Eduardo Conçalves Stop Trophy Hunting!

Eduardo Gonçalves has dedicated his life to animal protection and conservation

Have you ever walked through hallways filled with the stuffed heads of animals that once roamed free in nature? Have you ever seen footage of an elephant baby shot alongside its mother to end up in just such a room, or did you know that in Africa, lion cubs are raised in cages just so they can be shot by ‘hunters’? Maybe you should…

WORDS MICHEL CRUZ PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EDUARDO GONÇALVES AND SHUTTERSTOCK

With numbers dropping dramatically, trophy hunting is the most senseless of all the challenges wildlife faces

EDUARDO GONÇALVES

AND THE MISSION TO END TROPHY HUNTING

Originally trained as a journalist, Eduardo Gonçalves became involved with environmental issues early in his life. The son of Portuguese immigrants to the UK, he would spend summer holidays in Portugal, where he was exposed to bullfighting at a young age. “I just couldn’t imagine why someone would want to purposely hurt an animal for no practical reason,” says Eduardo, and unlike Spain they don’t even kill the bulls in Portugal. “Even so, it seemed a cruel, ancient pastime not befitting a modern world,” and as he continued in his career, he encountered more and more examples of the same, from fox hunting in England to the unspeakable cruelty committed upon living creatures throughout Asia, Africa and beyond.

Animal lovers mobilising before it is too late

“We are meant to be civilised creatures ourselves, but can hardly justify that boast,” says the man who would later become a leading figure in wildlife conservation and animal rights organisations, including working for the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and the conservation of the Iberian Lynx. A few months before he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the League Against Cruel Sports, Eduardo had been particularly shocked by the killing of Cecil the lion in 2015 by an American dentist. “Like most people, I thought trophy hunting belonged to another era and had largely died out, but research bore out that Cecil was one of 600 lions shot by trophy hunters that year alone.”

THE RIGHT TO LIFE

Governments and agencies around the world officially rally around the cry to save thousands of animal species on this planet from impending extinction, which means they will be lost and gone forever. But not enough is done to effectively stop poaching of all kinds, from trophy hunting to shooting by farmers and the trade in furs, ivory, rhino horns, shark fins and all manner of so-called medicinal products that have no proven efficacy. It speaks again to our savagery as a species, and as Eduardo says, “all living creatures have an equal right to walk on this earth.”

Health issues created obstacles to Eduardo’s desire to end blood sports of this kind, but never diminished his drive, so he set up the campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting. Its message began to resonate more and more, and among the very long list of celebrity endorsers are the likes of Ed Sheeran, Ricky Gervais and Dame Judy Dench, with Sir Ranulph Fiennes as his co-director. “We focus on a global level, finding for example that while Botswana upholds a ban on elephant poaching, it still allows big game trophy hunting, and as a result has become a favoured spot for ‘sportsmen’ of this kind.” Eduardo and his colleagues work hard to campaign for awareness and the enforced banning of such activities including the import and export of hunting trophies, not just in far-off countries but

also closer to home, where he uncovered a criminal organisation, whose activities included not only organising illegal dog fights, but also drug smuggling and trafficking women.

The perpetrators were arrested, but he doesn’t sit on his laurels, fighting on to protect the Iberian Lynx, which went from 100,000 in 1900 to just 92 animals left by the end of the century. Many believed it was a lost cause, but Eduardo fought on and created the noise required for the governments of Spain and Portugal to begin an active breeding programme, followed by release into the wild of a new generation of young lynxes. Today, numbers are up and recovering, and the species saved from what was going to be certain extinction.

Having such achievements to his credit, Eduardo Gonçalves is now aiming to realise an international convention abolishing worldwide trophy hunting forever. “Of all the poaching and other challenges to the continued existence of animals in the wild, trophy hunting is the most senseless and cruel, as it serves no purpose other than to inflate the ego of rather sad individuals,” says the author of the book, Trophy Leaks.

To put it into perspective using the example of one of the most famous animals of all, the African lion, as recently as the 1970s there were 200,000 in the wild, and now there are just 15,000 left and that number is in freefall thanks to a combination of human overpopulation and senseless hunting. If nothing is done, the lion could be gone by 2050, followed by the majority of wildlife that still clings on to life on this planet today.

Rather than football players or pop stars, it is people such as Eduardo Gonçalves who are the true heroes of today, and they don’t do it for fan adulation or millions, but because they want a better world.

So if you are shocked to learn that in the 21st century trophy hunting is a growing industry and see just how easy it is to arrange a killing holiday online, visit the Ban Trophy Hunting website to join Eduardo and his numerous supporters – maybe you too will be inspired to do something about making this a better world.

His partner in the project is none other than Sir Ranulph Fiennes

g www.bantrophyhunting.org www.edgoncalves.wordpress. com/trophy-hunting/