A trophy hunting propaganda film from the German lobby
CIC and DJV produced a trophy hunting propaganda film that followed a non-hunter’s two-week journey through Namibia interviewing local people.
One of the narrative-changing communications strategies discussed by the trophy hunting industry involved sending media to rural communities in African countries to interview people that were sympathetic to trophy hunting. Unsurprisingly, when German politicians proposed a trophy hunting import ban, the industry worked diligently to put their strategy into action.
Two European trophy hunting lobbyists, the German delegation of International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) and Deutscher Jagdverband (DJV), produced a propaganda film in October 2021 called Green Facts over Green Ignorance that was then translated to English and released in September 2022 under the name The Eco Colonialists – an Exposé. The film intended to fight Germany’s proposed trophy hunting import ban by documenting the two-week journey of Naita Hishoono, an unassuming person with no previously apparent ties to the trophy hunting industry, through Namibia as she interviewed people that supported trophy hunting.
Hishoono was, of course, an absolutely independent and unbiased host on this journey which is why she visited the Namibian Professional Hunters Association (NAPHA) office in Windhoek to determine if there was any peer-reviewed research that compared income from photo-tourism to trophy hunting… I mentioned that this film was produced by European trophy hunting lobbyists, right?
Of the 17 people that I counted that were interviewed, five of them were from NAPHA or a trophy hunting outfitter. I personally wish a higher percentage of people interviewed would have been from trophy hunting organizations since that would have given the film’s viewers a more realistic look at who in Namibia stood to lose the most from a trophy hunting import ban.
The film only showcased two local people that were not directly employed by conservancies. Of those two people, only one even mentioned trophy hunting during their interview which was primarily centered around conflict with lions.
Community Leaders Network Secretary and NACSO Director Maxi Pia Louis was interviewed for the film, which seems to have become a bit of a standard for pro-trophy hunting media.
Louis said something that I thought was very intriguing. She said, “You are actually killing them, you are killing their livelihoods” when you take trophy hunting away from rural people in Namibia.
I wonder when we’re going to start seeing industry propaganda that says anyone who opposes trophy hunting should be charged for the murder of rural Namibians?
Louis also complained that anti-trophy hunting groups weren’t taking her up on her offer to visit Namibia and talk to local people. That’s real ironic given that she also complained when people funded by anti-trophy hunting groups came to Namibia to talk to local people.
Namibian Chamber of Envrionment (NCE) CEO Chris Brown was also interviewed for the film. He said something which we’ve heard so much from sustainable use grifters – that he’s actually a vegetarian and many people would think it odd that he supports trophy hunting.
Interestingly, the NCE was fairly recently set up by the mining corporation B2Gold. And while Brown has made appropriate criticisms about commercial fishing and oil exploration in Namibia, he seems to have an oddly soft spot for mining.
A staff reporter at New Era Live had this to say about Brown’s views on phosphate mining:
“Scientists in the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources as well as other internationally respected marine scientists have pointed to the enormous risks posed by marine phosphate mining. It is hardly surprising that such projects were rejected elsewhere in the world, recently by New Zealand, Mexico and Australia. Dr Brown deliberately ignores such evidence and pronounces that it is safe to mine for phosphate and that seabed mining could exist side by side with fishing without a serious impact on the marine ecosystem.”
Another person interviewed in this propaganda film was Gail Potgeiter, NCE Communications Manager and self-professed science communicator. I find it interesting that science communicators rarely communicate the science about trophy hunting but often communicate the economics (and before you say anything – no, economics is not a science).
Could it be because the science (biology, ecology, etc) behind trophy hunting isn’t actually all that good and they need economic arguments to balance out what could be a potentially negative narrative? For example, there was a lion conservation conference that refused to rank trophy hunting against other threats “due to the difficulty of separating potentially negative biological impacts on lion populations from improperly managed offtakes from potentially positive socio-economic impacts on lion conservation.”
At this point you might be saying, “But Jared, there were other people interviewed that worked for conservancies and supported trophy hunting!”
Ignoring the potential issue of people not wanting to publicly criticize their place of work, the problem here is that we are supposed to assume that not only do all other people living and working in conservancies support trophy hunting, but that they also support the idea of conservancies.
The film’s most featured conservancy that exemplified the benefits of trophy hunting was ǂKhoadi ||Hôas. Yet a Schnegg et al. paper found that the benefits from trophy hunting and safari tourism in the conservancy weren’t as great as people had hoped.
Schnegg et al. also conducted interviews with people in the conservancy. A pastoralist in an interview said that people were “a slave of the conservancy.”
“The elephant is only useful to the white tourist and maybe those who work in the lodge. Maybe they are happy and enjoy the benefits. For us, we suffer so that they can enjoy. We are a slave of the conservancy, our progress is held hostage in our land.” – Dantago, an elderly pastoralist in ǂKhoadi ||Hôas conservancy
So much for amplifying that voice and respecting those human rights.
Regardless, Stephan Wunderlich, a German delegate for CIC, said that the propaganda film “worked” and that “the media and politicians heard the voices from the film and understood that trophy hunting has a ‘second medal side’ [it brings extra benefits].”
He added, “We need to motivate all European user associations to invest massively in communication around the sustainable use of natural resources” and that “we need to provide a platform for the voices of those countries and people directly affected by the animal rights fantasies of the Global North – if we want to change the prevailing narrative in the long term.”
Investing in communications around sustainable use and changing the narrative in the Global North… Where have I heard that before?
Oh, that’s right, UK-based charity Jamma International is hiring a propagandist to develop a “communications campaign to promote sustainable use as a principle in conservation and community economies and challenge entrenched narratives around conservation in the global north.”
But CIC and DJV didn’t fight Germany’s proposed trophy hunting import ban alone, they received help from Jamma International-supported groups like IUCN SULi and the Community Leaders Network.
“The spirit of the campaign and its pro trophy hunting stance gained support from scientists and international bodies. In the UK, Professor Amy Dickman and Professor Adam Hart backed it, as did international bodies such as IUCN SULI and representatives of rural communities from southern Africa: The community leaders Network (CLN), which represents millions of rural Africans from a total of nine southern African states.” – Deborah Hadfield, Fieldsports Channel
CIC has a FAQ page on their German website that shows letters that were sent to German politicians urging them not to ban trophy hunting imports – one from Community Leaders Network, one from IUCN SULi Chair Dilys Roe, and one from sustainable use activists Amy Dickman, Catherine Semcer, and Adam Hart.
Also on the page was a graphic criticizing Kenya’s trophy hunting ban - this is becoming one of the most favored talking points for sustainable use activists like Amy Dickman.
The Community Leaders Network’s letter stated, “Your considerations lead to loss of income, loss of jobs, loss of intact habitats and wildlife populations and would have exactly the opposite impact, which you may intend to do with your ban considerations. You are thereby undermining our human rights.”
IUCN SULi Chair Dilys Roe’s letter harped on the narrative that trophy hunting is not a major threat to any species and that removing trophy hunting could make other threats worse.
The Dickman/Semcer/Hart letter stated that they “have investigated the narratives put forward by groups and individuals seeking bans and the relevant media coverage, and found significant falsehoods being perpetuated.” Of course, they did not mention the falsehoods perpetuated by the trophy hunting industry’s multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign or the denial espoused by Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), of which Semcer is a research fellow.
I particularly enjoyed that these three are all members of IUCN SULi yet they decided to write separately from Roe and list out the other groups to which they are affiliated. This created a misleading illusion that the trophy hunting import ban was opposed by a vast array of unaffiliated organizations rather than a small coordinated group of like-minded individuals.
As I mentioned previously, CIC and DJV’s propaganda film was originally produced in German and then just recently translated to English. The decision to release an English version was inspired by “pressure from antis across Europe, including Belgium and Britain.”
The UK has been contemplating a trophy hunting import ban for some years now. Are we going to see a similar film produced by folks from the UK with support from similar organizations?
I think most of us already know the answer to that question.