The Trump administration is lifting a US ban on the importation of body parts from African elephants shot for sport. Credit:AP However, the White House on Thursday said it had not yet finalised the decision. "There hasn't been an announcement that's been finalised on this front," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters when asked about the reported policy shift. "Until that's done, I wouldn't consider anything final." The proposed text of the new rules had not, as of Thursday, been published in the Federal Register. That publication would start the clock ticking on a public comment period before any rule could be made final.

US President Donald Trump's administration has infuriated conservationists with its move to lift the imports ban. Credit:Bloomberg The move would reverse a policy implemented by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. "Infuriating," Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, wrote on Twitter. Walter Palmer, left, poses with the corpse of Cecil the lion. Cecil's death reignited the debate over trophy hunting and conservation in Zimbabwe. "Will increase poaching, make communities more vulnerable & hurt conservation efforts."

Advocates for big-game hunting contend that it can help preserve wildlife by generating income for poor countries that can promote conservation and improve the lives of impoverished people. Robert Borsak from the NSW Shooters and Fishers Party with a dead elephant. "Legal, well-regulated sport hunting as part of a sound management program can benefit certain species," the US Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement. Hunting group Safari Club International, which sponsored the meeting in Africa, praised the decision.

"These positive findings for Zimbabwe and Zambia demonstrate that the Fish and Wildlife Service recognises that hunting is beneficial to wildlife," said the group's president, Paul Babaz. But M. Sanjayan, chief executive of Conservation International, said in a statement: "The original ban was enacted based on detailed findings on the condition of elephant populations on the ground, and it strains credulity to suggest that local science-based factors have been met to justify this change." Wayne Pacelle, the president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, criticised the decision in a blog post, describing the practice of trophy hunting as a "new form of colonialism".

"What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it's just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?" he wrote. Pacelle also called into question Zimbabwe's ability to manage its elephant population, noting that the government is itself in crisis. Just this week, Zimbabwe was rocked by a coup d'etat that left its autocratic President, Robert Mugabe, under house arrest. The Nonhuman Rights Project in New York, which campaigns for legal rights for members of other species, said it was appalled by the move.

"[Trump's] actions will lead to a surge in wildlife trafficking and the slaughter of countless elephants," the group said in a statement. "It is ironic that this announcement came on the same week we filed the first-ever lawsuit on behalf of captive elephants seeking recognition of their right to bodily liberty in the US. "We have always been committed to the well-being of members of this extraordinarily complex (and endangered) species, and we hope this latest travesty against the most vulnerable from the Trump administration shows the courts why it is imperative to recognise our elephant clients as 'legal persons' with fundamental rights." Elly Pepper, a deputy director of the US National Resources Defence Council, said: "I'm shocked and outraged.

"I expect nothing less from our President, and if he thinks this is going to go down without a fight, he's wrong." The group, which does not oppose all hunting, is considering bringing legal action to block the policy change, Pepper said. The outrage echoed that seen in 2015 after a Minnesota dentist killed a well-studied lion nicknamed "Cecil", who was lured out of a protected national park. The population of African elephants fell by about 30 per cent between 2007 and 2014, with poaching the primary reason for the decline, according to a report released last year. A growing number of countries, including China, Singapore and the United States, have banned the trade in ivory.

In 2016, NSW upper house MP Robert Borsak, who represents the Shooters and Fishers party, admitted in Parliament he had shot about eight elephants and had eaten parts of all of them. Reuters, Steve Jacobs