The proposed hunting law could do more harm than good for the animals it is supposed to protect.

This is according to a study led by the University of Oxford's Department of Biology and the Oxford Martin programme on Wildlife Trade.

The study examined the UK's role in the international hunting trophy trade and the potential impact of the proposed UK Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill.

The analysis suggests that the bill, which MPs voted to support last year, is disproportionate and could cause more harm than good to the species it aims to protect.

The new Labour government has also committed to a similar import ban in their manifesto.

The researchers based their analysis on data from CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.

The study found that an estimated 3,494 hunting trophies from 73 species and subspecies included under CITES were imported into the UK from 2000 to 2021.

This equates to roughly 159 trophies (116 animals) each year, representing less than 1 per cent of the global trade in hunting trophies from species included in CITES.

The research indicates that legal hunting for trophies is not a major threat to any of the 73 species and subspecies imported to the UK.

Conversely, trophy hunting was found to provide, or have the potential to provide, significant environmental and social benefits.

These include protecting wildlands from conversion to agriculture, providing resources to prevent poaching, income and employment for Indigenous peoples and communities, provision of meat for communities, and enhanced population growth for threatened species.

The researchers suggest that the proposed ban on importing hunting trophies to the UK is disproportionate and could harm biodiversity.

They argue that the previous UK Government’s impact assessment failed to adequately consider the likely impacts of this policy on people outside of the UK who would incur most of the costs.

The analysis indicates that this bill could have a 'severe, even devastating,' impact on marginalised rural communities and indigenous peoples who rely on legal hunting for trophies for income and employment.

Professor Amy Dickman, a contributing author to the study and a member of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, said: "Assuming past trade is indicative of future imports, the argument that the bill will reduce pressure on many threatened species is unfounded.

"Other threats, notably unregulated hunting, poaching, and retaliatory killing, are much greater for most species imported to the UK as hunting trophies."