On a recent trip to Africa, Xhosa farmers along with animal preserve administrators advised me of the devastating effect U.S. laws prohibiting the import of certain hunting trophies (from leopards, rhinos, elephants, etc.) has had on conservation efforts.

Legal and carefully managed hunting allowed people to pay large amounts of money to harvest old, weak animals that were suffering from arthritis and other old age ailments. The meat would go to

Now the hunting and associated funds are gone, leaving animals to die of disease (scavengers getting their meat), being poached in record numbers (either for illegal profit or to prevent the destruction of crops and livestock), and locals are deprived of large amounts of meat and income. This has led to a rapid decline of the species our laws profess to protect.

I share this with you to urge you to ask our representatives to look into altering our laws to at least allow the import of trophies for these animals that are accompanied by official government documents confirming the licensed and sanctions legality of their harvest in order to return to a time when responsible and managed hunting was helping the save them from extinction.