[
Guardian] [
ungated] Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.
Originally from Lodi, California, Dosio had built an extensive collection of hunting trophies over the years, including animals such as elephants and lions. He was reportedly a familiar name within the Sacramento Safari Club.
Every year, clients of the trophy-hunting industry claim the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals across the world. Legal hunting tours in Africa are popular with some wealthy Americans, including Donald Trump Jr, who was pictured holding a severed elephant's tail more than a decade ago.
During his first presidential term, Donald Trump created a controversial wildlife advisory board to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinoceroses. The board was disbanded in 2020 after lawsuits alleging it was an illegal, biased panel stacked with trophy hunters rather than conservationists, who worked to promote the economic benefits of big game hunting.