A trophy hunting propaganda film from the UK lobby
Someone from an “independent” podcast created a trophy hunting propaganda film that followed a non-hunter’s two-week journey through Namibia interviewing local people.
[Before reading this post, make sure you’ve read this post about the trophy hunting industry’s communications strategy and this post about a trophy hunting propaganda film from the German lobby. Both posts provide necessary background and context.]
Recently converted sustainable use activist Ryan Dalton put together a trophy hunting propaganda film titled Beyond The Trigger. The film follows Dalton, a non-hunter, and his short journey through Namibia as he provides a “platform” for local voices to talk about trophy hunting and the proposed trophy hunting import ban in the UK.
Beyond The Trigger is essentially a rehash of the German trophy hunting lobby’s film The Eco Colonialists – an Exposé which was released one year prior. The two films are so similar that a school teacher might suspect plagiarism.
The story lines were the same, the interviews were the same, and the intentions were the same. Dalton even included a cheesy montage of anti-trophy hunting media just like the German lobby did in their film.
I was personally surprised that Dalton, like the German trophy hunting lobby, failed to feature any local voices that opposed trophy hunting. I honestly thought that there would be at least one or two voices that weren’t in favor trophy hunting so that there would be some type of plausible deniability that the film wasn’t propaganda.
The only real difference between the two films was that the German trophy hunting lobby included more interviews with people directly involved with the trophy hunting industry and private hunting concessions. In that way, the German propaganda film was actually the more accurate of the two because those people are the ones with the most to lose when it comes to foreign trophy hunting import bans.
It’s unclear if Dalton understands which Namibians benefit the most from trophy hunting. Beyond The Trigger distorts the reality of trophy hunting in Namibia by focusing mainly on the benefits to communal area conservancies and failing to add important context.
Here is some context provided by Sian Sullivan, a Professor of Environment and Culture, in her piece ‘Hunting Africa’: Trophy Hunting, Neocolonialism and Land.
Conservancies fall outside of freehold land, of which 70% was owned by white settlers according to data from 2018.
More than 95% of hunting activities were reported to have taken place on freehold farms in 2019.
Between 2020 and 2022, 27 professional hunting operators accessed hunting concessions in 54 of the 86 communal area conservancies.
554 of 555 (99.8%) of trophy hunting operators in Namibia were white, according to data from 2013.
“In the Namibian context, advocacy against trophy import bans primarily protects trophy hunting businesses on freehold land, and the inequalities on which these are built. This dimension is masked by the rhetorical emphasis on income to communal area conservancies. Whilst payments from professional trophy hunters are important to those conservancies that receive them, this income is marginal in comparison to the wealth consolidated outside communal areas by the national trophy hunting industry.” – Sian Sullivan, someone who has spent more than two weeks in Namibia doing academic research and talking to local people.
But it’s hard to blame Dalton for failing to include this context given that the film’s pre-production research was done by Adam Hart, an entomologist who convinced Dalton that trophy hunting can be beneficial. Hart has no apparent expertise in trophy hunting other than once unironically comparing criticism of trophy hunting to climate denial in a letter he wrote with a climate denial group’s research fellow.
Hart wasn’t the only one helping Dalton with the propaganda film though. Maxi Pia Louis, Secretary of the Community Leaders Network and grand marshal of the European trophy hunting lobby’s political parade, served as Dalton’s guide in Namibia.
Dalton tweeted a video of him sitting next to Louis who begged anti-trophy hunters to come to Namibia to talk to local people about trophy hunting. This, of course, was something she also did in the trophy hunting propaganda film from the German lobby which, of course, was very hypocritical given her criticism of people funded by anti-trophy hunting groups visiting Namibia and talking to local people about trophy hunting.
Frowin Becker, a conservation scientist who has been critical of the simplistic narrative around trophy hunting’s socio-economic benefits in Namibia, responded to Dalton's video saying “Would be great if you could go a step further and also talk about the freehold land ownership that drives the industry in Namibia.”
In fairness to Dalton, he did interview Helmuth Boshoff, a professional hunter and owner of a private hunting concession called Onduri Lodge. Dalton fawned over Helmuth and his wife Cindy for all their work as owners of such a spectacular landscape that was seemingly teeming with wildlife.
Helmuth said that his father bought the land from a failed cattle rancher and rewilded it back into a natural landscape perfect for wildlife. But his ‘success’ story failed to mention who was using the land prior to the cattle rancher.
[Once again, a trophy hunting outfitter placed an emphasis on defining natural or wild land as being fenced off from use by local people. Read more about that here.]
The film paid no critical thought to why two white people were in a position to own so much land and wildlife in Namibia. As well, the difference between Dalton’s visit to the Onduri Lodge and the communal area conservancies was striking.
Dalton appeared to visit the conservancies to simply check them off a list and get some content, even rushing through one conservancy to get straight to the question of “What benefits do trophy hunting bring in?” But Dalton took his time at Onduri Lodge, where he was given free range of the concession for two days.
It’s hard not to fall in love with the romanticized version of a private trophy hunting concession when you’re ignorant of the region’s historical complexities and you’re on holiday. This is especially true when the person responsible for your trip had nearly the same experience in the past.
Hart, like Dalton, used to oppose trophy hunting. However, he was converted when he saw the benefits of trophy hunting and the hard-to-accept realities of wildlife conservation during his visit to private trophy hunting concessions in southern Africa.
“I am writing this article overlooking a magnificent property in Namibia, a country that like much of southern Africa is suffering a terrible drought; animals are dying of thirst and hunger. However, this property is thriving. I can see a herd of waterbuck around a water hole and a large group of black wildebeest are moving in. The wildlife here is doing well for one reason alone: trophy hunting.” – Adam Hart,
trophy hunting evangelistentomologist.
Hart, Dalton, and many of the people interviewed in the film expressed the opinion that conserving wildlife rests on the creation of value, mainly through privatization and commodification. But, again, there is never any critical thought of how this idea opinion came about in a country like Namibia.
When Dalton first arrived in Namibia, the camera captured a sign for Fidel Castro Street and a statue of the country’s founding president Sam Nujoma, both were nationalist revolutionaries aided by communist allies.
Nujoma’s allies were why he was labeled a “Marxist terrorist” by the oppressive South African regime, although he pushed back against the claim that his party was communist.
Namibia was a Cold War battleground between the US and Soviet Union. It’s been argued that the US delayed Namibia’s independence by working with South Africa to try and impose liberal democratic constitutional principles on the country and force Cuban troops out of Angola.
There is so much talk about how the economics of trophy hunting benefit communities and add value to wildlife but sustainable use activists rarely, if ever, try to explain how capitalistic conservation policies, like the privatization and commodification of wildlife, might have arisen in Namibia given the tensions of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union.
The most famous example of Namibia’s commodification of wildlife was the sale and trophy hunt of a black rhino. The trophy hunt made headlines for its $350k price tag and was the source of much controversy.
Mike Hannis, a Senior Lecturer in Ethics, Politics and Environment, wrote a paper about this black rhino sale and concluded, “It is rather a triumph of economics over ethics, in which almost anything can be commodified into commensurable ‘capital’, thereby erasing other ways of understanding and engaging with the world.”
The idea that living beings can be broken down into discreet units of capital is favored by conservation foundations run by the word’s elites. For example, Jamma International, a foundation that aims to push sustainable use propaganda, tweeted a photo African Wildlife Economy Institute Board Member Brian Child standing in front of a presentation slide titled Africa’s unique Pleistocene wildlife capital.
[It is worth noting that this conference was run by Safari Club International Foundation, a trophy hunting organization that funded disinformation. Read more about that here.]
Jamma International was also a major funder of Dalton’s film. Or not. Maybe? Probably? Obviously.
Dalton said that the film was funded by donations and one large conservation foundation. When I pressed him for more information on funding, he simply told me to watch the credits of the film.
Unfortunately, the film’s credits only stated that funding was obtained through GoFundMe campaign donations. Jamma International received a “special thanks” and the credits closed with Jamma International’s logo but there was no mention of their funding for the film.
Additionally, Dalton stated that he’s from an “independent” podcast in the film’s trailer. He also described the film as a “brand new documentary created by independent wildlife & conservation podcast Into The Wild.”
While it may be technically true that Dalton’s podcast is independent, it’s blatantly dishonest and misleading to describe the film that way. The entomologist responsible for his trip, the Community Leaders Network Secretary guiding his trip, and the conservation foundation funding his trip all had a specific agenda – fighting trophy hunting import bans.
An unassuming viewer might be led to believe that the film is an independent venture which is false. Making things worse, a trophy hunting organization promoted the film and as “independent” and Dalton did not correct them (I love the #hunting and tagging of trophy hunting groups).
[AWCC isn’t the only group in the trophy hunting industry to promote Dalton since he made this film - he was also featured on the trophy hunting podcast Blood Origins.]
Hannis was one of the few people to legitimately press Dalton about his film on Twitter. Dalton responded to Hannis saying, “You're right Mike, this initiative has no connection with the well funded & tightly co-ordinated campaigns promoting the industry & its interests. Mad that some people think I don't have a brain eh?”
Is Dalton lying? Or does he really not have a brain?
[Read this post about the trophy hunting industry’s communications strategy and this post about a trophy hunting propaganda film from the German lobby if you think Dalton is telling the truth.]
My favorite part of that Twitter thread was WildCRU Director and Dalton supporter Amy Dickman asking Hannis for evidence of a well-funded and tightly coordinated pro-trophy hunting campaign, adding that she believes that only to be true for anti-trophy hunting groups.
You can provide Dickman with all the evidence in the world and she won’t accept it if it doesn’t fit with her narrative. Believe me, I’ve tried.
When I reached out to her about the trophy hunting industry’s well-funded and tightly coordinated disinformation campaign, she told me that my evidence was weak and that she believed anti-trophy hunting groups were conducting something even worse (notice a pattern?).
Interestingly, my evidence was verified by The Washington Post, Facebook’s Cybersecurity team, and the Stanford Internet Observatory. It was strong enough to have the campaign removed from multiple social media platforms.
Dalton may not have a brain, but sustainable use activists like Dickman certainly do. And that’s dangerous.