Late last month Senator Murray Sinclair of the Canadian Parliament proposed a new law, the “Jane Goodall Act,” one provision of which would ban the import of legally hunted and harvested wildlife.
In response to Senator Sinclair’s proposal, Safari Club International (SCI) Canada Committee Chair Eric Moland said, “By making illegal the import of hunted animals, the proposed Act would disincentivize Canadian hunters from contributing to African conservation plans as legal hunters, causing long term harm to elephant and other wildlife species populations.”
SCI CEO W. Laird Hamberlin commented further, saying “SCI, in coordination with our Canadian members and partners in Africa, will be taking every appropriate action to oppose such misguided legislation just as we did in the California state Legislature.”
SCI worked to successfully kill the similar Iconic Species Act in California because, like the Jane Goodall Act, the proposed policy would harm the ongoing, effective conservation strategies of the African countries that rely on legal, regulated hunting to increase the value of wildlife and generate revenue for conservation plans. These hunter-supported plans include effective efforts to combat illegal ivory poaching, which proponents of the Jane Goodall Act state is a major contributor to elephant decline in the past century.
Legally harvested animal import bans are opposed by the many African Countries of the African Wildlife Consultative Forum (AWCF). For example the Director of the Namibian Association of Community Based Natural Resource Management Support Organizations (NACSO), Ms. Maxi Louis, testified earlier this year that “Namibian communities rely on sustainable hunting as part of a larger conservation effort that protects healthy populations of diverse species and wildlife habitat, while also supporting local jobs and livelihoods.”
