Elephant Trophy Imports Soar in Trump’s Second Term
Center for Biological Diversity: New Case Study Shows United States OK’d More Than 300 Trophies in 2025
biologicaldiversity.org
New Case Study Shows United States OK’d More Than 300 Trophies in 2025
“Why is a president who once decried elephant hunting rolling out the red carpet for the elitist practice of killing these imperiled animals for décor? This about-face is terrible for Africa’s beleaguered elephants,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hunting elephants for sport takes the biggest, healthiest males out of the population, skewing elephant genetics and harming their social fabric. With so many trophy hunters coming from the United States, our government should be helping to police the trophy trade, but Trump officials are instead rubberstamping imports of tusks and heads.”
More than two-thirds of the 2025 imports came from Botswana, which reopened to elephant trophy hunting in 2019, after a pause of five years. The country is home to about 140,000 elephants. Local scientists have raised concerns that the country’s annual quota of more than 400 elephants is not sustainable. Since trophy hunters generally remove large mature males who are also threatened by poaching and drought, these elephants could soon be depleted from the population, harming breeding, genetics and elephant social functioning.
Despite the harm trophy hunting can cause to imperiled species, pro-trophy hunting organization Safari Club International is asking the Trump administration to entirely eliminate Endangered Species Act permitting requirements for imports of trophies from threatened African elephants, African lions and Argali sheep. A rulemaking petition from the group, obtained under FOIA by Humane World for Animals, formerly called the Humane Society of the United States, illustrates how the trophy hunting industry is trying to take advantage of the current deregulatory agenda.
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