Washington, D.C. - Safari Club International (SCI) and millions of hunter conservationists worldwide are shocked and disappointed by the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to continue the ban of elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe.
"Like my fellow hunters, I am disappointed in the FWS decision to persist in upholding a ban that has absolutely no basis in science," said SCI President Craig Kauffman. "The fact is this administration continues to publicly talk about the benefits of hunting while siding with anti-hunting extremists time after time. SCI's Washington team will do everything within its power to reverse this misguided and baseless policy."
This decision comes after months of both SCI and Zimbabwe providing data and answers to the laundry list of questions submitted by the FWS. Both Zimbabwe and SCI provided tomes of information that supported Zimbabwe's elephant management plan and regulated hunting program. Sadly, this data demonstrated that Zimbabwe is actually facing an overpopulation of elephants and not the drastic decline that alarmists would have you believe.
Removing the U.S. hunter from the landscape of Africa's great outdoors will permanently handicap communal wildlife administrators in their fight against poachers and result is significantly less money for conservation and rural development.
Problems with poaching in Zimbabwe will be exacerbated by this ill-advised ban by the FWS.
International hunters are the first line of defense for conservation, management, and anti-poaching throughout Africa.
When wildlife has no value, hundreds of years of history prove that it will most certainly be slaughtered indiscriminately.
Examples of how hunter derived revenue are critically important to the rural economy of Zimbabwe:
In Zimbabwe hunter derived revenue contributes between 60-90% of the annual budget for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. This funding is critical to on the ground anti-poaching efforts.
The fees paid by international hunters are immediately reinvested in community projects through the CAMPFIRE program.
An average of 90% of CAMPFIRE revenue annually comes from hunting. Elephant trophy hunting contributes more than 70% of CAMPFIRE's annual revenue. On average $2 million per year in net income directly benefits local communities, and most of this is derived from the lease of sport hunting rights to commercial safari operators in 49 CAMPFIRE hunting concessions. Further income is generated from sales of hides and ivory, tourism leases on communal land, and other natural resource management activities.
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Safari Club International - First For Hunters is the leader in protecting the freedom to hunt and in promoting wildlife conservation worldwide. SCI's approximately 200 Chapters represent all 50 of the United States as well as 106 other countries. SCI's proactive leadership in a host of cooperative wildlife conservation, outdoor education and humanitarian programs, along with the SCI Foundation and other conservation groups, research institutions and government agencies, empowers sportsmen to be contributing community members and participants in sound wildlife management and conservation. Visit http://www.safariclub.org for more information.
