Trump admin. to reverse ban on trophies from dead elephants [updated]

Elephant mother with two young calves

Updated below.

As repugnant as it may sound, trophy hunting can have some upsides – it can help trim overpopulation, and fees paid by hunters can be used to fund local conservation efforts. But that requires that trophy hunting also be carefully monitored and that the animals affected not be in steady decline. That’s not the case with African elephants, which are officially considered an endangered species. Yet that isn’t stopping the most anti-sensical administration in US history from reversing a ban on bringing back hacked-off pieces of dead elephants as trophies:

The Trump administration plans to allow hunters to bring trophies of elephants they killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia back to the United States, reversing a ban put in place by the Obama administration in 2014, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed for ABC News today.

[…]

This change applies only to elephants in those two countries. It prompted questions about using game hunting to generate money for conservation efforts, and similar questions arose after the controversial killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe in 2015.

The government has not officially announced this policy change yet, but it was reportedly raised at a wildlife forum in South Africa this week, according to Safari Club International, which filed a lawsuit to block the 2014 ban.

It's unclear how the current political situation in Zimbabwe could affect this decision, but a blog post from the president of the Humane Society of the United States points out that poaching has been a problem in Zimbabwe over the years and that the hunting industry there faces corruption issues.

I gotta wonder: What kind of sociopathically greedy, insecure little person is so desperate to have his manhood validated that he’d go halfway around the world to butcher elephants and carve out body parts to bring back home to nail to a plaque?

Oh.

(via Joe.My.God.)

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UPDATE (11/18/17 @ 5:35 PM ET) —

Trump has now Twitter-announced that he’s putting the reversal on hold to “review all conservation facts” (uh-huh) and that he’ll “update soon with Secretary [of the Interior Ryan] Zinke”. His poor kids will have to wait a little longer before they can bring back bits of mutilated lions and pachyderms, then.