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What could Donald Trump do to disgust you? Donald Trump. The guy who has been accused of sexually assaulting 16 women. The guy who trades middle school insults that could plunge the world into nuclear war. The guy who has hots for his daughter. The guy who thinks there are some very fine Nazis. That Donald Trump.
How about this?
The Trump administration plans to allow hunters to import trophies of elephants they killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia back to the United States, reversing a ban put in place by the Obama administration in 2014, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed to ABC News today.
Because nothing shows what a tough guy you are like the withered part of an elephant blasted from absolute safety simply for the holy hell of it. Meanwhile, in science land, where no Trump ever ventures ...
In the past 10 years, however, researchers have realized that elephants are even smarter than they thought. As few as eight years ago there were almost no carefully controlled experiments showing that elephants could match chimpanzees and other brainiacs of the animal kingdom in tool use, self-awareness and tests of problem-solving. Because of recent experiments designed with the elephant’s perspective in mind, scientists now have solid evidence that elephants are just as brilliant as they are big: They are adept tool users and cooperative problem solvers; they are highly empathic, comforting one another when upset; and they probably do have a sense of self.
And they make excellent umbrella stands.
The new regulation allows import of elephant parts collected in Zimbabwe, which is one of two countries making claims that sport hunting “benefits conservation” of elephants. But of course, that would be this Zimbabwe, where four decades of repressive rule under Robert Mugabi have just been replaced by a military coup which is bringing to power another charming leader.
In late 2000, a cable written by Earl Irving, then a US diplomat in Harare, described Mnangagwa as "widely feared and despised throughout the country," warning he could be "an even more repressive leader" than Mugabe if he were to succeed him.
Fear of Mnangagwa stems from his position as Mugabe's enforcer and head of the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), or secret police, and his alleged role in the 1983-84 massacres of the Ndebele ethnic group in Matabeleland, a region in Zimbabwe's southwest that was a center of political opposition to Mugabe's regime.
So the word that it’s all good to take ivory from Zimbabwe is coming from a guy who’s a villainous dictator, replacing the previous villainous dictator with a little coup-time in between. The number of elephants in Zimbabwe has increased, specifically because the economy there has been so miserable and Mugabe’s long rule made the nation Africa’s least likely place for a tourist visit. But conservatives have long been pushing another narrative—one that says all we need to do is allow more hunting and ivory trading, and everything will be fine.
Except that the numbers advertised by those supporting the shoot-them-to-health plan don’t seem to correspond with what studies have found. Rather than continuing to increase, as groups like AEI would claim, elephant populations in Zimbabwe are in decline.
The elephant population declined 6 percent overall in Zimbabwe but dropped by 74 percent within one specific region. Elephants saw "substantial declines along the Zambezi River," in Zambia while other areas of that country were stable, according to the census.
However, the real truth is that trophy hunting of elephants isn’t a significant threat to the species. The numbers across Africa peg the total number of licensed hunts as fewer than 50 a year. What they really represent is the sad expression of zero-self worth by a handful of rich assholes. Poaching and habitat loss still represent the threats that are driving elephants toward extinction.
That doesn’t make hunting them any less sick or the idea of bringing back their body parts for trophies any less grisly.
Scientists living among herds of wild elephants have long observed awe-inspiring cooperation between family members. Related elephant mothers and their children stay together throughout life in tight-knit clans, caring for one another’s children and forming protective circles around calves when threatened by lions or poachers. …
They deliberate among themselves, make group decisions and applaud their achievements. “Being part of an elephant family is all about unity and working together for the greater good,” says Joyce Poole, one of the world’s foremost elephant experts and co-founder of the charity ElephantVoices, which promotes the study and ethical care of elephants.
No wonder they seem so alien to the Trumps.
