An investigation by Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting discovered shocking links between scientists who drafted a pro-hunting letter for Science and the trophy hunting community. In light of the findings, the magazine is taking action to correct the matter and hold the scientists accountable.
The pro-hunting letter, “Trophy hunting bans imperil biodiversity,” published by the magazine in August, is at the heart of this scandal. The five scientists who penned it claim that a ban on trophy hunting would be detrimental to wildlife. But some of the authors have received funding from the hunting industry, while others have direct relationships with entities like the Dallas Safari Club and Safari Club International.
This information was not disclosed, damaging the credibility of the magazine, the scientists, and the research.
Eduardo Goncalves, founder of Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, spearheaded the investigation and, along with Sir Ranulph Fiennes, wrote a complaint to Science. The magazine has now requested that the authors disclose their links to the industry, and also published six letters from other scientists criticizing the letter’s claims.
Regarding the letter, Goncalves says, “This was a cynical and clumsy attempt to push trophy hunting propaganda using a reputable scientific platform. They have dragged Science magazine into a scandal with potentially major ramifications. The integrity of science is dependent on authors disclosing any relationships which could be construed as bias. They threatened the very independence of scientific enquiry.”
World renowned conservationist Jane Goodall spoke out against the letter’s authors as well:
“Society will not forgive them for being complicit in the cruelty and the conservation disaster that is trophy hunting. There is clear evidence which shows how stopping trophy hunting has benefited threatened species such as lions. The handful of so-called conservationists who believe the trophy hunting industry’s propaganda need to wake up. They are naive and are being manipulated.”
What’s New…
This is truly shocking! I can not understand how any human can find joy in the killing of a sentient being. Now that we know more than ever how the brain works, we have have found that mammals experience the same range of emotions as humans, even the complex ones. So is it murder that hunters are partaking in?
With the loss of more than 40% of our wild mammals across the planet in the last 50 years we are driving the remailing species to the point of extinction.
I hope these DISGUSTING people get whats coming to them for their crimes against nature!!!
That is wrong no animal deserves that kind of torture
Cruelty needs to STOP!
Shame on the supporters and individuals continuing to trophy hunt any species.
The usual grinning idiots straddling the corpses of the magnificent animals they have butchered in their cowardly way. The faces of the animals they have killed show the horror they have experienced at these fools’ hands.
Presumably these buffoons need a break from torturing monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, and mice in laboratories if that is what they do.
Beyond hope, there is no way people like this can change.
Karma to people who do trophy hunting
karma to those people who kill animals
The planet is dying, animals are fighting for their very existence and the answer is to kill more animals for fun.
Sport and tropthy hunting is a sickness, a perversion and a danger and should be recognised as such. The lowlife animal torturing murdering hunting monsters who get their sick amusement from hunting and killing defenceless and helpless animals can only be suffering from a mental disorder. In a world with boundless opportunities for amusement, it’s detestable that these lowlife wildlife murdering monsters who choose to get their sick thrills from deliberately killing the precious and helpless wildlife, who ask for nothing from life but the chance to remain alive.
All Trophy hunters and wildlife hunters must be eradicated from our planet earth.
And those vile and evil wildlife monsters with their vile and evil smiles on their evil faces who have taken the life of precious and beautiful animals must be put to death. They are the monsters on our planet earth and should not be allowed to breath the air. I curse you all and I pray you vile and evil wildlife torturing and murdering monsters suffer the vilest of agonising deaths. Burn in hell for an eternity you evil lowlife monsters from hell.
All these vile and evil animal torturing animal murdering Trophy Hunters and all Hunters of the precious and innocent wildlife must be stopped and eradicated from our planet earth. These lowlife animal murdering monsters from hell with smiles over their vile and evil faces and the life of a precious and innocent sentient being deliberately murdered is absolutely sickening and unfrogivable.
Sport and trophy hunting is a sickness, a perversion and a danger and should be recognised as such. These evil monsters who get their amusement from hunting and killing defenceless and innocent wildlife can only be suffering from a mental disorder. In a world with boundless opportunities for amusement, it is detestable that these lowlife wildlife animal killers would choose to get their sick thrills from deliberately killing the innocent and helpless wildlife who ask for nothing from life but the chance to remain alive. Eradication from our planet earth of all tropthy hunters and hunters of the precious wildlife is a must. Kill them all. Then our precious and helpless wildlife have the chance to survive.
And when you have implemented your genocidal plan for world domination, who will pay to protect the wildlife habitat that hunters now manage and support financially ?. Or do you hate hunters so much that an ecological armageddon would be acceptable collateral damage in your war against them ?
This article is inaccurate, misleading and possibly defamatory. I am one of the authors of the original letter to Science, along with 131 other conservationists and scientists. There are no “shocking links” between us and the hunting industry, and there was no violation of Science’s policies. These are simply lies peddled by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting in an effort to discredit and smear us.
i. Our “links” are as follows: none of us receive any personal funding or other benefits from any hunting-related organisations. Three of us are affiliated with organisations that have received, respectively, approx. 2% and 1% of funding for activities from hunting-related organisations. Two authors are current/past Chairs of IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (IUCN SULi). IUCN SULi was a co-convenor (along with GIZ – the German development agency, Panthera, TRAFFIC, and a Tajik organisation) of one meeting in Central Asia, part of the funding of which came from organisations with a link to hunting, with other funding coming from non-hunting-related sources. Only one author was even present at that meeting. It has no effect on our current personal views on the conservation impacts of indiscriminate hunting bans. Another author, seven years ago, had donations to her conservation organisation for anti-poaching work, along with donations from tourism organisations. Given the vast bulk (99%) of her funding, plus all her personal funding, is from either anti-hunting or non-hunting sources this has no effect on her current views.
ii. Science has always had a policy of not asking Letters authors to make a Competing Interests statement, so we were at no point asked to make one – had we been, we gladly would have.
iii. After our letter was published, Science decided to revise its policy, and we were happy to comply, as Science itself has made clear in a statement (see below).
STATEMENT FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE
Science was alerted to possible conflicts of interest (COI) among authors of the letter by Dickman et al. after the letter’s publication. This brought to the journal’s attention its need to align its letters COI policy with that of Science’s manuscript COI policy more broadly. Science’s request to the authors of the letter by Dickman et al. was our first effort to align our letters COI policy with that of Science’s manuscript COI policy for manuscripts. Science did not conduct an investigation into any of the authors’ potential conflicts. Rather, we asked the authors to declare their own potential conflicts and the Dickman et al. authors were happy to comply with our requests. The update to the letter is being included as an addendum, not a correction, as the goal is to provide additional information for potential readers. Science’s policy with regards to declaration of COIs pertains to the need for readers to be aware of associations that might influence an authors’ arguments. The declaration of a potential COI is not a confirmation of bias.
This article is inaccurate, misleading and possibly defamatory. I am one of the authors of the original letter to Science, along with 131 other conservationists and scientists. There are no “shocking links” between us and the hunting industry, and there was no violation of Science’s policies. These are simply lies peddled by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting in an effort to discredit and smear us.
i. Our “links” are as follows: none of us receive any personal funding or other benefits from any hunting-related organisations. Three of us are affiliated with organisations that have received either <2% or 1%, respectively, of funding from hunting-related organisations. Two authors are current/past Chairs of IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (IUCN SULi). IUCN SULi was a co-convenor (along with GIZ – the German development agency, Panthera, TRAFFIC, and a Tajik organisation) of one meeting in Central Asia, part of the funding of which came from organisations with a link to hunting, with other funding coming from non-hunting-related sources. Only one author was even present at that meeting. It has no effect on our current personal views on the conservation impacts of indiscriminate hunting bans. Another author, seven years ago, had donations to her conservation organisation for community conservation from hunting-related organisations, along with donations from tourism organisations. Given the vast bulk (99%) of her funding, plus all her personal funding, is from either anti-hunting or non-hunting sources this has no effect on her current views.
ii. Science has always had a policy of not asking Letters authors to make a Competing Interests statement, so we were at no point asked to make one – had we been, we gladly would have.
iii. After our letter was published, Science decided to revise its policy, and we were happy to comply, as Science itself has made clear in a statement (see below).
STATEMENT FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE
Science was alerted to possible conflicts of interest (COI) among authors of the letter by Dickman et al. after the letter’s publication. This brought to the journal’s attention its need to align its letters COI policy with that of Science’s manuscript COI policy more broadly. Science’s request to the authors of the letter by Dickman et al. was our first effort to align our letters COI policy with that of Science’s manuscript COI policy for manuscripts. Science did not conduct an investigation into any of the authors’ potential conflicts. Rather, we asked the authors to declare their own potential conflicts and the Dickman et al. authors were happy to comply with our requests. The update to the letter is being included as an addendum, not a correction, as the goal is to provide additional information for potential readers. Science’s policy with regards to declaration of COIs pertains to the need for readers to be aware of associations that might influence an authors’ arguments. The declaration of a potential COI is not a confirmation of bias.
It’s a little hard to keep comments peaceful when you see such idiots sitting beside an animal killed for no better reason than trying to make themselves look like their great hunters when what they really are and that’s murdering spineless cowardly monsters…they deserve to have the grin on their face taken away like they took the life of that innocent animals…disgusting example of a human being…who’s the real animal here.??
“Science” magazine has done a disservice to the scientific profession (not to mention wildlife & the publishing industry) on a number of levels. A magazine of the caliber that they perceive themselves to be, should know better than to publish such claptrap without vetting the contents. Now that they have disgraced themselves, they need to grovel before their readers & the public, asking forgiveness for lending credence to such brazen bullshit. Their reputation has been tainted with this colossal blunder.
I soundly condemn all “Trophy Hunting.”
Have you actually read the letter from Amy Dickman and her collleagues ? Or are you basing your judgement on the biased article here, or on the controversy theory propaganda from Goncalves and Fiennes ?
A nice start would be to picket in front of the Dallas Safari Club and Safari Club International and bring awareness to what these two clubs are all about….MURDER of innocent wildlife.
What can we do about this? It seems ethically and morally wrong, but can we get them on fraud?
I can’t fathom getting pleasure out of murdering beautiful beings like these people do. I just don’t get it.
Hunt and prosecute the hunters
Hunt and prosecute the BLOODY HUNTERS
These 2 persons deserve a long incarceration in jail, public humiliation, and a life long ban on owning weapons. And they grin!
race to the last animals in exctintion
there can only be sheer disgust for these empty-headed cowards who kill for no other reason than they can, why animal cruelty is justified by the governments and media is beyond reasonable thinking humans, civilized humans do not take lives for fun or greed or any other pathetic excuse. these creatures deserve jail time.
The extent that animal killer psychopathic humans will go to to protect their right to engage in legal joy-of-killing is nothing new.
Animals are non-human sentient beings. They are not THINGS. They have all the body parts as humans and they need all the same elements to live as humans do: food, water, air, health, housing; they urinate, have bowel movements, and they engage in sexual behavior. They care about their families; they experience fear, anger, love, suffering; they mourn, and they want to live. Yet, the dangerous human predator exploits many to death, for greed and selfish wants.
Once we know better, we should choose better, and we need to hold governments accountable.
STOP killing and abusing these poor animals. NO reason to do this. If this is not stopped, these animals will go extinct. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!
Cruel disgusting acts upon animals. Killing animals are not trophies but dead animals. The animals did nothing to deserve their death. You see them smiling over the dead bodies of the animals they killed. Senseless killings. Distgusting.
These people are savage who kills life
Of an innocent animal if these thing would done with there family members
Then they know life is so precious whether animal or human being
What goes threw a person mind when they kill a innocent animal. I could jail and fine these awful people
Wow, just wow. The ban of trophy hunting would in NO way be detrimental to animals. If anything,the ban would allow species to regain a foothold. Stricter means against poaching should also be taken. This is the 21st century and it is way past time for mankind to evolve and to ban trophy hunting. It has NO place in today’s world. None whatsoever. There are too many species that are extinct thanks to trophy hunting along with poaching.
I would expect Science magazine to be better informed of fact versus bullshit. They should vet submitted articles and their authors better. And no reputable scientist thinks killing animals is any way to conserve and save them.
It’s good that Science magazine is taking action against the perpetrators of that fraud, but it should never even have gotten that far.
I am sick to death of seeing photos of pseudo ‘brave’ Americans posing with animals they have slaughtered in unfair hunts. Go and do something useful with your lives – like working in an animal shelter or planting a tree!
Amen!
Those people are just unbelievable cruel and it is not necessary to treat an animal like this