Today's Must-Read: #savetheelephants

I guess his Hemingway wannabe offspring prevailed on our so-called president to grant them more elephant tails:

Trump has done one single decent thing since he took office and it was defy his murdering neanderthal heirs and uphold the ban on imports of elephant trophies. I guess Uday and Qusay were the last people in the room on this one:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has quietly begun allowing more trophy hunting of African elephants, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge last year to uphold a ban on importing parts of animals killed by big-game hunters.

That's bad enough. (Yes, I am in favor of a total ban on hunting endangered species, and you won't want to hear my opinion on "trophy hunters".)

But this is what really pisses me off:

“Our biggest concern is there’s been too much back and forth by the U.S. government to the point of really confusing the public,” Jimmiel Mandima, the director of program design at the African Wildlife Foundation, said. “Why does the decision keep flopping, are we hunting or are we not hunting?”

Mandima, who noted that his group has long opposed the hunting of threatened, vulnerable or endangered species, said such confusion makes it difficult for the public to voice opinions about the issue, and harder for environmental groups to craft conservation recommendations.

(Emphasis added.)

That's the whole point.

Several environmentalists on Monday pointed out that the new import guidelines haven’t been made public, and Freedom of Information Act requests to determine what “case-by-case” actually means will likely take months. In that time, an unknown number of applications could be approved.

“We saw the public outcry last fall when [the trophy decision] was announced … not just from people who are traditionally Democrats,” Sanerib said. “The agency is really playing hide the ball. It’s incredibly disappointing.”

That's the way the Republicans "govern": don't tell the public what's going on.

Remember the "tax reform" bill? The one that was rushed through with no public hearings and no debate?

Footnote: This is what we should be doing:

In Kenya, the last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) in the world isn't faring well - the animal is past its prime and in declining health. With time running out, a global team of scientists and conservationists are trying to save the subspecies from extinction with help from the last two surviving females.

It's called "cooperation," and it's something we as a species are supposed to be good at:

Efforts to pull the species from the jaws of extinction have brought together institutions from around the world, such as the San Diego Zoo Global in the United States, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, and Embryo Plus, a South African company specializing in IVF procedures.

Read this one, too -- it's fairly detailed, and pretty informative.