Trump administration to reverse ban on imports of elephant trophies from Africa

An elephant tusk.
(Image credit: Mehdi Fedouach/AFP/Getty Images)

The Trump administration will reverse a 2014 ban on allowing hunters to bring back to the United States trophies of elephants they killed in Zambia and Zimbabwe, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official told ABC News on Wednesday.

There is a provision in the Endangered Species Act that lets the government issue permits to import trophies if there's sufficient evidence that the hunting benefits the species, and the Fish and Wildlife official claims there is evidence coming from Zimbabwe and Zambia to support reversing the ban. The Great Elephant Census released in 2016 found that from 2007 to 2014, savanna elephant populations dropped 30 percent across 18 countries in Africa, and there are about 350,000 left in the wild.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.