Florida hunter receives approval to import lion trophy into US, conservation activists fear it will 'open the floodgates'
A trophy hunter from Florida has reportedly sought permission to import a lion trophy into the United States. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based nonprofit that advocates for endangered species, the particular lion trophy set to be imported from Tanzania is believed to be the first since January 2016.
Under the US Endangered Species Act, two subspecies of African lions, in the year 2016, were listed as threatened. The listing meant that those lions cannot be killed for trophies unless it can be shown that the hunts would enhance the survival of the particular species in the wild, according to the National Geographic.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that oversees trophy hunting imports to America, however, approved a hunter's application in May to import the skin, claws, and teeth of a lion killed in Lukwati North Game Reserve. The information was retrieved after the international legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity, Tanya Sanerib, obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The hunter, whose identity has not yet been revealed, reportedly applied to import the trophy from Tanzania in November 2016. The timeline of exactly when he killed the lion has not yet been established. It is also not clear whether the lion trophy has already been imported into the US. The permit to import the remains expires in May 2020, a year from the date it was issued.
According to the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Network, African lions have disappeared from 94 percent of their historic range, and populations have nearly halved to fewer than 25,000 since the early 1990s. Nearly 40 percent of Africa's lions are found in Tanzania. Reports state that the main reasons for such a dramatic decline in the lion population are depletion of their prey animals and retaliatory killings of the lions that attack villagers.
Sanerib, after the latest revelation, has expressed her concerns the decision made by the Fish and Wildlife Service could suggest that the Trump administration will "open the floodgates” for future Tanzanian trophy imports for lions and other species, including elephants. A US hunter, last week, was also permitted to import a black rhino trophy he had killed last year in Namibia.