Deal with NRA would have allowed Trump sons to keep killing endangered animals
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| Donald Jr (left) and Eric Trump posing with a leopard they shot on a hunting trip to Africa in about 2013. |
Federal regulators have tossed a last-minute Trump-era agreement with the National Rifle Association about wildlife conservation which critics said was designed to help trophy hunters.
Aurelia
Skipwith, director of the Fish and Wildlife
Service under Trump, signed the agreement on Jan. 13, just seven days before
President Joseph Biden was sworn in.
“The service’s
memorandum of understanding with the National Rifle Association was not
adequately reviewed by agency staff or the Department of the Interior
solicitor’s office,” said an agency spokesperson. “Therefore, the service
terminated the agreement.”
The 10-year
agreement called for the agency to work with the NRA to develop “science-based
strategies” for wildlife conservation. The agreement also called for the Fish
and Wildlife Service and the NRA to promote hunter education, expand access to
shooting ranges and hunting and promote marksmanship and shooting safety.
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| Donald Trump Jr. with a dead Cape Buffalo Bull |
Brett Hartl of the Center for Biological Diversity, which asked that the agreement be rescinded, said the likely goal of the agreement is “increasing the opportunity for trophy hunters to kill big game animals and put their heads on walls.”
The
NRA’s most noted trophy hunter is Wayne LaPierre,
the head of the NRA, whose hapless efforts to kill an elephant have made him a
mockingstock. Trump’s sons Eric and
Donald Jr. are also both trophy hunters.
Nearly 32,500 “trophies” from animals in Africa such as elephants, lions and rhinoceroses were imported from 2005 to 2014 into the United States. An estimated 26 million elephants roamed across Africa in the early 1800s. That number has been decimated by overhunting, habitat loss and poaching to about 415,000.
The Trump-era
agreement Skipwith signed named NRA lobbyist Erica Tergeson as the NRA contact.
Tergeson, also known as Erica
Rhoad, once worked for the House appropriations subcommittee on
Interior and related agencies.
The NRA has
spent more than
$3.3 million in federal lobbying so far this year and spent $16.3
million during the 2020 campaign to try to reelect Trump.
Biden said
during the presidential campaign that he opposes
importing body parts from animals hunted overseas.
Rhoad was one of
the members of the International Wildlife Conservation Council who
Trump’s first Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, set up to help rewrite
federal rules for importing heads, hides and other body parts
of African elephants, lions and rhinos.
Other members
included Peter
Horn, a vice president at Beretta who owned a hunting property
in upstate New York with Donald Trump Jr., and Republican fundraiser Steven
Chancellor whose hunting record includes killing at least 18 lions, 13
leopards, six elephants and two rhinos.
The Center for
Biological Diversity and other conservation groups sued in
2018, saying the makeup of the council violated the Federal
Advisory Committee Act which requires that all federal advisory
panels have a balanced mix of members. Team Trump said in February 2020 that it disbanded the
council.
Sarah
Okeson is correspondent for DCReport, reporting on the environment,
gun control and the COVID pandemic. She is a former staff reporter for the
Springfield News-Leader, Joplin Global and Florida Today ; and her work has
also been featured by Salon, Miami Herald, Washington Times, Barons and more.