The “Jagd & Hund (Hunting and Dog)” fair, which takes place annually in Dortmund, Germany, is Europe’s largest hunting fair.

The organizers advertise themselves with the participation of exhibitors from over 40 nations from all continents.

Among them are almost 180 tour operators who offer the shooting down of individuals of endangered and protected species such as various deep sea birds and songbirds, polar bears, rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards, giraffes, monkeys, brown bears, and wolves – quite legally.

As in colonial times, wealthy trophy hunters shoot endangered animals.

We are currently experiencing the greatest loss of species since time immemorial.

Hunting methods are used that are prohibited in Germany for good reasons: hunting with a bow and arrow, crossbow, or revolver. A hunting license is often not even required. In some places, wild animals such as for example Lions specially bred in hunting farms to have them shot by trophy hunters in large enclosures.

In Africa alone, 18,000 trophy hunters kill over 100,000 wild animals each year.

The shooting down of an individual animal often endangers their entire family and group system.

Trophy hunting is often justified with species protection since the proceeds of the shooting partly go to conservation projects. An ethically completely absurd way to protect wild animals: some of the species have to die in order to protect others.

Trophy hunting in Africa is also referred to as a form of development aid since individual groups of people have a source of income as a result.

According to an IUCN report from 2009, the local population in Africa earns an average of $ 0.3 (equivalent to between 20 and 30 euro cents) per person and year from hunters from abroad killing elephants, lions or giraffes in their homeland.

Big game hunting in Africa only contributes an average of 0.006 percent to the national budget of the respective countries.
At the same time, land use is one percent – a disproportionately land-intensive industry from which the local population does not benefit at all.

Instead of trophy hunting, more international support and commitment is needed to curb poaching in national parks and to effectively protect species.
Trophy hunting is an animal- and nature-hostile holdover from colonial times, on which very few privileged locals earn.
In contrast, real animal and species protection can also create future-oriented jobs in the context of sustainable safari tourism.

Hundreds of trophies of internationally protected species are imported to Germany every year.

According to the federal government between 2017 and 2019, it was 89 leopards, 89 hippos, 89 brown bears, 85 elephants, 54 lions, 46 wolves, 23 Argali sheep, 17 Cheetahs, 6 polar bears, 6 white rhinos, 1 black rhinoceros, hundreds of zebras and monkeys and numerous other species.

Trophies for “private use” can be imported with the permission of even strictly protected species that are not allowed to be traded commercially.

In Germany, this is actually prohibited under animal protection, nature conservation, and hunting law.
But the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation does not act consistently.

Germany, together with Spain, is the largest importer of hunting trophies of endangered species after the USA. The majority of the population in Germany rejects trophy hunting for endangered species!
Appropriate bans already exist in neighboring countries or are being planned.

The city of Dortmund is directly responsible for the events held there, including for the fair “Jagd & Hund”.

The management of the Westfalen Hallen and also the political decision-makers rely on the fact that all offers of the fair are legal. Unfortunately, this argument is not convincing at all: what is right is not immediately fair and therefore questionable.

It is only through the further development of ethical and moral ideas and norms that reforms in the areas of animal rights and animal welfare can occur.

We ask you, Lord Mayor Sierau, to prohibit all providers of trophy hunting from advertising and stand permits at the annual “Hunting and Dog” trade fair, thereby sending a clear signal for animal and species protection.

Please sign the petition: http://chng.it/qPtjZ6jkxx

 

And I mean…Does anyone really believe that even a poor family in these countries benefits from the murderous big game hunt?

In countries with an obscure legal situation, with horrendous corruption, with often dictatorial governments, where the very few rich bathe in gold and where the very poor have hardly a bite to eat?

Hunting is (almost) in all cases a leisure pleasure, a pervert one, for an elite group of people with exclusive rights, who is partly willing to pay a lot of money to enjoy a very special but psychotic thrill.

Hunters kill up to five million wild animals and an estimated several hundred thousand dogs and cats in Germany every year.

In just a few weeks, private individuals can complete the hunting license (the “Green Graduation”), then lease a hunting ground and shoot legally defenseless fellow-creatures in their free time.

There are only about 1,000 professional hunters, mostly forest officials, against the approximately 380,000 hobby hunters in Germany.

Hunting is not nature conservation, because not only 5.5 million wild animals die every year, but more than 350,000 cats and over 40,000 dogs are killed by hunters (information taken from official hunting publications). Trusting hunters in animal welfare is like trusting a pedophile to run a children’s daycare center.

My request is, therefore: hunt the hunters out of the forest!

My best regards to all, Venus