Leading wildlife conservationist Dame Jane Goodall has launched a blistering attack on trophy hunters as she hailed a looming ban on imports of their sick souvenirs after a Mirror-backed campaign.
Marksmen who target endangered species may be “mentally diseased” or “stupid”, the top chimpanzee expert told a Westminster reception.
Dame Jane, 88, was speaking after a parliamentary Bill aimed at banning hunters bringing their sick souvenirs back to Britain cleared its latest hurdle.
She held a placard paying tribute to Cecil the lion, whose killing in 2015 in Zimbabwe by American dentist Walter Palmer shocked the world and shone a light on trophy hunting, which she branded “a very black mark on humanity”.
“I have tried very, very hard to get into the mind of a trophy hunter … I have struggled to get into the mind of someone who can behave like this,” revealed Dame Jane.
“We are supposed to be a nation of animal lovers and yet we have these people, so what is motivating them? How can they feel pride?”
Highlighting how hunters used powerful long-range rifles to kill their prey from distance, she stormed: “Where is the courage? There’s no courage at all.”
She added: "The people who do it, I find whether they are mentally diseased or they are stupid, I don’t know. Maybe some of you can work it out, but I can’t.”
Dame Jane warned it was not just wildlife killed which suffered, but also other animals in their pride or herd.
“All of these animals who are being hunted by these people who just want bragging rights and the biggest heads on their walls, to boast to their friends who come and visit them - these animals all have personalities, they all have minds, they are all intelligent and they can all have emotions,” she said.
“They can all feel happiness, sadness, fear, pain and they can grieve.
“It’s not just trophy hunting - each individual animal is suffering.”
Foreign Office Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith said: “People who relish in killing these extraordinary animals, dismembering them, putting pieces on their walls and decorating their houses - I think there is something psychopathic about it.
“Who would want to shoot a gorilla? Who would want to shoot a lion? Who would want to shoot an elephant?”
Blasting the “moral debauchery that leads someone to want to kill one of nature’s great creatures”, he said the “kind of person who would derive pleasure from such a thing is someone who is so far removed from any normal person”.
Conservative backbencher Sir Roger Gale, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Trophy Hunting, lashed out at the “bizarre, perverse, perverted, self-gratification of going to Africa and murdering Africa’s animals”.
Tory MP Henry Smith is leading the fight to block hunters from bringing animal skins, severed heads and carcasses back to Britain after shoots abroad.
His Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill passed its second Commons reading last week and is due back in Parliament on January 25.
Mr Smith said: “We can really lead the way in consigning trophy hunting to the history books.”
Backing the Bill, former Shadow Environment Secretary Baroness Sue Hayman urged MPs and peers to help “bring an end to this really disgusting practice that I simply can’t get my head around”.
She said: “This has wide, cross-party support so there’s no reason why we can’t get it through.”
