With the European Union the world’s second largest importer of hunting trophies after the United States, HSI/Europe is calling on EU citizens and politicians to take action to stop the EU’s involvement in this grotesque and unsustainable killing.

Fortunately, the fight is gaining momentum. Governments and institutions are taking note and giving the issue of trophy hunting the attention it deserves.

In recent weeks and months:

• The High Court of the Western Cape granted an interim suspension of relevant hunting quotas in the application for an interim interdict against the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s 2022 hunting and export quotas for leopard, black rhino and elephant.
• The International Union for the Conservation of Nature Ethics Specialist Group called on the German government to end the practice of trophy hunting imports for ethical, ecological and legal reasons. This was followed by an announcement from the Environment Minister Steffi Lemke of the intention to restrict the import of hunting trophies from protected animal species to Germany.
• The Belgian Federal Parliament unanimously passed a resolution demanding that the government immediately stop authorizing trophy import permits of species protected under certain international trade regulations.
• In Italy, a bill to ban the import and export of hunting trophies of protected species—the first of its kind in Italy–was presented at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
• The Spanish Parliamentary Association for the Defense of Animal Rights presented a motion for resolution to prohibit the import and export of hunting trophies of protected species listed in Annexes A and six species from Annex B, as well as the giraffe, of the Wildlife Trade Regulations, and held an event in the Spanish Parliament with international experts to discuss the threats of trophy hunting.
• The United Kingdom committed to one to one of the world’s strongest policies banning the import of hunting trophies of over 7,000 protected species.

Prior to these developments, the Netherlands and France pioneered this paradigm shift in Europe. In 2015, France implemented a ban on the import of lion hunting trophies. In the same year, the Dutch government adopted a decision to ban the trophy imports of over 200 species, which came into force in 2016.