In many ways, Ben Wightman does not fit the stereotype of a former Green party councillor. He is young and beard-free, is rarely photographed in sandals, and comes from a Conservative family.
He also likes to pose in army fatigues next to the bloody corpses of the animals he has shot dead for sport.
Mr Wightman, former Green councillor for Kirkburton parish council, near Huddersfield, has found himself at the centre of a conservation battle after pictures came to light of him leaning over a variety of game trophies in South Africa, including gazelles, a zebra and a warthog.
Rather than retreating like Walter Palmer, the lion-killing American dentist, Mr Wightman, 27, has come out fighting. When he sees a buffalo lumber into his telescopic sights and squeezes the trigger, he is, he says, motivated not by bloodlust, but by altruism — and his fellow conservationists should take note. “There is a lot of over-population out there and animals sometimes do a lot of damage and that needs addressing,” he said. “We have hunted for as long as man has been on the planet, and wildlife has profited from that.”
In fact, using a high-velocity rifle to kill wildlife is, he argues, entirely compatible with caring about animals, even if the party he used to represent has a very strong anti-hunting platform.
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“It’s not about killing, it’s about conservation. I am a firm believer that one of the best ways of management and conservation is with a rifle. We are taking out old, lame or unfit animals that are causing problems for farmers.”
There is a debate among some conservationists as to whether game hunting should actually be encouraged, within reason. Shooting animals, some argue, might seem a strange way to save them but gives them an economic value and encourages local communities to prize them accordingly, and maintain sustainable herds.
The Green party, however, is unmoved. “We condemn hunting and have actively campaigned against it for many years,” a spokesman said. “Our 2015 general election manifesto contained a commitment to ban all hunting of all animals for sport or pleasure, and we expect all Green party candidates to support this policy.”
A Greenpeace spokesman went further. “I think Mr Wightman may be confusing subsistence hunting by indigenous people, which can be sustainable, with flying halfway around the world to kill rare animals for fun and gruesome trophies, which isn’t.”
Mr Wightman, who lost his seat in May after winning a mere 86 votes, prefers not to call the skins he takes back from holidays trophies. “It’s a memento,” he said. “I have had the skin tanned and dressed to go down as a memory.”
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One memento, the head of an antelope, has pride of place on a wall in his home — where it must have caused a spluttering of herbal tea when he hosted fellow Green councillors.
Mr Wightman disagreed. “If he had been left he wouldn’t have made it over the winter,” he said. “When we examined the carcass it had loose and missing teeth. To me that was a well-planned shot, a good kill. The animal would not have lasted. Its teeth would have fallen out and it would have been found starved to death, having lost the quality of life it had.”
He was acting, in other words, like the Dignitas of the veld. “I would like to go out at my peak. I would much rather go out in my prime of life knowing I had done something worthwhile,” he said.