PARLIAMENTARY BRIEFING – January 2026
- New figures published by international authorities reveal that a British hunter recently brought home a trophy of a Critically Endangered Black Rhinoceros. There are just 3,142 black rhinos left, according to global conservation body IUCN.
- Researchers for CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – have recently released figures for the bodies and body parts of endangered animals brought back to Britain by trophy hunters.
- As well as trophies of black and white rhinos, British hunters brought home tusks of elephants from one of Africa’s most endangered herds in Zambia, and those of leopards which are classed as an Appendix I species under the convention indicating that it is a species at greatest risk of extinction.
- The figures also reveal that British hunters shot several ‘canned’ lions – semi-tame animals that are bred in captivity and then shot in enclosed fields they cannot escape from – as well as a wild lion in Zimbabwe, where American dentist Walter Palmer shot Cecil the lion in 2015.
- The British hunters in question will have been issued import permits by Defra for the most vulnerable species.
- Other animals killed include Hippopotamuses, Zebras, Wolves, and a Baboon.
- British trophy hunters travelled as far as Canada and Eastern European to acquire the bodies, skins and skulls of bears.
- The 2024 figures are the most recent available and uploaded onto the CITES Trade Database, which is managed by UN Environment Programme and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), which is based in Cambridge.
- They show that approximately 50 trophies of CITES-listed animals entered the UK during the year. The figure for 2023 was just under 190.
- The 2024 figure may still rise due to late reporting, which is relatively common under the CITES system.
- There is a clear pattern of decline in recent years, not just in the UK but globally. The volume of annual trophy hunting trade has fallen by half in the last decade.
- This is believed to be as a result of trophy hunting becoming more socially unacceptable, restrictions on imports and exports by a growing number of countries, and also because of declining wildlife populations.
- The revelations follow recent pressure from the Trump Administration on the British Government to halt its plans to ban trophy hunters from bringing back ‘souvenirs’ of animals they have shot.
- A ban on trophy hunting imports is supported by Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP, DUP, Plaid Cymru, Green Party, SDLP, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party, Your Party, and several Reform-UK and Independent MPs.
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