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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Texas club cancels auction for elephant hunt

By EMILY SCHMALL and TERRY WALLACE Associated Press
DALLAS— A Texas hunting club has canceled plans to auction off a chance to kill an African elephant, the club’s executive director said Saturday. Ben Carter of the Dallas Safari Club told The Associated Press, that the donor of the hunt withdrew his donation. The African elephant is the Earth’s largest land animal. The World Wildlife Fund, the world’s leading conservation group, regards it as “vulnerable,” a step below “endangered” and defined as “facing a high risk of extinction in the wild.” The Dallas Safari Club faced international criticism last year for auctioning a permit to shoot an endangered black rhino. That hunt has been postponed until the winner receives permission to import the carcass from Namibia. This year’s auction prizes still include a 14-day trophy hunt in Mozambique for an adult male leopard. Animal welfare activists demonstrated across the street from the Dallas hotel where the club’s convention was taking place. Angela Antonisse-Oxley of the Dallas-based Black Rhino Project, said trophy hunts aggravate the serious problem of big game poaching in Africa. “A bullet is not going to save them,” she said. In an earlier statement, Carter said that “elephants, lions and leopards are not listed as endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and, in fact, are overpopulated in certain areas of Africa.” “These species are commonly hunted where legal, sustainable and where populations need to be managed,” the statement said. Jeff Flocken, the North American regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, called the club’s position “disingenuous.” “It’s disingenuous to say it’s being done for conservation,” he said. “Elephants and rhinos are in the middle of intense poaching.” The club’s auction catalog notes that although the top bid would win “the right to hunt a mature bull elephant,” it also notes such quarries “are not importable to the U.S.” The African elephants’ range in equatorial Africa has been steadily dwindling, from 3 million square miles in 1979 to just over 1 million square miles in 2007, the WWF has reported. Expanded logging and other agriculture, along with mining, have eaten into that habitat. They also are frequently the targets of illegal hunting for their prized ivory tusks.