I am appreciative that I was able to be in
a sketch with you on this and show off my
inauthentic African accent. You're authentic, first of all. Now, what
you're not gonna do is disrespect my accent that I've
been working on. I've been I've been trained at Julio.
Now you say Julio, it's next door.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
I'm saying your accent gives cultural appropriation and badening.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Dear America, for the past few decades, you have come
to Africa to shoot our animals. I must say, you
do this to help us, and we are so grateful.
We want to return the deva. You see all of
these straight dogs and cats that are running across your country.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
I'm going to cure them.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's right. As part of a new program, rich Africans
will pay to hunt straight dogs and cats in America.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
How are you so terrible?
Speaker 5 (09:59):
I know white people have better African accents, and.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
You're insulting, and I do not appreciate your insults.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
But I always always always love I always love doing that.
And we've done a.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Badge of sketches with you where like you have to
do the African voice Afghan accent, and because people laugh
at me because they think I can never don an
American accent, It's impossible.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
I can't.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
And then I look at Roy and I go like, well, okay,
at least it also goes the other way.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Because you know, my African, my African accent is so
terrible that Africans don't even get offended by it, Like
they send me messages on Twitter and stuff, and it
just goes that was terrible, Roy, well done.
Speaker 5 (10:38):
They treat you the way a kind of getten teacher
treats a kind of getting as drawn a stick man.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
Well done. It's very because I'm.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Like, even they have, you know, the other African who
normally they are very patronizing towards you. And this is
because everyone assumes, everyone assumes that an African accent. Everyone
assumes that Troy, you know, stand up comedy next door
ordinay I should be able to do.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
An Afghan accident. And then wow, absolutely yeah, we know
why he went to a knockoff Goodyad.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Juliad Eduardo, Now you swimming waters on this topic where
there are no punch lines, there are no jokes. It
is straight up stop this action from happening, you know,
as an advocate for the cars to ban trophy hunting.
How did you feel watching the segment? Because I always
(11:30):
feel like with issues this serious, you could always watch
it and go oh, but you didn't mention the thing
the other thing. So how did it feel seeing the
segment air?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know, trophy hunting. I don't know if it stopped
shocking me. I mean, it shocks me, and it doesn't
shock me because I've now spoken to and read the
accounts of so many trophy hunters and the things that
they say as if it was a normal thing to say.
I mean, there's one guy who was a president of
Safari Club International talking about how the most intimate and
(12:05):
most moving thing you can do in life is to
hunt an elephant, and he talks about the joy that
he feels when he sees a lion's head blow up
in a cloud of smoke, you know, And they talk
about it's like losing your virginity when you shoot your
first animal. It's like it's beyond parody. It's almost if
these people exist on a different plane, they are not
part of the human race. And you know what, that
(12:27):
actually makes it sometimes a bit of a difficult issue
to engage because it is so I mean, it's so
disgusting for a lot of people, it is so upsetting
to see these essentially defenseless animals killed just for fun
and whatever. The trophy hunters say that retroactively try to
justify it. They don't fly halfway round the world to
kill an animal for anything other than the pleasure of it,
(12:50):
because that's what they enjoy doing it. And we actually
sort of thought, well, look, I mean, there are some
people who just turn away from the issue because it
is so distressing. I mean, is there another way we
can engage with them? So we actually set up a
fake trophy hunting company. It's got a website. It's called
Trophy Hunting Holidays dot com. It's kind of like the
Amazon of trophy hunters. These are the click and kill
(13:11):
travel firm specialists. And we've recorded these mock TV adverts.
So we've got a couple of actors in there, and
you've got these guys there, come and earn you are
stripes shoot a zebra today, just one thousand dollars. We've
got a series of these adverts going out there and
we thought, you know, is this a way to engage
with you. But all of the stuff that it was
in there, it was all based on one hundred percent fact.
(13:34):
There is actually a website. It's a bit like the
Amazon for trophy hunters. It's called bookjorhunt dot com. You
can literally go on there and check an animal that
you want to shoot. So it's got three hundred different
different species, three hundred and fifty different species. You can
choose from everything from squirrels and skunks to lions and leopards.
I mean, you name it. You want to shoot a kangaroo,
(13:56):
a wallabee. I mean it's all there, and yeah, it's
got all the details how you get there, how and
then you know they'll help you find somebody to skin
it and preserve it and take it home for your Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
They still treat their employers way better than Jeff Bezos
streets is.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
I guess they have that going for them, you know, in.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The trophy hunting world. This is one of the things
that because I've spoken, you know, to people in Africa
who are village headman their community chiefs, their local MPs
and counselors and ask them what they think about it,
and they say, look, whatever these guys say, we don't
get to see any of the money. They say, you know,
money comes from trophy hunting back into the communities, Well,
(14:40):
we ain't seen a cent of it. And the only
people who are employed by these but in terms of local, local,
rural communities, you know, they've got a menial job as
a skinner or a cook, or as a cleaner, they'll
only have two or three. The money stays either in
the US or Europe, because a lot of European American
(15:00):
companies own these trophy hunting outfitters, that's the name the
companies that do this, or of course you know, they
sell these holidays in the big conventions in Las Vegas,
in Germany and Spain, and the money stays in those
accounts in those countries. So the amount of money that
ever reaches somebody at the end in the community is zilch.
(15:21):
I mean, everyone I've spoken to says, look, you know,
it's crazy. We don't see any of it, and we
simply don't understand this because look, even if somebody here
is really hungry or really desperate. They cannot go and
touch that animal. But a big, fat white American can
fly halfway around the world and kill that same animal
(15:43):
just for fun, because that's all it is. It's for pleasure,
it's for entertainment, it's for joy. And when you talk
to the trophy hunters, as I have, I pretended to
be a trophy hunter to sort of get behind the
scenes if you like to actually say, look, come on,
you're talking to one of one of us. Now we're
the same, we're both what do you really think about this?
And you know they're telling me, lookay, it's great, it's
(16:05):
so much fun. You know, we'd go hunting in the
day and then at night we'd grab a few beers.
Can we go and shoot some of the monkeys out
of the trees just for fun? And I actually say
this as if this is a normal, acceptable human thing
to say, this is their mindset, their mentality.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
That almost feels like the craziest undercover operation, because what
if they go like, oh, you have to kill an
animal to prove that you're not a fed The thing
for me, one of the problems I have on Fast value.
Forget the moral and ethical questions. The big problem I
have with it is the optics as an African, the
optics of a white man with a gun storming Africa
(16:42):
just isn't great without history with colonialism. The thing is
Africans have a lot more pressing issues right now, so
maybe trophy huntings they're not exactly at the top of
the list, but the optics, if I want a trophy hunter,
I would say, the optics just doesn't save my cause
(17:02):
it's the.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
History of the continuation.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
With the history of colonialism, white men coming into Africa
with guns and then saying we're doing this for your
own benefit, for your own good.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
The optics isn't great.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
And then also there's the fact that who is the
fast of trophy hunting in the West.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
It's done Junior and Eric Trump.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
And I'm saying, if the first of your platform, or
if the first of the thing you're doing is don't
Junior and Elk Trump, you need to change the damp post.
You need to find you need to find someone more
like Cable, like you know, get Dolly pattern.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Baby, You'll do something.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
After the break, I want to get into it with
you at WAD on the history of trophy hunting and
how you got into this because I'm always interested in
how people find the thing that's their thing, you know,
Like for you, it's trophy hunting. For me, it's winning
askers for wonderful accent work in many many American films. Uh,
(18:03):
it's beyond the scenes. Who will be right back, Yes,
we'll come back to beyond these scenes. I am Roy
Wood Jr. We are discussing trophy hunting in Africa with
us an anti trophy hunting activists Eduardo Gonsalves and Ugandan
Daily Show. Right at Joseph Opio.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
Hello, Joseph, your accent is more facive.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
It's like you're putting on African face, but like in audio,
like folm, it's it's offensive to me as an African.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
It's I speak from blacker face, not black face, blacker face,
sword water. How far back? Let's go back, Let's let's
just dig it to the origins of trophy hunting. How
far back does the history of this terror go? I
refrain from calling it a sport. That's the other thing
they try to do to get people to get society
(18:55):
on board. I'm a big game hunter and sport like, No,
how far back does this horrible shit go? And what
got you involved in it.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And they also call themselves outdoorsmen. That's the other kind
of yeah, And they talk they don't talk about killing animals.
They call about harvesting, harvesting game. There's all kind of
ways that they used to you know, it's sort of
smoke and mirrors to try to deflect from the reality
and anyway, going back to the history of it, yet
there's little bits of it going back, you know, a
few thousand years, but really it begins with the Brits
(19:24):
in Africa and in Asia. So it's the beginning of
the British Empire, the colonies, the colonization of Africa and
of Asia, and they exported this sport. It was to
give the officers something to do as a nice hobby.
It was to sort of give them a bit of
a break, something positive to do. And then it got
quite interesting because they would write about it. And so
(19:46):
then the Times in London would you know, carry these
epic tales of these adventurers, et cetera. And that was
the nineteenth century and then that and you had guys
who were taking i mean huge numbers. You know, there
was one trop He hunt alone, which involved the British
royal family actually including the then Prince of Wales, and
they engaged in this absolute blood bath of a hunt
(20:08):
during which they actually extinguished a species. So the last
remaining member in the wild of the quagger, which is
a species a bit like the zebra, is thought to
have been shot by the Prince of Wales and they
literally had blood up to their elbows. There's these graphic
accounts of the hunt. Come the twentieth century, then the
Americans get involved, thanks largely to Theodore Roosevelt. So he
with the help of the British colonies, he goes on
(20:31):
this train trip and they laid on that the Brits
lay on this luxury train for him and his son
Kermit to go around Africa, and during that year they
shoot over five hundred animals, including lions, lots of lions.
He loved, loved lions. Theodore Roosevelt loved lions. And they
actually built this seat that would be stuck on the
front of the train, so and he would sit there
(20:51):
with his rifle training would be chugging on this year
animal line or whatever. He'd shoot it, they'd stop the train,
they'd get the lion's body on board, skin it cetera,
and he would carry on on this great festival and
it just grows into this industry.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So something built like a jump seat at the front
of the train. Yeah, like one of those side cars
on a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
I don't remember that scene in Night at the Museum,
but wow, when you say the thing about the British
reform actually leading to the extinction with species, and I'm
right now thinking wow, So Prince Andrew is not the worst.
Speaker 6 (21:30):
He's got competition that gets you thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, so he's on the train, he's shooting lions, and
walk us through more of the evolution of that.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
It just becomes this organized industry and it really takes
off in the seventies when a guy called C. J.
McRoy sets up Safari Club International. Now you've got this
major industrial lobby group. And it's also you know, it
creates an awards system. I mean, it's got about eighty
different prizes that you can get for shooting lots of animals.
So one of these prizes is called the Hunting Achievement Award.
(22:02):
Now it's got all of these different levels. To get
to the Copper prize, copper level, you've got to have
shot animals from at least ten different species, Bronze, twenty
different species, Silver fifty. Then you go up to get
to gold medal, you've got to shoot animals from at
least one hundred different species. And that's not the end
of it, because there's a diamond prize as well. To
(22:25):
do that. Yeah, you've got to shoot animals from at
least one hundred and twenty five different species around the world.
And they've got to be big animals, not just little ones.
They've got to be big enough to count. And so
it's this organized, I mean mass slaughter. That This is
the thing that really gets me about trophy hunting. It
is not meeting any human need of any kind whatsoever.
(22:46):
You can't argue it in the same way as food
or for skins or whatever. This is just to feed vanity,
because that is these people. They take selfies and they
take the souvenirs, and that for them is sport. That's
what makes it fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
If it's so fundamentally wrong, why do the governments in
African countries support it. You just can't be moving through
Africa without the paperwork, so you damn sure just can't
be walking around with a did tiger in your carry
on bag, acting like you didn't come to the country
to murder animals. So why do they support it, edwardal.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Well, simply corruption. I'm afraid to say it, but you
know there is a lot, you know, when there are
those trophy fees paid, those fees do not go to conservation,
They do not go to local communities. They either stay
in the hands of officials or they just disappear. Look,
let's take the example of Cecil the lion. He was
a beloved line, had this wonderful black mane, and he
(23:39):
was radiocollared. He was being researched by Oxford University scientists.
They were looking at what they were actually looking at
the impact of trophy hunting on wildline populations actually, and
they found that about a third of the lions they
were studying, even though they had radio collars on, were
being shot by trophy hunters. So even the fact that
were visibly part of an official government research program didn't
(23:59):
protect them the hunter's bullets. So Walter Palmer, this American dentist,
he goes and shoots this line where he shouldn't. He
didn't have a permit for it. And you know then
they tried to conceal the radio collar. There's all sorts
of shenanigans, and there's a guy called Johnny Rodrigues who
was a Zimbabwean conservationist. He blows the whistle on it.
It gets out into the wider world and it becomes
(24:20):
one of the most talked about stories in the world,
largely because, in my view, people didn't know trophy hunting
was still going on. It was a shock. It was
thinking people think, hey, surely this ended with the colonies,
with imperialists, with all of that. You know, this ended
in the days of empire. People shooting lines for fun.
And you know, the trophy hunting industries were very hard
to actually keep this quiet. You know, why isn't this
(24:42):
talked about. They work quite hard actually to keep it
under wraps, and yet the numbers of animals that are
being shot enormous. You know, a trophy hunter shoots an
animal every three minutes. Even during COVID when people can't
fly around the world there's all these travel restrictions. Americans
were flying to Africa. They were shooting black rhino cheetah elephant,
(25:02):
who are now endangered. By the way, there's only seven
thousand cheaters left in the world. There's less there's about
three thousand black rhinos. This is going on even when
supposedly we're under lockdown, people can't travel the world, and
it's just so so nonsensical. But it's barbaric. It's barbaric,
and I'll tell you why, because again, this is one
of the things that doesn't often get talked about, the
(25:23):
pain and the suffering that the animals undergo. Right, these
people who shoot animals, they're not professionals, they're not snipers.
These guys. These are guys who have you know, they
shoot a gun every now and again. And what they
do is they're shooting these animals from two hundred yards
away because they don't want to get hurt by you know,
a lion or whatever coming anywhere near it. So they're
shooting through the scope and they're not shooting them in
(25:44):
the head, which would be you know, an instant's brain.
The shot exactly kills shot, because that would make the
trophy look ugly. All right, you can skin that and
put that on your wall. It looks pretty rough. So
what they do is they try to do this heart's
lung shot through the shoulder. Now, if you're an amateur shot.
You're trying to do that from two hundred yards, and
(26:04):
you've got to count on the animals staying still. You've
got to count on there being no wind right moisturing
right now. There's been actually a number of state authorities
in the US that have looked at trophy hunting in
the States, and the numbers about to say over half
of the animals that are shot by trophy hunters, they
don't die instantaneously. They die these slow, painful desks like Cecil,
(26:30):
you know, because Cecil, right, what's his name, Walter Palmer.
He was trying to win this prize from Safari Club International,
which is for shooting big game with novelty weapons like
crossbows and bow and longbow and handguns, because they actually
want you. They give you a special prize if you
shoot an elephant with a handgun, okay, And he was
trying to get one of these prizes for shooting a
(26:51):
lion with a long bow, and he shot Cecil. But
Cecil didn't die instantaneously, and he managed to somehow crawl
under the bush and couldn't find him, and he wouldn't
take a shot with a rifle to put him out
of his misery because he wouldn't then be eligible for
that prize. So he thinks, Ah, I'm gonna go home,
have dinner, you know, have a sleep, kind of come
out and see if the animal is dead in the morning.
(27:12):
He goes back out in the morning with the professional hunter,
that is the guy who takes him out. They can't
see Cecil because he's still kind of hidden under the book,
but they can hear him. They can hear him because
he is gasping, is gurgling. He is literally drowning on
the blood in his lungs. That is the reality of
what happens with most animals. And I know because when
(27:35):
I spoke to a lot of trophy hunters when I
was under cover, and they were telling me about the
absolutely shocking injuries that they were inflicting on animals, and
they were laughing. They were laughing as if this was
a funny thing and you could actually just talk about
this normally.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
When I was reading up on Cecward's case, I was
shocked that initially he was in a protected alia area
where he couldn't be handed, and then they lured him out.
They actually used the bait to lure him out, and
then of.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Course into an area where he.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
Could, yes, why he could be shot. And then when
he did that, he didn't die. So it took twelve
hours for him to find it, for them find to
find him and then kill him. And I was like, frankly,
like that that seems that seems like endless agony, like
twelve hours of.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
When I was talking to conservations about it, they were saying,
you know, the hunters, they treat these national parks as mines.
They're mining the animals because they're protected and they're you know,
healthy and so on. So they lure them out literally,
these national parks like the Harangi National Park, which is
where Cecils had his territory. All of these national parks
they surround they surround them with these estates and so yeah,
(28:48):
they lure them. And but well that's what they do
with so many animals. They do that with leopards, they
do that with you know, they set packs of dogs
on on these creatures as well. And the numbers that
are being shot, you know, some of these big trophy
hunters that are shooting hundreds of lions each right, this
is where we're at with some of these species. We
are in an extinction emergency Lions experts are telling me
(29:09):
that there's probably fewer than ten thousand lions left on
planet Earth. In nineteen seventy the number was around two
hundred thousand. Okay, so in fifty years the lion population
has absolutely collapsed. In Africa from two hundred thousand to
ten thousand elephants. You look at what's happened to the
elephants in Africa. There were twenty million when the British
turned up in Africa and started shooting them. There's now
(29:32):
four hundred thousand. And actually this is how I got
into the issue, because this was the president of Botswana,
the outgoing one seretzi Ian Karma, and he banned trophy
hunting in Botswana because of what was happening to elephants
throughout Africa. And because of that, Botswana now has a
third of all the remaining African elephants on the planet.
(29:52):
One third are in this one country, which is the
side of well size of France, so it's not it's
not a big country. It's got twice as many as
any other country Africa. And they protected them and the
alful populations they're stabilized. The only other place where there's
good news for elephants is Kenya? Why because Kenya banned
trophy hunting in nineteen seventy seven, and we're saying this
(30:13):
pattern rights across the board line. Populations are collapsing excepting Kenya.
Elephant populations collapsing excepting Kenya. Rhino populations are collapsing, excepting Kenya.
Speaker 6 (30:24):
One thing at or raised Alia was the issue of corruption.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Right.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
One of the things I noticed when we even did
the segment.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
One of the reactions from Trophee Hunders was we would
like hope conservation, but we can't hope that Africans are corrupt.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
That should be Africans to fix.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Right.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
There was saying you can't.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Hold that they are just stopping hunting, just don't hurt.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
Yeah, it's the same reason people went like, oh, we
want petronized companies which use sweatshops, because it could have said, oh,
as we just buy, it's up to Apple, it's up
to Nike to actually pay people. Well, but people went like, no,
we can't actually more support the company when we know
the money we paid doesn't trickle down to the walkers.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
In this case, the big game companies that take you
out on the hunting.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Yeah, it's exactly and what has shown you s shows
the money doesn't trickle down.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
So Eduardo, to that point when you wrote this book,
when you you go on this journey of being an
undercover trophy hunter, you know, there's a lot of questions
that I have a lot of it You've already touched on.
But I want to talk to you about you man,
like getting first hand accounts from trophy hunters and they're
just talking about animals like they nothing. Talk to me
(31:35):
a little bit about the emotional told that that journey
took on you and how were you able to kind
of deal with that? Like, how did how do you
how do I say this nicely, Joe? How did you
not kill some of these folks when you was on
the hunt with them, pretending that you was cool with hunting?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Well, do you know what? I was saved from having
to actually go out and hunt by COVID because there
were these travel restrictions, so a lot of the British
hunters they couldn't actually travel. So instead what they were
they were telling me about the hunts that they had
been on the previous year, and they were telling me
in a lot of detail. But yeah, you know it
does drive you to the point of madness because you
kind of think this is like a parallel universe that
(32:16):
you're inhabiting or invading. Even do you just want to
scream out and say, how can you say such a thing?
How can you even use that language, use those words
as if it's a normal thing to say. But you
know it's really because I've been doing some more research
on writing another book at the moment, and I've been
speaking to a lot of psychologists and criminologists, and they're
telling me, you know, these people isn't just you know,
(32:37):
it isn't just sad. This is bad, This is dangerous.
These people are potentially dangerous. I mean, there is this
proven link. I mean, that's why the FBI in the
US right has now class serious animal cruelty as a
Grade A felony. Why because of all the links that
people who involved in that have got to drug running,
gun crime, and so on. So you know, there's a
(32:58):
lot of very serious crime involved here. And you look
at for example, in the US, I mean, the guys
who are behind that terb tragedy, the Columbine High School massacres.
You know, they started out as animal abusers. The Boston strangler.
He was a guy who started out as an animal abuser.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
You're saying the lack of empathy isn't just limited to
it spreads all across. But then won't some of your
hunters say you're using like the few selective bad animal abuser.
Can you know add cruel adults when they say you're
using them to paint the whole hunting community.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, I'm not a poacher. I hunt mine, yes, proper money,
in a proper reserve. I go to a reserve. I'm
not like those hoodlums out there.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
I'm not like because I.
Speaker 5 (33:48):
Know I say, is that that's one of the indicators.
That's like one of the behavioral indicators, like when a
kid is growing up. If a kid is cruel towards animals,
then you need to intervene immediatey orders. But then want
trophy hunters say, you're actually, you know, you're using like
a very selective rare and small sumple size to paint
(34:10):
the hall.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Look, I'm sure there's some very nice people out there
who go trophy hunting. Okay that in many ways I
see bit respectable and so on. But this is the
facts of the data. So when you look at the data.
And this is the criminologists and the psychologist who are
telling me this, right, and they're showing me the data saying, look,
you are seeing that people who involved in trophy hunting
are more likely to be involved in domestic violence, They
(34:33):
are more likely to be involved in child abuse. You know,
there is even in the cycle of the year, so
just before the hunting season begins and you get that
kind of buck fever thing, that's when domestic violence also peaks. Exactly.
So it's the same kind of I don't know how
to describe it, with these kind of emotional drives, these urges,
(34:54):
and again you've got to read about some of the
crazy stuff that trophy hunters actually write and say as
if it was normal. About how you know, there's one
guy he's I mean, he's a respectable guy. He's a lawyer,
he's involved in different international organizations, and he's saying that
trophy hunting should be made to write a passage for
all men. He's a guy who's actually talked about you know,
the first time he killed an animal it was like
(35:15):
losing his virginity. It had the same feeling how I
am sometimes lost for words with im, often not as
you can tell. But you know sometimes when you just
try to get into psychology in the minds of these people,
you know they're dangerous. They are dangerous people. This is
a dangerous mindset. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 6 (35:32):
It was striking.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Roy I would have to say when we did this
cage at the end with reach Africans coming over tour,
we turned the tables.
Speaker 6 (35:41):
It was striking tool not to hurt rich people.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
Yes, had the audience reacted to that, because that really
brought it home.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
For every dog we shoot, a portion of the prophets
will go to American communities, up.
Speaker 6 (35:56):
To three percent.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
And I know what you are thinking, what my pets.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
I'm going to kill them too.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Yes, pet said rich old age will also be hunted
by rich Africans. No more watching fluff struggle to climb
the stairs, instead be shut and mounted in the Nigerian's
man cake.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
It would be intriguing for me because most of these
trophy hunters, as Edward I said, you know, they have
disposable income. They're pretty well off. They are respected professionals,
they're very successful in their chosen careers.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
It would be intriguing for me to ask them how
they would.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
React if Africans were coming over not to hunt big game,
but to hunt their pets.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Yep, if enough, and said I love dogs so much.
Speaker 5 (36:41):
Yeah, so for me turning the tables because that would
be very intriguing for me too. And then you went like,
as we said in the skate, we were doing this
for you because their benefits are paying you and we
love dogs so much.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Chris, you have too many dogs. We need to shoot one.
Let's talk a little bit after the break about, you know,
ways that we the general public, Eduardo, can help to
stop this, help to bring awareness to this, and I
want to talk more specifically about the work that you're
doing doing now to ban trophy hunting. This is beyond
(37:12):
the scenes. So Eduardo, you've done your work as an
author to bring awareness to this issue, but you're also
the founder of the campaign to Ban trophy Hunting. What
are some of your outreach strategies, you know, to get
people to join the college. You've already done the work
of studying the hunter, now the laban, how do you
(37:33):
get people like us who think that trophy hunting was
just poaching rhinos for ivory, but clearly it's layers and
layers deeper than that. What are some of your outreach
strategies to get people to join your cause.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The main thing we want to do is just tell
people the truth and tell people the whole story, the
whole shocking story, because a lot of people don't know,
you know, and I talked to government ministers as well
as members of parliaments and members of the public and
they don't know. I mean, it was government minister I
spoke to just the other day and she was saying
trophy hunting. But I thought all of that was finished
with years ago, and I'm saying, no, it's happening, and
(38:09):
it's happening here in the sense that there are British
trophy hunters. And that's the thing I mean at the moment,
I'm trying to get people to understand that this isn't
just you know, the guys like Walter Palmer, that American
dentist who shot sees all the line. There are people
from Britain, There are people from China, there are people
from Russia. You know, there's a Russian Mountain Hunters Club,
so it's their trophy hunting group. Some of its directors
(38:32):
have got very close links to Putin. You've got a
growing number of Chinese people going out to Africa now,
and they're using the laws because this is the weird
thing about the law. Okay, so you cannot go and
shoot a black rhino or any kind of rhino in
order to take off its horn and take it away,
to grind it up, to sell it as afrodiziak to
(38:54):
do all of that. That is a league. Well, that's
called poaching. However, you can turn up and say, hey,
I'm a trophy hunter and I'm going to import this
as a hunting trophy. So you can shoot the same rhino,
you can take its horn, you can take it back
to China, and you can grind it up and take
it into the black market. Right, And this is the
crazy thing about so the international regulation societies, the Convention
(39:17):
on International Trade and in Dangerus Species, Okay, this is
the law that's supposed to stop poaching and protect endangered wildlife.
But there's this loophole. And so at one point, you know,
a huge proportion of the rhino legal hunting trophies that
were then going back into China and Vietnam and into
the black market there was through this loophole. And exactly
(39:39):
the same as to being happening with and you've got bears,
including polar bears, right we're talking about climate change, polar
bears being on the threat of being threatened with extinction.
You can still go to Canada and shoot polar bears.
You can go to Canada shoot pretty not much any bear.
They shoot about twenty twelve thirteen thousand bears a year.
Trophy hunters do from America and from elsewhere. But you
can shoot a polar bear if you're one of these
(40:02):
wildlife traffickers and claim that you're a trophy hunter, and
then you can take it's god bladder because they like
the goal. They use that for all of these traditional
Chinese medicines, which of course have gotten not proved. They
even shoot bears for their and let me use the word,
they're penises, right for the baculum, that the penis bone,
because that again is supposed to have aphrodisia values. This
(40:24):
is all done legally, because that's the law on trophy
hunting says, Okay, you can't shoot that animal to traffic
it and to sell them. But yeah, if you say
that you're a trophy hunter, you can go and shoot
the exact same animal, take it back home, So.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
They're basically saying, your claimate gene, you can't wipe out.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
That's our job.
Speaker 7 (40:45):
For me.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
The thing Roy that intrigues me about this whole thing,
and I think Edward or like, the biggest killing you
have is to get the people on the ground. I think,
to care as deeply and as much as you do,
because as I say, Africans have more pressing issues and
the government is obviously governments are produced. When Sisa the
(41:06):
lion was killed, it wasn't big news in Zimbabwe until
actually it hit like the big time in the UK.
Speaker 6 (41:13):
The babasicapt the story and.
Speaker 5 (41:15):
Then they oh we had this iconic They did not
have been killed so before the ground for them to
care as much, I think they care a lot more
about poaching these days, but trophy hunting maybe not so much.
It's the same thing with I think climate climate change.
But the irony of this whole the thing that got
as yastronomy is so many people thought trophy hunting was normal.
(41:37):
Tear trophy hunters started posting pictures of themselves.
Speaker 6 (41:42):
With the animals theirs social media. Yes, so for me,
that's that's a very interesting like well, so.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Some African citizen issue. Let me tell you why. It's
because it is perpetuating poverty, is perpetuating exploitation, it's perpetuating
land ownership by a wealthy minority elite, and so on.
There was a study done by economists in South Africa
that showed that if there was a wholesale switch from
trophy hunting to photographic safaris, that would create eleven more
(42:10):
jobs for people in poor rural areas in South Africa.
And that's the case because you know, again the numbers
don't add up. You shoot a line like Cecil, you know,
maybe ten thousand dollars is going to end up supposedly
in the conservation fundel though it never does. The cost
of conserving a line like Cecil and its habitat is
a million dollars a year. Ten thousand dollars doesn't is
(42:32):
a drop in the ocean. But what does work for
conservation as well as for local people cause photo safaris
because they you know, an average line like Cecil, akay,
he's going to generate something like one hundred thousand dollars
a year. So over an average life span of fifteen years,
that's a million and a half dollars he's paying for
his conservation by staying alive. These photo safari industries, they
(42:57):
employ so many more people, they pay them best, and
they work all year around because hunting is largely a
seasonal activity, and they're working in management jobs, you know,
instead of in menial skivvy jobs as a skinner or
a track or you know, a Yeah, this is why
it is good for the economy of Africa's You know,
(43:17):
when presidents came a banned trophy hunting in Botswana, it
wasn't just because of the conservation issues. It was because
he was seeing that photo safaris was doing so much
better for local people in Botswana and some places were
just switching before there was any law from trophy hunting
to photo safaris because it was better for local people.
Speaker 7 (43:39):
Full s.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
The thing was asking about the African like the people
on the ground, like you know, how the climate change.
Even then, they're still having a problem because you know,
people still ban chackal and they still do all these things.
And I'm thinking, like how would you because the thing
has to be so praising that people go like we
need to stop this, Like I wish Africans were as
(44:03):
passionate about this issue, like the way you're passionate about it,
like I wish, I wish He's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 6 (44:10):
I wish it was a voting issue. If that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Well, look for some Africans it is no.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
But I'm going because you need a so like when
it comes to politicians, for you to move the need
of politically, you need like a critic com mass. People
have to feel like their jobs are in danger, like
the local area.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Empty yes, yes, personal issue, yes, other wise the issue.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
Otherwise you're going to need every African government to be
like Coma, which can't happen because he was. He's a
visionary like his dad, like he comes from I know,
like I know it about him, like even I went
to People admire him a lot because it comes from
a line of like almost statesmen, but not every like
African leader, especially the local leaders. You know, they struggle.
(44:55):
It's the same thing like in America they're getting. If
I'm an African politician and the trophy hunt is paid
part of my campaign money or they're sponsoring my campaign,
it's very hard for me to So I need to
almost choose between do I take the money from the
trophy hunting globist or do why risk losing my so like,
how can your.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Most environmentalism in America? It's like you take the oil money.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
Yes, why do you tin it? Incrove like a voting issue.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
It's do you know what it's about the dollar in
your pocket? Because trophy hunting is holding Africa back. Yes,
it is perpetuating the old economic structures, which deliberately, you know,
we're set up to keep a certain class of people.
Speaker 6 (45:38):
Certain racy people obviously and minority exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
You know, so a part that might have ended in
South Africa. But actually you know, you look at the
if you look at the industry of trophy hunting, So
who are the people who own the land where the
trophy hunters go, where the trophy hunting goes up? Who
owned the companies? At least these are the same people. Yeah,
(46:02):
it's all those people, but you know there are some
and you know, partly our responsibility here in the West
is to give a platform to those powerful African voices
who have a view to I once went to Downing Street,
which is where the Prime Minister of England lives with
a seven foot tall senior elder from the Massai tribe.
It was January. It's so cold, and he was in
traditional but you know that he was able to address them,
(46:26):
and he told the Prime Minister how in olden days,
actually part of the Massi warrior ritual was to kill
a lion to show that you were a warrior. They
had now abandoned that and in fact they were now
they had taken pride in becoming custodians of their natural heritage,
and that actually part of the whole warrior ritual is
(46:48):
much more about that now. And also, of course in Kenya,
every single Massi high school kid or high school aged
child gets a high school education thanks entire to the
photo Safari.
Speaker 6 (47:03):
Yes, yes where it, yes, yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
And we've got to give people like Karma, like you know,
the Massi elders, et cetera. We've got to give them
a platform. I mean, at the moment they you know,
then then for reasons we all understand, they're excluded from society.
They're not given, you know, the same access to the
media and so on. So we've got to give these people.
And you know, because I tell you I've spoken to
a lot of you know, village headmen and community leaders,
(47:29):
and they're all scathing about trophy hunting, largely for the
economic reasons rather than necessarily conservation ones. They say, where's
this money.
Speaker 6 (47:38):
We're not, Yeah, we're not. There's money. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Whenever I go to the you know, to us, look,
you know, we need a new roof for our health
center or our school or whatever, they say, Oh, there's
no money. They've been telling me that for twenty years.
And yet they've been conning us to say that.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
But in terms of you know, changing mindset globally here
in the West, the US government has actually.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
Because I feel like I feel like the it's the
thing you said about nine out of ten people, the waste.
Speaker 6 (48:03):
It feels like a voting issue.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
It feels like if you if there was a congressman
and you went like, this congressman is a trophy haunter.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
There's no way they are winning re election.
Speaker 5 (48:14):
That's that feels like that feels like an issue you
could hit them with, especially like in liberal cities.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah, yeah, well the moment you see, SCI is one
of the biggest packs on Capitol Hill. So, I mean
their pack is bigger than General Motors, It's bigger than
Delta Airlines. I mean, it all goes to Republicans obviously,
but their pack is one of the biggest on Capitol Hills.
And they've set up this thing called the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation,
and it's basically to hoover up members of the House
of Reps, the senators or so stay governors, and they've
(48:42):
all brought them into this club. It basically says, you
keep towing our line, we'll keep giving you money at
election time. So one half of all governors, Reps and
senators are members of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, which is
the congressional presence of the trophy hunting industry. So they've
got their claw into the system. But yeah, it does
(49:03):
change politicians when you tell them the numbers. So about
three weeks ago here in the UK, the government started
briefing political editors that they were going to drop the
bill banning trophies, and so obviously they got in touch
with me, the political editors, and said, hey, listen, we're
being told this. I said, okay, very good timing. I've
(49:24):
actually just had an opinion poll done tells me two things. Firstly,
ninety two percent of Conservative Party voters, the government's own supporters,
want this bill implemented as soon as possible. Only one
percent disagree. Second, thirty four percent of Conservative voters say
they're going to ditch the party if they don't follow
through on this manifest So I publicized one of those
(49:46):
big article in the Times and the Guidian, blah blah,
and I briefed ministers privately on the second because it
could have been a bit anyway, but in cendjury if
I put that in the newspapers anyway, big coverage. And
then I get a call from the Government ministry from
one of my contact. They're saying, wow, that story about
the poll, it's like a nuclear bomb. The minister is
about to declare in an hour's time that they're going
(50:07):
to do a U turn on the U turn. They're
going ahead with a ban after all. And sure enough,
an hour later a statement given to the BBC, the
government say, of course we're always going to do. All
of these rumors about us not doing it, what were
they doing?
Speaker 6 (50:20):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
And the figures are really really strong, you know, and
getting stronger because we've been polling consistently for about two
three years. I mean, they sound like election results in
North Korea. They're so good for us.
Speaker 5 (50:34):
You know, that's the only thing I feel like poeticians respond.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
They're for re election, you know, yeah, they don't want
to lose their jobs. So one of the things we're
actually doing at the moment, we're actually doing a road
show around marginal conservative constituency, so where the conservative MP
has got a majority of less than five percent.
Speaker 6 (50:55):
Yes, yes, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
We're going to them and we're saying, now, you support
the government policy, don't you come on out and come
and do this photo up with us. And we've got
a great quote from you know, Dame Judy Dench and
Joanna Lumney because they're amongst our supporters, say what a
great campaign this local MP is doing. They get great fame,
you know, right.
Speaker 6 (51:13):
Up, that's what you see. That's that's what I was saying.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Now, if you have done junior endosing you, it's not
good if you If you if you have THEMN Judy Dench,
then it's good for if you have.
Speaker 6 (51:23):
That's what I was saying. The optics just doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Yeah, let's let's end here. What are some campaigns that
we could donate to and where are some companies or
organizations that you're part of atwater that people need to
be aware of on this issue.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
So the campaign's Band Trophy Hunting. It's an international organization.
You can find us at bantrophy Hunting dot org and
you can find all the information about us there and
all of the issues. And we you know, we've we've
actually named and got photos of trophy hunters so we
can give them, you know, a name and the face.
Because these people they want to remain faceless. Well we're
actually putting some names out there so people can actually
(51:58):
understand what is really happening. And we're at the moment,
we're you know, we're coordinating campaigns in a number of places.
We've got an international foundation. We've been helping our colleagues
in Belgium, who the Belgian Parliament in the last few
days past the resolution unanimously to ban trophies. Right, so
this is this is hot news. We've just done an
opinion poll here in the UK. It shows nine out
(52:21):
of ten voters want trophies banned as soon as possible.
And in fact, there's been poles in the US that
have shown similar figures around elephant trophies. You know, nearly
nine out of ten voters in the US. Thing gets
wrong for people to go to wherever Africa and shoot
elephants and bring those trophies back. We are on a
journey here. We're wanting countries like Britain, the US, et cetera,
(52:43):
to stop imports of these trophies. But ultimately as our
goal is the abolition of trophy hunting. Because look right,
you know, we've banned bear baiting, We've banned cock fighting,
we've banned dog fighting, We've all of these different things.
They've been kicked into the dustbin of history, which is
the only place they deserve to be. How come trophy
(53:03):
hunting has fallen through the gap. Well, we're trying to
make sure it doesn't and its next. And in the
same way that we have tackled as a human society,
great social moral evils like apartheid, like slavery, all the things,
we catabolish trophy hunting. We can change that mindset that
says that it is somehow okay to abuse, torture, mate,
and kill animals, defenseless living creatures, sentient animals, as if
(53:28):
they're just a pile of rubble.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Well, I cannot thank you enough for being excuse me
tate that again. Well, I cannot thank you enough, Edwardo.
Speaker 7 (53:39):
This is.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
For being a part of the show. The book is undercover,
Trophy Hunter.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
No one is going to buy the book because it
feels like it's being sold by a Nigerian prince.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
The problem the book is under over Trophy Hunter. Also
thank you to Daily Show writer Joseph Opio Joe Opio,
I will I will see you around the building and
we can take some dialect classes.
Speaker 6 (54:10):
I'll see you around HR. This is now an HR issue.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
That's all the time we have for today. Hopefully we've
taken you beyond the scenes. See you next week.
Speaker 7 (54:25):
I can't believe it or not my accent right.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts,
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