WASHINGTON— A new case study prepared by the Center for Biological Diversity shows that the Trump administration permitted the import of more than 300 elephant trophies in 2025, based on federal government records obtained via the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. By comparison, the first Trump administration reported importing 114 elephant trophies in 2018, following Trump’s 2017 tweet calling elephant trophy hunting a “horror show.”

“Why is a president who once decried elephant hunting rolling out the red carpet for the elitist practice of killing these imperiled animals for décor? This about-face is terrible for Africa’s beleaguered elephants,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hunting elephants for sport takes the biggest, healthiest males out of the population, skewing elephant genetics and harming their social fabric. With so many trophy hunters coming from the United States, our government should be helping to police the trophy trade, but Trump officials are instead rubberstamping imports of tusks and heads.”

More than two-thirds of the 2025 imports came from Botswana, which reopened to elephant trophy hunting in 2019, after a pause of five years. The country is home to about 140,000 elephants. Local scientists have raised concerns that the country’s annual quota of more than 400 elephants is not sustainable. Since trophy hunters generally remove large mature males who are also threatened by poaching and drought, these elephants could soon be depleted from the population, harming breeding, genetics and elephant social functioning.