This Morning viewers were furious today after the hit ITV show gave an animal trophy hunter airtime.
The trophy hunter appeared during a debate on whether it’s time to ban trophy hunting.
This Morning today
News recently broke that a hunter reportedly paid $50,000 to shoot and kill one of Botswana’s biggest and oldest tusker elephants.
This then sparked a debate on This Morning as to whether or not animal trophy hunting should be banned.
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield welcomed Giles Clark, director of The Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent, and Olivia Opre, a trophy hunter, onto the show.
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Giles, of course, is totally against trophy hunting and believes it should be banned. However, Olivia disagreed with him.
Olivia alleged that the $50,000 paid to kill the tusker elephant had gone to the local communities in Botswana.
She also attempted to defend hunters, but also confessed that posting pictures of the killed animal online will cause a “firestorm”.
Animal hunter on This Morning today
Olivia argued that we can’t have “this neocolonial tendency of trying to dictate how people must live in a place we don’t have to live”.
Phillip argued back, however, saying: “But this is rich people going from across the world and shooting the animals, so that’s a different argument. There’s also the argument that it leads to unnecessary suffering.”
However, Olivia disagreed, stating that the weapons and bullets used by hunters are designed to provide the animal with the “quickest death”.
“But what does nature’s death look like? He’s going to get stabbed by a bull, he may be poached or he may starve,” she said.
“Where does it stop then if you’re saying nature has no place in the animal kingdom? So all of these animals are going to die anyway, so we may as well just kill them,” Phillip argued.
This Morning on ITV
Understandably, many viewers of This Morning were furious at the fact that an animal trophy hunter was being given airtime.
Plenty of viewers took to Twitter to slam both Olivia, and the fact that ITV and This Morning had given her an opportunity to appear on the show.
“Olivia is disgusting! How dare she think this is ok? She’s killed over 100 animals… wouldn’t give her any airtime,” one viewer wrote.
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“WHY ARE THEY GIVING THIS [bleep] AIRTIME??? Trophy hunting is barbaric and should be illegal!! It makes my blood boil so much when folk like this thinks it’s perfectly fine to kill innocent animals!!! Shame on you this morning,” another ranted.
“I can’t believe this vile [bleep] is being given airtime again!” a third tweeted.
One person praised the interview, however, writing: “@thismorning great interview with the trophy hunter.
“I’m against it all, however please tell me what the difference is between that poor elephant and the tortured animals we eat?”
This Morning airs on weekdays from 10am on ITV and ITV Hub.
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