CHEERS & JEERS

CHEERS

SUPPORT THE ProTECT ACT Cheers to U.S. Reps Ted Lieu (D-Texas) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), for re-introducing the Prohibiting Threatened and Endangered Creature Trophies (ProTECT) Act at the end of last year. This federal legislation would amend the Endangered Species Act to prohibit the taking of any endangered or threatened species in the U.S. as a trophy and the importation of any such trophy into the U.S. We’ve signed on as supporters of H.R. 4804, and are urging the Senate to introduce a companion bill.

Friends of Animals has proposed similar legislation in New York, which is the biggest port for trophies in the nation, and Connecticut.

“Saving wildlife from extinction is not a partisan issue and Friends of Animals has long been pushing against the trumped-up notion that killing is conservation. Most of the money spent by U.S. trophy hunters who travel to Africa to kill for sport never gets to local communities, studies show. If the world’s threatened and endangered species are going to survive, including elephants and giraffes whose populations keep plummeting, lawmakers must support the ProTECT Act. The bill is elegantly simple and right on point,” said Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral.

MACY’S FLIPS OF FUR Kudos to retail giant Macy’s for flipping off fur. Last fall, Macy’s announced that it will stop selling fur by the end of the 2020 fiscal year in a move that came less than two weeks after California became the first state to ban the sale of new fur products and on the heels of legislation before the NYC council to ban fur sales.

Friends of Animals staged a bold protest inside the Fur Vault in Macy’s NYC location when we launched our Flip of Fur campaign, including a billboard in Times Square, in December of 2014. We asked shoppers to make the connection between the fur coats and the animals who were skinned to make them. Security ushered customers out of the Fur Vault and shut the doors, temporarily halting business on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

We couldn’t be more gratified knowing Macy’s is shuttering its fur business for good. NYC is considering fur ban legislation after FoA called on the city to do so. FoA’s anti-fur campaigns have always slammed the relevance of fur in today’s fashion because luxurious and warm alternatives to fur—providing glamorous looks that don’t kill—are readily available.

JEERS

TRUMP JR. STRIKES AGAIN; KILLS ENDANGERED SHEEP Jeers to Donald Trump Jr., who reportedly shot and killed an endangered sheep during a hunting expedition to Mongolia last summer. Trump Jr. obviously thinks he’s above the law because according to ProPublica he didn’t receive a permit until after he murdered the majestic long-horned argali sheep, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years amid hunting and destruction of its habitat in the rocky central Asian steppes.

Trophy hunters are just poachers with permits. With the high degree of corruption in African countries, for example, well-managed conservation is not a priority. A failure of the strict monitoring of the age, and sex of animals and a lack of penalties given to hunters is a serious threat to these species. Cecil, the lion killed by a U.S. dentist on a trophy hunt in 2015, is a perfect example. While he filed the proper paperwork to sport hunt a lion in Zimbabwe and import the trophy, Cecil was technically hunted illegally. A minimum age limit for hunting lions is set at six years old by the wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe. Of the five lions legally hunted in 2014, four were under six, so as a penalty was there were no lions on license for 2015.

BOYCOTT BOTSWANA At a time when tourism rates are rising in Botswana from visitors who appreciate its wildlife, the country with the largest elephant population in the world made the shameful decision last fall to rescind a ban on trophy hunting the pachyderms.

African elephants have been in steep decline, facing challenges from climate change, habitat loss and poaching. The population of pachyderms has declined by 90 percent in the past century, with only 350,000 elephants remaining in Africa. Their range has been drastically reduced by drought conditions.

In 2014, then Botswana President Ian Khama banned trophy hunting, citing wildlife declines. But current Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi announced the country will allow up to 400 licenses for elephant hunts. (In fact, a committee he formed to look at lifting the ban actually suggested using elephant meat for dog food.)

While Botswana claims more than 100,000 elephants, and southern African nations have stable populations, it’s difficult to pinpoint populations because more than 200,000 migrate freely between Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola, the Smithsonian noted in an article on the issue.