Every year tens of thousands of wild animals, representing hundreds of different species, are killed by American trophy hunters in foreign countries. The heads, hides, tusks, and other body parts of most of these animals are legally imported to the United States by the hunters.
Many animals imported as trophies are members of species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), such as leopards and African elephants. The ESA allows importation of endangered and threatened species only for scientific research, enhancement of propagation, or survival of the species. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which implements the ESA, has broadly interpreted the term "enhancement" to include trophy hunting of threatened species. While the USFWS has rarely allowed the importation of endangered species as trophies, this has not stopped hunters' trophies from making their way across the U.S. border in the guise of scientific research.
In 1997, just months after the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History accepted a $20 million donation from big-game hunter Kenneth Behring, the Institution sought a USFWS permit to import the trophy remains of two endangered wild sheep that Behring shot in Central Asia. One of the sheep, a Kara-Tau argali, is extremely rare in the wild where only 100 exist today. After a storm of ugly publicity, the Smithsonian abandoned the permit application. This was not, however, an isolated case. The Smithsonian has been involved in facilitating the import of endangered species killed by trophy hunters in the past. Other museums have done the same.
While the trophy hunting of endangered and threatened species attracts a great deal of attention, the vast majority of wild animals that American hunters kill and import—such as impala, black bears, common zebra, warthogs, eland, African buffalo, African lions, giraffes, and baboons—are not protected under the ESA or any other domestic law. If the foreign government allows the animals to be killed, as many do, the American hunter can import the trophies.
Trophy hunting is an elitist hobby, requiring tens of thousands of dollars to participate in each hunting trip. Many trophy hunters belong to organizations which promote and enable the so-called "sport," such as Safari Club International (SCI). Founded in 1971, SCI is based in Tucson, Arizona, and has more than 100 chapters in foreign countries. It has a wealthy membership, many of whom are doctors, lawyers and executives, 55% of whom have an annual income exceeding $100,000. SCI's annual conventions attract thousands of current and would-be trophy hunters. Through its publications and conventions, SCI entices people into booking more hunts and helps to hook up the hunting clients with the industry representatives, including outfitters, professional hunters, gun manufacturers and taxidermists. SCI's thick, glossy, bimonthly magazine, Safari, contains page after page of advertisements for trophy hunts and Hemmingway-like stories glorifying the hunt.
SCI also conducts elite competitions that provide trophy hunters with a playing field so that they can compete with others to kill the most animals of a particular type—one victim from all the bear species in the world, for example. There are 29 awards in all, and in order to win all of them, at the highest level, a hunter would have to kill 322 animals of different species or subspecies. Not the only club of its type, SCI is by far the most prominent trophy-hunting advocacy organization in the world. It protects the hunter in every conceivable forum, including lobbying the U.S. Congress to weaken laws, like the ESA, and lobbying the USFWS not to list species that hunters like to kill, such as argali sheep, under the ESA.
