Donald Trump has agreed to allow legally hunted elephant trophies to be imported to the United States from Zimbabwe and Zambia.
President Trump’s administration has reversed a Barack Obama-era ban on the remains of elephants killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia entering the US, arguing it can actually boost conservation efforts.
That means Americans will soon be able to hunt the endangered big game, an activity that garnered worldwide attention when a Minnesota dentist took Cecil, perhaps the world’s most famous lion, near a wildlife park in Zimbabwe.
A US Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman said the move will allow the two African countries to include US sport hunting as part of their management plans for the elephants and allow them to put “much-needed revenue back into conservation.”
Critics, however, note the restrictions were created by the Obama administration in 2014 because the African elephant population had dropped. The animals are listed in the US Endangered Species Act, which requires the US government to protect endangered species in other countries.
The population of African elephants have declined by 111,000 in the last decade due in large part to poaching.
The ban on imports of sport-hunted African elephant trophies from Zimbabwe was initially imposed by the Obama administration in 2014 as part of a national strategy for combating wildlife trafficking.
“Additional killing of elephants in these countries, even if legal, is not sustainable and is not currently supporting conservation efforts that contribute towards the recovery of the species,” they said at the time.
The change in policy was announced by Safari Club International, who filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, along with the National Rifle Association, in 2014.
“These positive findings for Zimbabwe and Zambia demonstrate that the FWS recognises that hunting is beneficial to wildlife and that these range countries know how to manage their elephant populations,” said SCI President Paul Babaz.
“We appreciate the efforts of the Service and the US Department of the Interior to remove barriers to sustainable use conservation for African wildlife.”
Critics have called the move “jarring”, with The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), an international animal protection organisation, citing a “lack of information about how money derived from trophy hunting by US hunters is distributed within Zimbabwe”.
“Let’s be clear: elephants are on the list of threatened species; the global community has rallied to stem the ivory trade; and now, the US government is giving American trophy hunters the green light to kill them,” said THS President Wayne Pacelle in a blog post.
“What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it’s just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?”
Zambia’s elephant population has dropped from 200,000 in 1972 to just a little over 21,000, he adds. While Zimbabwe’s elephant population has declined six per cent since 2001, Mr Pacelle says.
Source:Telegraph, CNN
It is up to us the Africans to safeguard that which God has given us….but with a corrupt PF leadership, everything goes
The Vice President of Zambia, Inonge Wina, wears Ivory bracelets on her wrists. Let her release a statement about that first.
Do we have sufficient elephants to go by those gun mongers from the USA? They will be flocking to Africa to complete the little that is left out, remember, to them it’s just a sport. I don’t think this is a good move, will encourage poaching even more.
Mr. Trump is a capitalist at heart.
@nubia princess
I wear an ivory bracelet too, but people of barosteland are not careless with nature, we have always been conservative with nature,,,,,..
And this white witch Trump is just greed, he wants zambian ivory for nothing..,,he wants to make money out of stup!d poor people like your PF Lungu
Silly stupid man …now his son and fellow hill billies will booking flights and polishing their expensive high powered guns!!
I will not comment, because I live here in America.
Now why war on elephants, is it because they killed Europeans last week?
Trump is the worst I-d-I-o-t I have ever seen. Instead of identifying and improving on the weakness of the polices his predecessor had implemented, he is busy scrapping everything, without stepping back to think about the implications.
Just like FTJ dismantled everything KK had created. …even selling a cooking oil (ROP ) factory because it was created by KK.
I share your frustration especially that it’s evident this guy is after eliminating everything that was put in place by a black president. Sorry, I don’t play the skin colour game or be a crybaby as a race victim. But with this Trump guy, it’s evident what his motivation is – eliminate anything good by a Black President, and want to be remembered as a great president. To Zambia, preserve what Obama put in place.
@ndanje
Trump is not your friend when it comes to money, especially when you are black worst if you are PF like lungu
To add insult …we have dumbass politicans like Lazy Lungu!!
FTJ sold those companies because they were liabilities and country was broke!!
Even a liability can become viable. How come Shoprite are successful where Niec and ZCBC failed.
Shoprite is private company which started off in RSA and has deep pockets. Most companies on INDECO portifolio were lossmaking and shutdown…how old are you for the second time I ask?
Mr Ndobo it appears part of your brain was left on the tar road after that accident you had. Who tells you I’m PF. I support Liverpool but that doesn’t make me Liverpool. I’ve reasons why I don’t support Oval Head.
Jay Jay I’m old enough to be your father. I’m sure you must have been at Unza with my son in the late 90s. Private or not private a company must make money and people are employed to formulate survival and profit making strategies. If I were FTJ my first step was to find out why these companies were loss makers. There was no study done before embarking on the destruction of the companies.
trump will be the best president this world has ever had, not that weak meekly Obama who just wasted the world space and time just watching everything pass by with him doing nothing. trump is the man, problem with us more low-life africans, anything obama is GOD given no matter how unreasonable it may be.
@Ndanje Khakis, you are old enough, but no brains. So, if you are old as you claim, you don’t remember that those parastatals like Niec and Mwaiseni were poorly run and workers used to get goods for free ‘ ati fya gava’? Ask shoprite workers if they can even get bread for free..Zambia airways my uncle used to fly to London every other Friday on the DC10 for free..
@Manab, you say that the companies were poorly run but not that the companies were running poorly, yes? So if the company is poor run is the company or the manager to blame? In the mines we fire the manager, at least that’s how we used to do at the time government only owed 51% of these mines. On brains it depends on hard or quickly you comprehend the subject.
He is a racist, just because Obama, everything he did is to be dismantled
How do you identify legally procured ivory from the illegally procured one? If people can easily siphon money from their countries how can they fail to export illegal ivory as legal?
Ndanje khakis – Exactly, I’m wondering too, how you would distinguish between stolen money and money earned? This chap apart from reversing anything Obama did, he is a racist who does not care about Africa. Like others have said let protect our natural resources from this crap.
There is one terrorising people in Livingstone. That one can be gotten
@4.1 why not start with you since uli Njovu or insofu.
Excessive hunting decimated wild life in America. Now Africa is their next target. This is a war now being declared on Africa’s elephants. What sin did we commit against these people? What sin has Africa’s wild life committed? Have they not taken away all our mineral wealth? Is it tourism which now holds a flicker of light for Africa? Is it not our main stay? If so, why should we hold our peace when such war has been declared against our natural wealth?
CORRECTION:
“…Isn’t tourism what now holds a flicker of hope for Africa?”
Which wildlife was decimated in America due to excessive hunting? There is a lot of hunting in America but everything is very well regulated including fishing.
@5.2 abilima:
The bison population in America is known to have tumbled from circa 30 to 60 million around the 1500s to what you may estimate it to be today. It is estimated that in one year along, 1872, an average 5,000 bison were killed each day, every day of the year, as ten thousand hunters poured onto the plains. One railroad shipped over a million pounds of bison bones. Bison hunting became a popular sport among the wealthy. Please tell me what that is in English.
CORRECTION:
“…It is estimated that in one year alone, 1872, an average…”
@Abilima You’re right. Even fishing of species like salmon is banned during spawning season. Here we even eat eggs of fish therefore curtailing the life cycle of the fish.
“What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it’s just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?”
You are shot to death if you are poor Zambian found killing elephants trying to make a living out it. But the rich out of pretence of obtaining hunting licences take all the benefits from these animals.
I think Trump is a genius. I am sure Trump has also gotten the news that elephants have killed 3 people in Zambia in a space of one week and a truck carrying water melons was also attacked a couple of days ago.
HE HAS LIFTED THE BAN SO THAT MORE ELEPHANTS CAN BE GUNNED DOWN AND MINIMISE THE DANGER THAT THESE ELEPHANTS ARE CURRENTLY POSING TO HIS CITIZENS WHO ARE VISITING ZAMBIA AS TOURISTS. We all know that America will always go to extreme to protect their citizens abroad regardless of the location.
Trump fears that the next tourist to be killed by elephants in Zambia or Zimbabwe will be an American.
What poor reasoning. Well done for effort though
Wildlife conservation is alien to Zambians
They see a wild animal as “nyama”
They are mired in the hunter-gatherer era
@C-General ,
Thanks for the humour !!! I don’t think you mean what you wrote 🙂
This has no benefit to poor Zambians and comes in the wake of trumps Asia tour….it is the Chinese that have convinced trump to lift the ban, they are the ones who will benefit.
Knowing corrupt lungu and his thugs don’t be surprised if they sell rights to harvest elephant tusks to the Chinese.. ..to export to the USA then re export to Asia and China.. .
So is this what HH meant when he said that “I would not want to disclose so much but just know that we are talking to President Trump. Once he has settled down, he will deal with all these African dictators who are abusing human rights,”
The orange orangutan at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue Washington DC even visited the reptile Duterte just to spite Obama, the guy that insulted his predecessor. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend. I used to believe in America and its people but the escalating hate is just bewildering and sad
you are wrong brother, Obama started this evil hatred for Trump when he was POTUS. Trump has the right to do away with all that Obama and that shillary of his did. escalating hate is what obama did to trump in his last term even humiliating trump in that public dinner. if you dont understand these issues keep ubututu to yourself. wako ni wako out
@AKASHAMBATWA.
you need to keep ubututu to yourself and it seems you have a short memory. So you have no clue who came up with the bither case, suggesting Obama was not born in US? How can you even think of it that Obama started it all? The dinner you are referring to i am is the annual dinner held for the Media, and each president uses that dinner to poke some fun. Obama targeted Trump because of that bither s.t.upidity. so for you to twist it around and say Obama started it all is an insane thing to say.
Akashambatwa is a Chanama resident.
In America, even fishing in their rivers and lakes has largely been reduced to a sporting activity. It cannot be done on a large commercial scale as we do here in our lakes such as the Kariba, Bangweulu, Mweru and Tanganyika, or in our rivers such as the Zambezi, Kafue, Luangwa etc.. Fish got finished in their rivers and lakes due to excessive fishing. In our case, however, we have been fishing in these lakes and rivers for thousands of years. America, on the other hand, was only discovered by Christopher Columbus a few hundred years ago!
It behooves us to see that, what Mr. Trump has said, is tantamount to commercializing poaching in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Mind you, Americans have powerful guns that will shoot and kill without producing even a tiny bit of sound. How may a game ranger…
>>> How may a game ranger fair, faced with a poacher who is using such kind of a gun?
You may recall that, at one time these people had the bison and the Buffalo, among other rare spices of wild animals. Nowadays, however, these species have become so rare in America, they are hardly worth the mention. What a shame they now want to descend on Zambia and Zimbabwe to come and denude whatever is left of our precious wild life!
CORRECTION:
I now see I called them: “spices” and not “species.” Well, please call them “species” and not “spices.” Thanks.
QUESTION: Who will the exportation of ivory to America going to make richer, them or us? It is going to make them richer, us poorer. How sad.
Hope that we dont fall for it.Trump has been to all continents apart from Africa ..what does it mean?We are nothing.Our governments fear the USA ad if we owe them money .Shame on our Politicians.America today is a white nation..Its time to do an eye for an eye thing.
We have resources ,copper,uranium,diamonds,silver name it.No control over pricing.Determined by players.We should amd must determine the price of our menerals..An African miner must determine .
We have resources…copper,uranium,diamonds,silver name it.No control over pricing.Determined by players.We should amd must determine the price of our menerals..An African miner must determine .
I wonder if these people even care that we too are just as human as they are? That we too have stomachs that feel hungry, bodies that feel cold and hearts that feel hurt and lonely? Do they? Why is it that, in their mind of minds, Africa is never a factor? Look at the Niger delta and the contamination of that elaborate ecosystem, the very fabric of Nigerian life! How much have they cared to clean-up of that oil spill? By contrast, see what they did after that oil spill off the gulf of Mexico? They had the courtesy to subject even tiny birds to delicate cleaning. Not so with Africa. We cry. They don’t listen. We die. They don’t care. But may be God cares! May be He alone is listening to our cry, but certainly not Mr. Donald Trump.
Fact is that the USA has lost influence .We have resources that we dont control .Time for Africa and Africans to call the shorts.We are thought of as low class becuse the young voice,us are quiet about this situation .Independent yes..politicaly but not economically .African stock maket for minerals.
I wish I was an elephant right now so that I could go and trump Trump on the head…Leave our elephants alone…Damn!
I will be equally hunting those hunting and killing our animals for trophy purposes. Watch out hunters!
Bla bla bla bla………………….!!!!!!!!!!
According to Yahoo News the White house says that the reverse has not been finalized.
why should anyone decide for us kanshi?