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  • 2017-11-15 (xsd:date)
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  • United States to Reverse Ban on Wildlife Trophies? (en)
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  • On 15 November 2017, several news organizations reported that President Donald Trump had reversed Obama-era conservation efforts involving the import of ivory from Zimbabwe and Zambia, sparking outrage among animal rights supporters. CNN attributed the regulatory change to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: The 2014 restriction on importing elephant trophies included those that were hunted legally in Zimbabwe and Zambia. However, a provision of the Endangered Species Act allows for restricted activities such as the import of animal trophies if they are undertaken to enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species. In order to fulfill its obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the United States restricts the number of legally-hunted elephant trophies to two per year. Safari Club International, a hunting advocacy group that filed a lawsuit challenging the 2014 restriction, first announced the regulation change on their web site. In November 2017, a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service confirmed the change to the 2914 regulations and explained the rationale behind it: On 17 November 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would place a hold on reversing the ban, pending further review, and a few days later President Trump tweeted about the issue: However, the President appeared to have been at odds with others in his administration over this issue, as NPR reported in March 2018: But Trump appears to have lost that battle in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in December 2017 ruled in a case brought by the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International that the Obama-era regulations had been improperly implemented Among other aspects, the two organizations challenged the Endangered Species Act [ESA] findings on which the regulation was based and argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service impermissibly relied on standards that are more stringent than the statutory requirements in the ESA. That ruling already appears to have affected a number of other endangered species trophies. The Fish and Wildlife Service released a memo on 1 March 2018 in response to the ruling, withdrawing Endangered Species Act findings from various years for trophies of elephants from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa, and Namibia; lions from Zimbabwe and South Africa; and bontebok in South Africa; and stating that applications would be considered on an individual basis: The Fish and Wildlife Service will now review permits on a case-by-case basis. The agency did not announce this change, however, and the memo only began receiving media attention when The Hill and other news outlets reported on it in March 2018. (en)
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