Endangered species SCI has been criticized by the
Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for supporting the hunting of endangered
African
antelope species at game ranches in Texas and Florida and for giving awards for hunting
African leopards,
elephants,
lions,
rhinos, and
buffaloes. SCI, along with other hunting and nonhunting organizations, intervened in a federal suit where HSUS challenged regulations that allow hunting of captive
scimitar-horned oryx,
dama gazelle, and
addax. The FWS found that, “[c]aptive breeding in the United States has enhanced the propagation or survival of the scimitar-horned oryx, addax, and dama gazelle worldwide by rescuing these species from near extinctions and providing the founder stock necessary for reintroduction. The scimitar-horned oryx is extinct in the wild across its range in North Africa, having been last seen in Niger and Chad in the mid-1980s. The dama gazelle and addax are rumored to exist in only a few small and highly fragmented populations in the most remote parts of the Sahara Desert. According to SCI, however, healthy populations of all three species still exist in the United States. Sport hunting of surplus, captive-bred animals generates revenue that supports these captive-breeding operations and may relieve hunting pressure on wild populations.” As of February 2008, this case is still pending. In the case of the
black rhino, 83% of those countries represented at the 2004
CITES meeting approved sport hunting of the species in very limited numbers.
Members engaged in unethical hunting practices and poaching Ken Behring was a former president of SCI and was at one time its largest donor. In 1997, Behring shot an endangered Kara Tau argali sheep in Kazakhstan (only 100 remained in the world at the time). Behring claimed he had permits to shoot the sheep and had Russian scientists in his hunting party; he was issued export permits two days before the enactment of a prior international decision to move Kara Tau argali to the most-endangered status. Per American law, the remains of the endangered animal could not be legally imported into the United States. Behring donated $20 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History six weeks later, offering his private collection of stuffed hunting trophies to the museum, including four rare bighorn sheep, one of which was the Kara Tau argali sheep. The Smithsonian attempted to import the remains by petitioning the Department of the Interior for an Endangered Species Act waiver, but withdrew its request after questioning and negative publicity from Representative George Miller and groups like the HSUS. Behring maintained that he had broken no laws, and had shot the animal legally while assisting Kazakh scientists. The National Museum of Natural History subsequently re-evaluated their acquisitions policies in light of the charges. In 1998, Behring shot and killed an elephant in Mozambique, where the sport killing of elephants was banned in 1990. His hunting companions, the then past and current presidents of Safari Club International, killed two more elephants. Mozambican wildlife officials believed that the group had come "to survey investment opportunities" in Cabo Delgado province. The group was given a permit by the governor to shoot a lion, a leopard, and a buffalo; a local wildlife official also added a note referring to "problem elephants", the only exception to the national ban on the killing of elephants. According to Arlito Cuco, head of Mozambique's wildlife service, a federal investigation showed that the hunt was illegal because it did not target problem elephants, and that two of the elephant tusks had gone missing. Local investigators also reported that the group used a helicopter during the hunt, which "drove the elephants onto their guns"—a charge they denied. According to the
New York Times, Behring's spokesperson "sent a reporter a copy of a $5,000 check, dated six weeks after the hunt and made out to the provincial government with the notation 'elephant permit.'" The then-director of the game reserve near where the elephants had been killed was skeptical, telling ABC News
PrimeTime, "They came in there and bankrolled an operation to take out some big elephant, and it is wrong. And nobody, nobody can condone what happened." SCI was founded by trophy hunter C.J. McElroy, who claimed to be the greatest trophy hunter in the world. McElroy hunted in nearly 50 countries, on six continents. He killed nearly 400 trophy animals that appear in SCI's record book, including animals that are now endangered and can no longer be hunted. McElroy was forced to resign in 1988. Bill Quimby, a past president of SCI, writes in his book
Safari Club International that rumors were passed among hunters that McElroy "ignored hunting laws", that McElroy was even accused of killing a Rocky Mountain bighorn ram in a national park, and that his "ideas of sportsmanship and ethics simply were different from those of hunters who came along later."
Cecil the lion Cecil the lion was a lion that lived primarily in the
Hwange National Park in
Matabeleland North,
Zimbabwe. He was a major attraction at the park and was being studied and tracked by the
University of Oxford as part of a larger study. He was initially wounded with an arrow by Walter Palmer, an American dentist and SCI member, then tracked, and reportedly killed with a rifle about 40 hours later on 1 July 2015. Palmer says that Cecil was killed with a bow and arrow in much less than 40 hours after the lion was first wounded. Following outcry over the killing, Palmer's SCI membership was suspended. Charges against Palmer were eventually dropped by the Zimbabwean Government. ==Revenue sources==