A trophy of a bill

Wildlife across the globe is imperiled by habitat destruction, climate change, war, wildfires and poaching. Yet even as populations of vulnerable animals dwindle, hunting them for trophies remains legal in a number of countries.

The amount of protection afforded the animals, however, depends on the country they happen to be roaming in, and some continue to sell the rights to hunt and kill them.

But hunters won’t be able to keep new trophies in their California homes if a bill winding its way through the state Legislature becomes law. Senate Bill 1175 would prohibit possession of trophies — the taxidermist-stuffed heads or other body parts of dead animals — from any of 13 iconic African species, including African lions, African elephants, leopards, black rhinoceros, white rhinoceros, giraffes, two species of zebras and baboons.

The bill can’t stop federally authorized importation of these trophies. Instead, any trophy imported in the future would have to be removed from the state within six months of its arrival. The ban would not apply to any trophies you already have on your walls.

The bill would also prohibit the importation into California of live animals that “evidence suggests” could be responsible for “a readily transmissable human disease without a readily available and effective treatment.” Although there are laws in effect now to regulate this traffic, this is an attempt to tighten the regulations in light of the current pandemic.

Americans are by far the largest importers of hunting trophies from vulnerable species. One justification has been that the tens of thousands of dollars hunters pay for these expeditions supposedly go into wildlife conservation. Currently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allows trophy importation on those grounds on a case-by-case basis. But opponents of trophy hunting of vulnerable species contend that little of the money spent on expeditions reaches conservation programs or local communities. This issue continues to be hotly debated, but one thing not being debated is that many of these species are in trouble. Given that real danger, these animals shouldn’t be hunted.