With a new administration in office comes new laws and outlooks — but the Trump administration appears to be doing things a little differently by trying to undo just about everything that the previous administration created. The latest rollback comes in the form of undoing a ban on elephant trophy imports by hunters.
According to USA Today, hunters will be allowed to bring back elephant ivory trophies from their hunting expeditions in Zimbabwe and Zambia which President Barack Obama banned in 2014 because the countries couldn’t provide numbers showing their ability to protect their elephant populations.
For activists, this is outrageous because elephants are listed as endangered. According to the WWF, African elephants’ status is vulnerable as they “are in sharp decline due to poaching for the international ivory trade.”
Although hunters do pay huge amounts of money to do their sport and a lot of the money can go back into wildlife conservation, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, these animals are still being killed at an alarming rate. Activists (and literally anyone who cares about animals) are not okay with this and took to Twitter to speak out:
A total outrage and sums up the morals of this administration. @theelephantproj https://t.co/ivf2QjVoin
— John Weaver (@JWGOP) November 16, 2017
Trump has now decided to lift Obama-era ban on importing elephant heads into the U.S., so that his Rich Friends can hang trophies of murdered endangered species on their walls. I’m Disgusted. #HoldTrumpAccountableFor Killing Elephants!
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 16, 2017
Obama protecting endangered elephants wasn’t partisan.
Some things aren’t Democrat or Republican — just humanitarian.
Trump reversing the ban on elephant trophies should disgust all Americans.
— Adam Best (@adamcbest) November 16, 2017
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had previously established an “International Wildlife Conservation Council” to advise on issues of conservation, wildlife enforcement and, as the Washington Post notes, the “economic benefits that result from U.S. citizens traveling abroad to hunt.”
However, given the current tumultuous political climate in Zimbabwe, advocates, like President of the Humane Society Wayne Pacelle, argued against the “pay-to-slay arrangement” between the government of Zimbabwe and trophy hunters — zeroing in on the economic and environmental intersections of this decision.
“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,” Pacelle wrote, “but that it’s just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?”