The Trump administration has opened the door for American trophy hunters to bring back the heads of African animals and said it will consider requests to do so on a case-by-case basis.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials have prohibited imports of elephants and lions from Zimbabwe and Zambia since Barack Obama put up restrictions in his second term.
The moves came as part of global fight to help protect the animals targeted by poachers for their ivory, though the FWS, under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, reversed the policy in November.
Hunting organizations say that allowing the trophies from countries where elephant hunting can be legal, such as Zimbabwe, helps create an incentive to preserve the species, a reasoning cited by FWS last year.
Outcry about the November decision led President Trump to post on Twitter that the change was “on hold” and he said in an interview earlier this year that he thought the practice of bringing elephant heads to the U.S. was “terrible.”
However, the FWS announced late last week that it was scrapping the previous Endangered Species Act findings made under the Obama administration, as they were “no longer effective for making individual permit determinations.”
It also said it would stop relying on findings for countries going back to 1995, with elephants in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The FWS also moved against findings for lions from Zimbabwe, where an American dentist’s killing of Cecil the Lion caused international outrage in 2015, as well as Zambia and South Africa.
While it said that all of those restrictions were “no longer effective,” the memorandum added that officials would consider the information held within them for decision made “on an individual basis.”
Hunting group Safari Club and the National Rifle Association challenged the Obama moves in federal court. The Washington D.C. district court ruled against them, though an appellate court said that while the bans were legal, the FWS under Obama did not adhere to the proper rules about announcing the regulation and allowing time for public comment.
In a statement along with its memorandum last week, FWS said that it was making the revisions “In response to a recent D.C. Circuit Court opinion.”
