Last Wednesday, Luke attended the Parliamentary reception for the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, joining a coalition of charities and support groups, as well as a cross-party coalition of MPs and Peers. You can see his speech here.

‘Trophy hunting’ is the killing of an animal for sport or pleasure in order to display part or all of its body as a trophy.

The Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting calls for:

1. Governments to ban trophy hunting and the import and export of hunting trophies.
2. Effective enforcement of existing national and international laws against trophy hunting, with tough penalties for offenders.
3. An immediate halt to the trade in trophies of vulnerable, threatened or endangered species.
4. Trophy hunting exemptions to be removed from existing international conservation agreements.
5. Negotiations to commence on a comprehensive global agreement banning trophy hunting.

Speaking at the event, Luke said:

“I think banning trophy hunting would send a strong signal to the world that this is not an acceptable practice in the 21st century. Let’s use the international pressure that we see building as we move towards COP26 to push not just for cutting global carbon but boosting global biodiversity. Let’s leave young people a world that we can be proud of.”

Luke isn’t alone. In a 2019 poll prepared by Survation, 75% of respondents said they supported a ban on trophy hunters being bringing back hunting ‘trophies’ of wild animals back to the UK.

In a public government consultation on controls on the import and export of hunting trophies, Luke supports ‘Option 3’ – a ban on all hunting trophies entering or leaving the UK. You can have your own say here.

Luke hopes to work on a cross-party basis to end the practice of trophy hunting following the end of the consultation on the 25th February.