King Charles ‘unlikely’ to stop hunting despite calls for him to ban practice

WARNING: This article contains images that some readers may find distressing. It is unlikely that the Royal Family will stop hunting despite how it clashes with King Charles ‘s conservation and environmental aims, a royal commentator has suggested. Royal expert Cristo Foufas, speaking on the MAJESTEA podcast released on July 5, said that, despite the new King’s long record as an environmentalist, he believes the Prince of Wales will be the one to bring an end to the Royal Family’s long-standing tradition. He said: ‘I think [hunting] will be fazed out, I really do think that will be fazed out at some point soon. I do, because I think that you can’t have conservation or nature being on the one hand and hunting on the other. ‘Although some are bred to be hunted like grouse, stuff like that, so it’s not as simple as him going out and shooting endangered species but I do wonder how he’ll reconcile that moving forward.’ However, Pauline Maclaran, of Royal Holloway University of London , told Express.co.uk that she is doubtful the practice will be fazed out. Zara Tindall and the Queen at the Cheltenham Races National Hunt Festival in 2003 (Image: GETTY) Charles participates in a clay pigeon shoot at Windsor Great Park, 1979 (Image: GETTY) Prince Charles competing in the Quorn Hunt Cross Country Event, 1978 (Image: GETTY) The co-author of the 2015 book Royal Fever said: ‘I think they will have to carefully navigate this potential conflict between conservation of nature and the hunting of animals. ‘I doubt if hunting will be fazed out by the royals as it is very much a part of their lifestyle. However, they are likely to downplay their role in this sport and try to minimise the attention they receive when engaged in it.’ The Royal Family’s connection with hunting reared its head earlier this year. In his bombshell memoir Spare, published in January, the Duke of Sussex recounted how he endured an initiation where his head was pushed inside a deers carcass after he shot it on the Balmoral estate. However, this was not his first experience of killing animals, as he revealed that he first killed a rabbit and his nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, then ‘smeared’ a ‘dollop’ of its blood ‘tenderly across his forehand, down his cheeks and nose’. Queen Elizabeth II perched on an elephant during a tiger hunt in Nepal, 1961 (Image: GETTY) Prince Philip shot an 8ft long tiger in India (Image: Getty) King George V with the day’s kills on a tiger hunt, during his Indian Durbar Tour, circa 1912 (Image: GETTY) The Royal Family has a long-standing tradition of hunting from a pheasant shoot at Sandringham over Christmas to a grouse shooting near Balmoral at Corgarff. The Queen, who learned to stalk deer as a girl, has also been known to accompany Prince Philip – who was dubbed the ‘trigger-happy prince’ – on tiger hunts in shot in India in the Sixties. It is widely reported that Prince William and Kate, Princess of Wales, have taken their eldest Prince George shooting since 2018. This tradition is often said to be at odds with the Firm’s passion for conservation and environmentalism. For several years, King Charles was viewed as an environment radical and has now championed the environment for the past five decades. Queen Camilla at the Highgrove hunt in 1995 (Image: Getty) Anti-hunt demonstrators protesting at the Cheshire Hunt where Charles and Anne were taking part-1980 (Image: GETTY) Wallis Simpson with King Edward at a hunting party in Alsace, 1951 (Image: GETTY) Meanwhile, Prince William , who this week opened a sustainable restaurant at a Duchy of Cornwall nursery, is following in his father’s footsteps and has become more vocal about pollution and climate change, launching the Earthshot Prize in 2020 to support climate innovators. The family’s connection with hunting has caused controversy before. In 2002, the Mail on Sunday reported that King Charles tried to persuade Tony Blair not to ban fox hunting , claiming it was ‘romantic’. Part of the letter, which was released under an FOI, read: ‘There is … complete bewilderment that the Government is apparently responding to calls to ban something which is genuinely environmentally friendly, which uses no modern technology, which does not pollute the countryside, which is completely natural – in that it relies entirely on man’s ancient and, indeed, romantic relationship with dogs and horses.’ In 2014, William and Harry hunted wild boar and stags in Spain just days before the now Prince of Wales took part in a campaign against poaching. That same year, Harry pledged to work tirelessly to save Africa’s wildlife but a photo emerged of him with a water buffalo he had killed in Argentina . In 2020, British primatologist Dr Jane Goodall told the Radio Times the Duke will stop hunting because Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, ‘doesn’t like it’. But with the post-Christmas pheasant shoot tradition continued by the new King, the Royal Family does not appear to have severed their ties with hunting as Harry has. Professor Maclaran believes they may instead seek to emphasize the positive arguments for the hobby. She added: ‘Rather than emphasising the pleasure of hunting, they may also be likely to emphasise hunting’s traditional role in maintaining rural bio-diversity to ensure that one species does not become dominant to the detriment of others.’