Wildlife hunters took home nearly 1,800 giraffe body parts “trophies” in a year – including from more than 100 animals specially bred in captivity to be shot, it’s been revealed.
Whole skins, bones, skulls, feet and tails were all popular with wealthy hunters who paid to shoot giraffes – but one even tried to smuggle back home genitalia from an animal they had shot.
Customs officers in the United States discovered the genitalia in the luggage of a traveller returning from Africa.
Figures from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) show that 1,791 giraffe trophies were exported worldwide in 2023, the most recent available data.
Some 120 of the animals were recorded in the database as captive-bred, to be killed by foreign hunters.
British hunters imported 21 giraffe trophies into the UK that year, but other European nations also accounted for some imports, including Austria, Germany and France. US hunters imported 1,072 (60 per cent) of the global total.
Plans for a ban on trophy imports into the UK remain stalled. The Tories under Boris Johnson dropped proposals for a ban, and Labour accused the government of being “complicit” in trophy hunting when Conservative peers blocked such a plan.
Campaigners are calling on the UK government to finally deliver on Labour’s long-standing promise to ban the import of hunting trophies – a pledge made in election manifestos.
Giraffes are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, the global system of monitoring species’ statuses. It estimates there are about 68,000 giraffes left in the world.
The species is outnumbered three-to-one by elephants in Africa – whose own populations are dropping – yet they have less protection, conservationists point out, calling for action to close legal loopholes.
“Giraffes have suffered about a 40 per cent decline in numbers in three generations,” said Prof Fred Bercovitch, adjunct Professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa and a leading giraffe expert.
“If the decline continues at the current rate, they will be extinct before long.”
British-owned trophy-hunting companies are offering giraffe-shooting “holidays” online. One is marketing more than 200 giraffe shoots, with “special offers” starting at under £1,500.
One worldwide site offering wildlife shooting trips in Botswana and Zimbabwe charges a fee of $1,800 (£1,336) to hunt giraffes on its estates.
Prof Bercovitch, who has written giraffe conservation reviews for the IUCN, rejected industry claims that trophy-hunting boosts local economies.
“If trophy-hunting benefits the local economy and increases the socioeconomic status of people in hunting areas, then those people would have a higher standard of living than people in areas where hunting is forbidden. However, there is no evidence to suggest this is the case,” he said.
He called on the UK to act. “The trophy-hunting of giraffes produces yet further declines in endangered populations. If the UK truly wants to support conservation, it must shut its borders to these trophies once and for all.”
A private member’s bill banning trophy-hunting imports is due to have a second reading in the Commons on 11 July, and it’s understood the government will set out its position then, but private members’ bills rarely become law without government support.
A spokesperson for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “The government was elected on a mandate to ban the import of hunting trophies – that is exactly what we will do.”
