Play

In a speech in the Australian parliament, MP Robert Borsak, the New South Wales Legislative Council representative of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party said that he had hunted and eaten an elephant. The party is a proponent of the right to possess guns and champions hunting rights.

About his hunting trip, he told The Daily Telegraph, "I eat it while hunting over there, usually in the form of billtong (dried meat). Most meat, however goes to the traditional owners of the land upon which they are hunted and killed, along with hunting fees. Elephant billtong is quite tasty and they are hunted on a sustainable yield program"

Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham was appalled at this revelation and said, “It’s sick to shoot and kill an elephant for thrills, and it's revolting that Mr Borsak would eat the elephant. He’s unfit for office.”

Borsak made the admission because he had grown "tired of the skewed animal rights ideology". He said, "Animals do not have an intrinsic human right. Humans have a right to eat meat if they choose to do so. It is as simple as that." In the video, during the admission, Buckingham can be heard repeatedly asking, "Elephants, what about elephants?" and Borsak replies, "Yes. Especially elephants."

In 2015, in a column in the The Sydney Morning Herald titled Why I shoot elephants, Borsak wrote, "Much of the criticism I have received relates to my hunting elephants in Africa. Again it is mostly based on a failure to understand that the culling of rogue, crop-raiding African elephants is conducted under carefully managed Problem Animal Control programs and under CITES endorsed quotas throughout the world.

"Elephants are not an endangered species in southern Africa. There are about 90,000 in Zimbabwe alone, where they compete with subsistence farmers, who survive on an annual income of less than $100 a year.

"If one puts dollar figures to the immediate benefits to the local people from these safaris, $US2550 cash per elephant goes directly to the local village, plus the benefit of the elephant meat. The local outfitter benefits by over $US5000 to employ up to a dozen local villagers for each expedition, and the balance would end up in a community pool, licence fees are separate and go to the Game Department."

Borsak's piece was written in response to a news report about former Australian fast bowler Glen McGrath with pictures showing him posing next to a hunted elephant.

In response to Buckingham's criticism, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party posted a photo of the MP eating a "freshly hunted" sausage.

The use of hunting trips to cull animal populations and fund the local economies in Africa has been a controversial, much debated and complex issue. Last year, when it come to public attention that dentist Walter Palmer had killed the beloved Cecil the lion, there was international furore against him.

An article in Conservation magazine that analyses the issue sums up the issue by pointing out that more focus should be put on the large number of animals killed due to illegal poaching than due to trophy hunters while citing examples, where animal numbers have gone up because of trophy hunting.

Animal welfare website The Dodo argues that most of the facts cited by the hunters doen't work on the ground. Less than three per cent of the money goes back to local communities, and the revenue amounts to less than 1.8 per cent of the country's GDP.