Celebrity TV rat catcher and trophy hunter will be stopped by new UK legislation

NEWS AND OPINION: Ricky Clark is a rat catcher by trade. He became a TV celebrity by dint of his enthusiastic personality and buff appearance according to The Times newspaper. He has a BBC1 series called The Rat Pack which shows how he catches and kills rats with his dogs. The show received favourable reviews when it was launched in 2009. That’s his profession: a television presenter and ratcatcher. He clearly makes piles of dosh.

What he likes to do in his spare time is to travel to Africa and other countries and kill lots of iconic species for fun. He is a trophy hunter. In the infographic below you see him with an elephant that he shot. He has shot leopards which are classified as threatened with extinction and of course African elephants are an endangered species as well.

Legally there’s nothing wrong with shooting wildlife in Africa if you got permission from the local authorities. Regrettably, a lot of the administrators in these countries take large fees corruptly to organise hunting trips for trophies.

He has a trophy room at home in the UK which is filled with at least 20 stuffed animals. He has 20 skulls and two pelts.

Royal family connection

He rather proudly states that he is part of an exclusive hunting syndicate on the Royal family’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Some time ago I wrote about how I believe that the late Queen was not whiter than white as some people professed at the time but allowed wildlife abuses. And now we have abuses of wildlife under the auspices of the new King.

He says that he saw King Charles about three weeks ago and that he hunts around William’s house on the estate. He was given permission to do this after getting to know a gamekeeper in Norfolk.

Serial killer of wildlife in many countries

And in Africa and in other countries such as Kazakhstan, Canada, Hungary, Finland, Spain and France he has completed 20 safaris. He has visited at least 11 African countries. He has shot various species including lion, civet, hippo, buffalo, warthog, mousse, hyena, leopard and bush pig. Further, he has killed numerous antelope including impala, wildebeest and Lord Derby eland to name some species.

He said the following about a safari in Zambia in which he shot a hippo which was divided into chunks as bait.

“Four baits got hit by big toms [presumed to mean male leopards] so it was a choice of what tom I wanted to shoot. We built a blind [a hiding place]. I shot it [leopard] out of the tree [on] the first night. That [safari] was an incredible experience. I shot buffalo, big bushbuck, a civet cat, a leopard and a hyena and some impala and some other shit”.

Note that he calls African wildlife ‘shit’. That is the level of his respect for animals.

UK legislation to stop importation of trophies from hunting

In the infographic above, I say that a new piece of legislation passing through the UK Parliament at present will stop him. It might not fully stop him, but it will certainly curtail his obnoxious pastime

It is the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill. The introduction of the bill appears to have been motivated by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, which was founded in 2018 by Eduardo Goncalves, a former head of the League against Cruel Sports.

The campaign has been backed by many high-profile people such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the actor Sir David Jason and Dame Jane Goodall a world expert on chimpanzees.

As usual, those that support sport and trophy hunting fightback, and they have an association called The British Association for Shooting and Conservation. Notice that they link the word “shooting” with “conservation” in an effort to promote the concept that shooting animals improves the conservation of those animals. A bizarre concept in my mind.

They argue that countries such as Namibia encourage and arrange well-regulated hunting tourism which helps their biodiversity thrive.

Below are some more articles on trophy hunting.