Humane Society urges Gov. Bush to reject Safari Club award

Scott Sonner

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 2:28 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - The Humane Society of the United States urged Gov. George W. Bush Wednesday to decline an award from the Safari Club International, a group of trophy hunters the society says promotes the killing of rare species.

Leaders of the club defended the expensive big-game hunts, saying they provide the money necessary overseas to restore wildlife habitat and bolster troubled species' numbers.

Former President George Bush, the Republican Texas governor's father, is the keynote speaker at the club's 28th annual hunters' convention in Reno this week.

He is scheduled to participate in the awards ceremony Saturday night, which is to include an award to Gov. Bush as the "Governor of the Year."

Humane Society Vice President Wayne Pacelle said in a letter to Gov. Bush Wednesday that he may not be aware the Safari Club "promotes competitive killing of rare wildlife throughout the world."

Scott McClellan, a spokesman for Bush's presidential campaign, said the governor had not seen the Humane Society's letter and had no immediate comment.

"He's a strong supporter of conservation and understands they are recognizing him for his conservation efforts," McClellan said from Texas.

The Humane Society, boasting more than 7 million members worldwide, considers the 32,000-member hunting club "to be a particularly destructive and unethical trophy hunting organization," Pacelle said.

"This activity is way outside the mainstream of sport hunting," Pacelle said in a telephone interview Wednesday from Washington.

"This is not a group you want to associate yourself with to get votes in a general election, or even a primary. This is a distinct subculture of hunters," he said.

The Safari Club says in its literature it is "dedicated to wildlife conservation, education and the advocacy of hunter's rights."

"The Humane Society thinks that everyone that hunts is a bad group," said Greg Koehl of Reno, past president of the Safari Club International Northern Nevada Chapter.

On Wednesday, the club sponsored a "sensory safari" for blind children to feel animal furs, hides and tusks. In past years, the club has contributed deer meat and other game to local food banks, Koehl said.

Rudy Rosen, executive director of the Safari Club International based in Tucson, Ariz., said club members contribute about $440 million annually in the form of license fees that go back to state and federal wildlife agencies.

"To support the few number of animals hunted, a very large number of animals are maintained, along with their habitat and the non-game species," said Rosen, former director of state wildlife and fisheries divisions in Oregon and Texas.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and actor Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association, are among others scheduled to address the club's convention this week.

One of the highlights of the annual convention is an auction of big-game trips that can cost in excess of $50,000.

The Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority said in a news release this week that one-third of the club's 32,000 members worldwide have incomes in excess of $100,000.

Pacelle said the club's awards include such names as "Cats of the World," which goes to hunters who kill six of the world's big cats, including lions, leopards and mountains lions. There's also an award called the "Africa Big Five," which includes an elephant, rhino, leopard lion and Cape buffalo, he said.

"By no standard of hunting ethics can these competitive killing sprees be justified," Pacelle said.

The majority of the 322 species that comprise the club's hunting achievement awards are not threatened with extinction, Pacelle said.

But he said there are "a substantial number of species included among the list that are threatened with extinction, including African elephants, rhinos, leopards, Nike crocodiles and argali sheep.

"Your principled rejection of this award would provide assurance to millions of Americans that you are not philosophically allied with an organization whose mission is centered on the needless killing of the world's wildlife for amusement," he said in the letter to Bush.

Rosen rejected the charges.

"They are calling elephants rare?" he said Wednesday. "Hardly. In some areas, elephants have come back in astonishing numbers.

"In fact, it is the prospect of hunting that allows the indigenous peoples to tolerate the destruction the elephants cause," Rosen said.

"Rhinos are rare. But it is the hunting programs and prospects for future hunting programs that has led to the resurrection and restoration of the species."