PETA statement: Exotic Animal Hunters Claiming They Hunt For Conservation/Environmental Purposes

For Immediate Release:
August 3, 2015

“Conservation” is a term often used nowadays in an attempt to mask exploitation—a word that’s more apt and honest but one that causes proper revulsion. The idea of killing animals to “protect” their species is like having 5-year-olds build a child-labor museum. The sole reason hunters hunt is to promote themselves in photographs and videos as “fearless killers,” even though they are often escorted to within yards of an animal like a lion or rhino, who they then blind at night with a spotlight, and then shoot in cold blood with a high-powered weapon. Trophy hunters are serial killers without empathy, understanding, or respect for wildlife. True conservationists are the people who pay to keep animals alive through highly lucrative eco-tourism, not the power-hungry people who pay for the cheap thrill of taking magnificent animals’ lives and putting their heads on a wall.

— PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk