Conservation scholars' perspectives on the morality of trophy hunting for the sake of conservation

Abstract Trophy hunting is one of the most contentious issues in recent biodiversity conservation discourse, eliciting opposition and support for practice. Ethical concerns are often at heart debate. To investigate moral views about trophy hunting, we conducted an online survey randomly selected scholars worldwide who had published on ( n = 2315). Scholars expressed divergent acceptability as a Moral convictions were significantly related to perspectives scholars. The important factor predicting respondents was consequences local human communities. results also indicated that utilitarian (versus deontological) decision‐making conservation, ecological animal welfare contribute views. findings emphasize need interdisciplinary work ethical concerning rights well providing robust comprehensive evidence We caution polarization among may negatively affect efforts. Based literature our findings, provide some recommendations narrow gap consider different management options. Read free Plain Language Summary this article Journal blog.