The Return of the Trophy: How Trump's Second Term Is Reshaping America's Role in Elephant Hunting
For decades, the question of whether an American sportsman should be permitted to fly to southern Africa, kill one of the world's most intelligent animals, and ship its head home as a decoration has sat at the volatile intersection of conservation law, presidential politics, and big-money lobbying. That question has never felt more pointed than it does right now. New federal records, pried loose through Freedom of Information Act requests, have revealed a sharp and controversial acceleration in elephant trophy imports under President Donald Trump's second administration — a reversal so dramatic that conservation groups are calling it a wholesale betrayal of wildlife protections that took decades to build.
A case study prepared by the Center for Biological Diversity shows that the Trump administration permitted the import of more than 300 elephant trophies in 2025, based on federal government records obtained via the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The figure is not merely a statistic. It represents a 154% increase in the total number of elephant trophy import permits issued during all of Trump's first term. For context, in 2018, the agency issued 114 permits, and that number dropped to just four in 2019, and to none in 2020 and 2021. The trajectory is unmistakable, and to the people who spend their professional lives monitoring the fate of African elephants, it is alarming.
A President Who Once Called It a "Horror Show"
The central irony animating this story is Trump's own record. This is not a president who has been silent on the subject. In 2017, after Trump called trophy hunting a "horror show," his administration convened a pro-hunting board to rework import rules; it dissolved after a lawsuit. The tweet that followed his Fish and Wildlife Service's initial attempt to lift an Obama-era ban became instantly famous in conservation circles. Two days after pausing the ban, Trump said on Twitter that he would be "very hard-pressed" to change his opinion "that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal."
That public stance, at least rhetorically, seemed to align Trump with the broad majority of Americans who view elephant trophy hunting with deep discomfort. Yet the gap between his words then and his administration's actions now has grown into something conservation advocates describe as one of the starkest wildlife policy reversals in recent memory. "Why is a president who once decried elephant hunting rolling out the red carpet for the elitist practice of killing these imperiled animals for décor? This about-face is terrible for Africa's beleaguered elephants," said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
President Trump had previously suspended the importing of elephant trophies in 2017, though this was relaxed to a case-by-case basis in his second term. That case-by-case framework, which sounds measured on the surface, has in practice opened a floodgate compared to the near-total closure of the Biden years. The present rules center on reforms from March 2024, issued under President Biden, that Humane World called an "effective ban" on elephant trophy imports. Even so, there were still more than 350 elephant trophy imports in 2024, a spike compared with other years during the Biden administration, which experts attributed mostly to hunters rushing trophies home before the new rules took effect.
The Legal Architecture: Endangered Species Act Under Pressure
To understand what is happening today, you have to understand the legal scaffolding that has governed elephant trophy imports since the 1970s. The Fish and Wildlife Service classified African elephants as threatened in 1978. That classification has never changed, and it carries real weight. Because elephants are listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, importers need a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to bring elephant trophies into the country. Under the law, those permits can only be granted if the agency determines that the import will enhance the survival of the species in the wild — a standard that sounds straightforward but has proven remarkably elastic in practice.
The Obama administration drew the line clearly enough. Under the Obama administration in 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued rules suspending the importation of elephant trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe into the U.S. That decision rested on a finding that hunts in those countries were not actually contributing to species survival. There were — and remain — serious concerns about whether proceeds from elephant hunts in Zimbabwe and Zambia actually go to conserving and protecting the species, as big-game hunters claim.
The first Trump administration's Fish and Wildlife Service challenged that framework in 2018, reverting to a case-by-case system. In 2018, under former President Donald Trump, the federal agency retreated on that ruling and allowed the import of elephant trophies to the U.S. on a case-by-case basis. Then the Biden administration raised the bar again. The revised rule heightened the criteria required for the Fish and Wildlife Service to authorize imports, including from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia — the top exporters of elephant hunting trophies to the U.S. — making it harder for trophy hunters to import their hunting spoils.
Now the second Trump administration has effectively set that Biden-era framework aside. And Safari Club International, the wealthy pro-hunting lobbying organization at the center of this policy universe, wants to go considerably further. In May 2025, Safari Club International petitioned the USFWS to roll back some protections for African elephants under the ESA so it would be easier to import trophies. The petition is sweeping in its ambition. It calls the current regulations "unnecessary, overly burdensome and inconsistent with regulatory reform initiatives" under Trump, and urges the agency to accept the exporting countries' determination that trophy hunting does not harm the species.
The implications of that last clause are significant. "It would be a scenario akin to the fox guarding the hen house," Sanerib said. "If [Safari Club International's] petition was implemented, USFWS would no longer be required to determine that import of a sport-hunted trophy enhances the survival of African elephants." It also means that hunters would no longer need an ESA permit to import their elephant trophies. For conservation attorneys, that would represent the dismantling of a core protection that has been in place for nearly half a century.
Safari Club International and the Deregulatory Moment
Safari Club International is not a fringe organization. It is a well-funded, well-connected lobbying force with deep ties to Republican politics and the broader gun rights ecosystem. Groups such as Safari Club International are lobbying for trophy imports as well as loosening other endangered-species protections and may have allies in the president's sons. "There are absolutely ties between Don Jr, in particular, and Eric, to a certain extent, with trophy hunting in the US," Sanerib said. "The trophy hunting industry, and folks who lobby for gun rights are very much tied together … they're a really powerful lobby."
The organization's current petition makes explicit use of the Trump administration's broader deregulatory posture. A rulemaking petition from the group, obtained under FOIA by Humane World for Animals, formerly called the Humane Society of the United States, illustrates how the trophy hunting industry is trying to take advantage of the current deregulatory agenda. The organizations opposing the petition are not mincing words about what is at stake. "Safari Club International is pushing an exploitative proposal that threatens hard-won protections for African elephants and other iconic species by expanding the U.S. market for trophy hunting — a market that already dominates global trophy imports of species threatened by trade," said Sarah Veatch, wildlife policy principal for Humane World for Animals.
The United States is not a minor player in this market. The U.S. imports more hunting trophies than any other country in the world, according to Humane Society International, which notes America accounted for 75% of global hunting trophy imports and almost 25% of global elephant hunting trophy imports between 2014 and 2018. That dominance means that American policy decisions reverberate directly into elephant populations across southern Africa. When Washington makes it easier to bring back a trophy, outfitters from Botswana to Zimbabwe feel it immediately in their booking calendars.
Botswana: Ground Zero for the Modern Trophy Hunt
If one country sits at the heart of the current debate, it is Botswana. Nearly two-thirds of the imported trophies came from Botswana, which renewed elephant hunting in 2018 after a brief pause. The landlocked southern African nation has the largest elephant population on the continent — the country is home to about 140,000 elephants. That abundance has made it the destination of choice for American hunters willing to pay steep fees for the experience.
Trophy hunting is a pursuit for the wealthy, who parachute into the country — often from the Global North, with many from the U.S. — and pay up to $28,500 just to kill an elephant. This fee, also called the trophy fee, is determined by professional outfitters, based on market demand and licensing fees. A full luxury excursion, including guides, accommodations, food, and various permits, can balloon the total cost far beyond that.
Botswana's government has constructed a political defense around its hunting program that draws on both economics and ecology. Botswana's government has long defended its decision to reinstate hunting as a way to deal with increasing elephant numbers and rising human-elephant conflicts, and says that hunting also provides livelihoods. The country's political posture has not been lacking in drama. In 2024, Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi famously offered to send 20,000 elephants to Germany after Berlin suggested imposing stricter limits on trophy hunting imports.
But independent scientists are not convinced the current quotas are sustainable. In 2025, the government permitted the hunting of 410 of its elephants, and increased it to 430 in 2026. In 2026, Botswana has licensed an increased annual trophy hunting quota of 430 elephants. This is 0.4% of the total wild population, and the CBD reports that local scientists recommend taking only 0.2% — approximately 280 animals — to ensure the breeding population is sustainable. The government is currently permitting harvests at twice the rate scientists say the population can absorb without long-term damage.
Zimbabwe and Namibia round out the roster of major source countries. Zimbabwe accounted for 19% and Namibia 9% of elephant trophy hunting destinations. In Zimbabwe, elephant populations have faced sustained pressure from poaching for ivory for decades, making the case for legal trophy hunting as a conservation benefit there even harder to sustain than in Botswana.
The Super-Tusker Problem: Hunting the Irreplaceable
Beyond the raw permit numbers lies a more troubling biological reality. Trophy hunters are not targeting random members of a herd. They are by preference pursuing the largest, most genetically significant animals — the individuals whose loss cannot simply be offset by the next breeding cycle.
Since trophy hunters selectively target "supertuskers" — older males with the largest tusks — conservationists say they are being killed at a rate that raises concerns for the future of endangered savanna elephants. The super-tusker designation refers to a specific class of animal. Particularly vulnerable are the so-called "super-tuskers" — males with tusks weighing 100 pounds or more, known by trophy hunters as "hundred pounders." There are thought to be as few as 24 to 80 super tuskers left in the whole of Africa, and their loss would be devastating for the genetic diversity of the African elephant.
The threat is not theoretical. Trophy hunters pose a substantive threat to the limited population of "super tuskers," male elephants with tusks weighing 100 pounds or more, who in recent years have been shot down for trophies in the famed Greater Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro ecosystem on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. A no-hunting agreement for the region among Tanzania hunters had previously been in place since 1994. This is the longest-studied elephant population on Earth, and it has one of the largest remaining collections of super tuskers with some 20 to 25 mature bulls. Scientists think there are only around 50 super tuskers left in all of Africa. When a hundred-pound-tusker falls to a rifle, there is no functional replacement — not within any human planning horizon.
Since trophy hunters generally remove large mature males who are also threatened by poaching and drought, these elephants could soon be depleted from the population, harming breeding, genetics and elephant social functioning. The damage is not just numerical. Elephants are deeply social animals with complex family structures and learned behaviors passed from older to younger generations. Remove the patriarchs, and something more than genes is lost.
The Population Picture: A Species That Cannot Afford Complacency
The broader context for all of this policy maneuvering is a species that has been in long-term freefall. Since the Fish and Wildlife Service classified African elephants as threatened in 1978, their global population has decreased by at least 60% due to poaching, habitat loss, and other compounding threats. The numbers at the end of the 18th century stand in stark contrast to today. There are an estimated 415,000 African elephants today, compared to the 26 million elephants at the end of the 18th century. That is not a species with margin to spare.
European nations have been moving in a different direction from the United States. Belgium's parliament voted unanimously to prohibit the import of hunting trophies from many endangered species. This comes after the Netherlands instituted a ban on the import of hunting trophies for more than 200 species and France implemented a ban on the import of lion hunting trophies in 2015. Against that backdrop, an America that is issuing more than 300 elephant trophy permits in a single year stands as an outlier within the Western world.
What the Policy Shift Means in Practice
For the American hunter who wants to book a safari and bring home proof of a kill, the current moment represents an opening that did not exist two years ago. The permit process through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service still exists on paper, but the agency's stance toward approvals has softened considerably under the current administration. "With so many trophy hunters coming from the United States, our government should be helping to police the trophy trade, but Trump officials are instead rubberstamping imports of tusks and heads," said Sanerib.
It is worth noting that a permit does not always correspond directly to an animal killed in the same calendar year. Receiving a permit does not necessarily mean an elephant was killed that year. Some hunters apply for permits before going on a hunting trip; others apply after an animal is killed. The 300-plus figure therefore represents an upper bound on kills attributable to American hunters in 2025, though the correlation is close enough that conservation organizations treat the permit count as a meaningful proxy for actual mortality.
What a trophy actually is — legally — is worth spelling out for those unfamiliar with the trade. Trophies are usually the taxidermied heads or feet, which hunters display in their homes as décor. More broadly, under Fish and Wildlife Service definitions, a trophy can encompass virtually any part of the animal — tusks, hide, skull, bones, or a full taxidermied mount. An elephant killed in Botswana in 2025 might end up as a mounted head in a game room in Texas, with full legal sanction of the federal government.
The Conservation-Hunting Debate: An Argument Without Easy Answers
The trophy hunting debate is not — and has never been — as simple as the loudest voices on either side would suggest. The argument for regulated trophy hunting rests on a coherent, if contested, economic logic. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman said the move to allow trophy hunting "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.'" The theory is that if local communities can profit from live elephants being hunted sustainably, they have a financial incentive to protect habitat and suppress poaching. In places where this model has been well-managed, the evidence has at times supported it.
The counterarguments, however, are numerous and well-documented. Opponents of trophy hunting say fees often don't make it back into the communities. Some critics say it is ethically wrong to kill wildlife for sport. Many argue that trophy hunting should not be allowed for species facing serious threats from poaching, including elephants, rhinos, and lions. There is also the question of legal cover. "There's a real concern that legal hunting of elephants provides cover for illegal hunting. When trucks, guns, and hunters are allowed on the landscape, rangers don't know who's who," says Tanya Sanerib at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The ESA's conservation enhancement requirement was designed precisely to force a fact-based determination in each case rather than accepting the industry's word that a hunt benefits the species. That standard is now at risk of being eliminated altogether if Safari Club International's petition succeeds. "SCI is actively lobbying to roll back Endangered Species Act protections that the Fish and Wildlife Service finalized for African elephants just two years ago. If the U.S. becomes an increasingly welcoming market for elephant trophies, it would undermine decades of work and public support to save these important, intelligent animals from extinction."
Where This Goes Next
The immediate future of the policy depends heavily on whether Safari Club International's petition gains traction at the Fish and Wildlife Service, and whether the administration continues its permissive approach to import approvals. The CBD also fears that lobbying from pro-trophy hunting organizations in the U.S. could lead to the weakening of the Endangered Species Act and the need for permits for importing trophies to be dropped altogether. If that comes to pass, the 300-plus figure from 2025 could begin to look modest by comparison.
SCI is actively lobbying to roll back Endangered Species Act protections that the Fish and Wildlife Service finalized for African elephants just two years ago. If the U.S. becomes an increasingly welcoming market for elephant trophies, it would undermine decades of work and public support to save these important, intelligent animals from extinction. Conservation attorneys at multiple organizations have signaled they will challenge any rule change that eliminates the permitting requirement in court, following a playbook that successfully unwound Trump's first-term hunting board before it could finalize new rules.
The historical record on this issue is one of whipsaw reversals tied directly to the occupant of the White House — Obama restricts, Trump loosens, Biden tightens, Trump opens the gates again. "With African elephants' rapid global population decline and the abrupt reversals in federal protections between administrations, this new revision to the regulation will help the agency make decisions that enhance the survival of the species in the wild, instead of incentivizing its decline," said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, in response to the Biden-era rule that the current administration has now effectively sidelined.
The elephants at the center of this policy war are not abstractions. They are, by every scientific measure, among the most cognitively complex animals on Earth — animals that grieve, that teach, that maintain multigenerational social bonds. Since trophy hunters generally remove large mature males who are also threatened by poaching and drought, these elephants could soon be depleted from the population, harming breeding, genetics and elephant social functioning. The men who hunt them argue that their dollars fund the conservation of the ones who remain. The scientists who study them say the math does not hold — not at current quota levels, not for super-tuskers, and not in a world where the species has already lost 60% of its population since the Nixon administration first signed the Endangered Species Act into law. The debate will continue. The permits are already being issued.
