Elephant Trophy Applications to Receive Wildlife Agency Scrutiny

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to make decisions on applications to import sport-hunted African elephant trophies as part of a settlement filed Tuesday in a Washington, D.C., federal court.

The Dallas Safari Club, Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism, and other groups and individual hunters argued the agency was violating the law by not processing the applications as quickly as possible. The groups sought a court order to speed up the process, but the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia refused to do so in April due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The agency will ...