Animal lobby turns on Guardian columnist

The Animal Sentience Bill is the centrepiece of the government’s environmental agenda, designed to protect helpless creatures and recognise they can feel pain. But will Guardian columnists be included under the new law? For it seems poor George Monbiot has been the victim of a rather unedifying pile-on in recent days. His crime? Suggesting that controlled trophy hunting should be used to incentivise animal conservation. 

Monbiot, a devoted environmentalist of the public school kind, argued that such activities ‘when well-regulated’ can provide much-needed funds to poor communities in places like Africa and actually help improve the number of endangered species. That suggestion led to furious denunciations, accusations and remonstrations about the long-time vegan’s blood-thirsty barbarism, despite his protestations that he personally loathed poaching. 

Indeed Peter Egan, the extra from Netflix series Afterlife, even went so far as to compare Monbiot’s stance to the treatment of Jimmy Savile as the Graun columnist is ‘accepting abuse because it raises money.’