Elephants are magnificent creatures.
They’re the largest land mammals, for one.
They also up there with chimpanzees as the smartest, possessing the biggest brains of any animal and three times as many neurons as humans.
This cerebral power enables them to comprehend emotions like grief, joy and anger, and it makes them quick learners, fiercely loyal, resourceful, playful and possessed of great memories. Scientists have established elephants never forget a face.
Unfortunately, they also have giant tusks made of ivory, one of the world’s most coveted materials.
International wildlife organisations have reacted with fury to the Trump administration’s decision to let big game hunters bring elephants trophies back to the U.S. Donald Trump Jr is pictured with the tail of an elephant on one of his hunting trips to Zimbabwe in 2011
The decision comes after a campaign by the NRA on behalf of big game hunters. The president’s sons Donald Jr (left) and Eric Trump (right) have previously been on big game hunting trips to Africa (pictured)
This makes elephants the No1 target for poachers keen to cash in on the massive market, particularly in Asia, for illegal ivory trade.
The effects of this market are drastic and horrifying.
At the turn of the 20th Century, there were estimated to be as many as 4-5 million African elephants in the wild, and over 100,000 Asian elephants.
Today, those numbers are down to around 400,000 and 35,000.
The slaughter is relentless: at least 100 killed by poachers every single day.
Two years ago, Minnesota dentist Dr Walter Palmer (right) paid $50,000 to hunt and kill Cecil the Lion (left) in Zimbabwe; it prompted a global outcry but President Trump has made it clear he wants more, not fewer Dr Palmers
They are also killed by trophy-hunters, mostly rich American businessmen who pay small fortunes to fly over to the African bush to hunt and kill big game like elephants, lions and rhinos.
Then they fly their ‘trophies’ home in the form of the animals’ heads, horns, tusks or skins – to mount on their walls as proud momentos of their sickening holidays.
I’ve never understood trophy hunting, nor the delight those who partake in it feel about what they do.
To gleefully celebrate slaying such wonderful animals in their natural habitat, knowing they are all facing possible extinction, seems so unutterably snivelling and cowardly.
Three years ago, Barack Obama tackled the trophy-hunters head on by announcing a ban on US citizens bringing home remains of elephants legally hunted in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
It was a move celebrated by most respected conservationists, who have long believed trophy hunting simply encourages more slaughter and more poaching.
Yet Donald Trump has now inexplicably decided to reverse the ban.
Yesterday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it had determined trophy hunters could actually help endangered animals like elephants ‘by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation.
It provided no hard evidence to support this assertion.
This move comes just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke established an ‘International Wildlife Conservation Council’ to advise him on how to increase Americans’ public awareness of conservation and the ‘economic benefits that result from US citizens traveling abroad to hunt.’
Ah yes, those fabled ‘economic benefits’.
There is a horrible irony in President Trump’s decision coming on the same day Zimbabwe’s corrupt dictator Robert Mugabe was finally deposed in a military coup
That was the argument made by supporters of Minnesota dentist Dr Walter Palmer after he was exposed two years ago for paying $50,000 to hunt and kill a lion called Cecil in Zimbabwe.
The fact that Cecil was a deeply beloved star tourist attraction at Hwange national park didn’t matter to Palmer.
Nothing was going to stop him getting his money’s worth, which meant luring Cecil out of the park, shooting him with a bow-and-arrow, then stalking the poor wounded beast for 40 hours before shooting him dead with a gun.
Palmer and his cohorts then beheaded Cecil, and skinned him, before leaving his rotting carcass lying outside the park.
It prompted a global outcry but President Trump has today made it clear he wants more, not fewer Dr Palmers.
The reason may be as simple as pleasing his family.
In 2012, photos were leaked to the media of Donald Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric taken during a big game hunting safari in Zimbabwe. In one of the pictures, Donald Jr. is seen posing next to a dead elephant he’d just shot to death. He is clutching a large knife, the elephant’s severed tail and a proud smile.
Other snaps showed them beaming broadly next to the freshly slain carcasses of leopards and crocodiles.
I’ve known both men for over a decade and I like them.
The lifting of the ban on elephant trophies has been greeted with outrage by conservation groups
The international ivory network links Africa with Asia, where most of the demand comes from
But I loathe their love of trophy hunting and found these images repulsive.
There is a horrible irony in President Trump’s decision coming on the same day Zimbabwe’s corrupt dictator Robert Mugabe was finally deposed in a military coup.
This appalling decision doesn’t make America great again; it makes America cruel again
Mugabe was infamous for encouraging the poaching and illegal export of ivory tusks. He even celebrated his birthday last year by feasting on an elephant.
Under his evil 37-year regime, Zimbabwe’s elephant population has declined dramatically and poaching has actually increased in areas where trophy hunting is permitted – nailing the lie that it helps not harms animal conservation.
In Zambia, the situation is even worse, with the elephant population falling from 200,000 in 1972 to just 21,000 now.
If trophy hunting conserves elephants, then how does anyone explain these numbers?
The truth is that much of the revenue from trophy-hunting is woefully and often deliberately mismanaged, meaning just a small fraction of it ever trickles down to the communities.
The revenue from animal tourism is massively higher, far more sustainable, and infinitely more likely to help conserve the wild beasts it promotes.
The reality is that trophy-hunting does nothing but sate the repellent blood-lust of corpulent American businessmen, substantially raise the value of the animals they hunt, and encourage poachers to strive even harder for a piece of the action.
There’s also another, even more sinister side to elephant hunting.
A 2015 film, Warlords of Ivory, proved in graphic detail how ivory trafficking now funds the activities of terrorists groups operating in Africa, including psychopath Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Al Shabaab and even ISIS.
The documentary showed how elephants are mass-slaughtered in places like the Congo by poachers firing guns from helicopters. Their tusks are then removed by chainsaws and taken to the terror groups where the ivory is sold on in exchange for money or weapons.
Terrorists would have no interest in killing elephants for ivory if it wasn’t so valuable. So the ivory trade is thus directly supporting the very terror Donald Trump claims he wants to eradicate.
Of course, there will always be a market for illegal ivory. But the way to reduce its value is to make the wider public realise just how vile this trade is, just how damaging it is to the elephant population, and just how it is directly funding terrorists.
The National Rifle Association was quick off the mark to praise Trump’s trophy hunting green light.
‘By lifting the import ban on trophies in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the Trump administration underscored the importance of sound scientific wildlife management and regulated hunting to the survival of game species in this country and worldwide,’ said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.
As so often, the NRA’s twisted logic is utterly nonsensical.
Just as you don’t stop mass shootings by flooding the civilian population with more guns, so you don’t stop the illicit murder of elephants by flooding the African bush with American trophy hunters wanting a nice big tusk to adorn their office wall.
This appalling decision doesn’t make America great again; it makes America cruel again.
It also makes America less safe.
Shame on you, Mr President.