WASHINGTON — A combination of public and private pressure prompted President Trump to overturn his administration’s recent move to allow elephants shot for sport in Zimbabwe and Zambia to be imported back to the United States as trophies, according to interviews with several individuals briefed on the decision.

Trump’s announcement Friday that he was putting the decision “on hold” until he could personally review it marked animal welfare activists’ first federal victory since the president took office in January, and came just hours after the White House press secretary had defended the idea of renewing the controversial trophy imports.

The administration faced blistering criticism on both the left and right after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that it would end a 2014 government ban on big-game trophy hunting in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

UPROAR UNEXPECTED?

Several conservative pundits and lawmakers questioned the decision and this criticism didn’t sit well with Trump, who himself has criticized big-game hunting.

A White House official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record, said the president became uncomfortable with the decision as he learned more about it and decided to act.

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“Put big game trophy decision on hold until such time as I review all conservation facts,” Trump wrote Friday night on Twitter. “Under study for years. Will update soon with Secretary Zinke. Thank you!”

Trump’s announcement came hours after press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the trophy import authorization, saying it resulted from a review by “career officials” that began in 2014 under former President Barack Obama.

Career officials at Fish and Wildlife did make the decision to renew the imports, according to individuals briefed on the decision who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. But political appointees at Interior did press for resolution of the issue, which is a top priority for hunting industry allies of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The negative backlash to the import decision, which was first announced by the Safari Club International’s foundation arm during a conference with African wildlife managers in Tanzania last week, appeared to take the White House by surprise. A similar change affecting African lion trophies had gone mostly unnoticed since it took effect last month, and it is not clear whether Trump was aware of that earlier decision.

The shift in policy coincided with a military coup in Zimbabwe – President Robert Mugabe remains under house arrest – making the decision harder for the administration to defend.

Referring to the president’s Friday tweet, the White House official said, “I think that does reflect his discomfort with it.”

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Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, spent part of Friday on Capitol Hill with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, meeting with Republican lawmakers to push for passage of several animal protection bills. In recent months she has met with White House officials as well as Cabinet members to press for action on a number of fronts, including connecting homeless pets with veterans, preventing wild horses and burros from being euthanized, and stricter enforcement of policies related to “puppy mill” operations.

‘MY SONS LOVE HUNTING’

Lara Trump visited the White House on Friday along with husband Eric, but it’s unclear whether she spoke to the president or White House aides about the import decision.

Both of Trump’s sons have engaged in big-game hunting, and photos of them posing in 2012 with the carcasses of species including an elephant and waterbuck have circulated widely on social media. In one image, Donald Trump Jr. is wearing an ammunition belt and holding the severed tail of an elephant in one hand, a knife in the other.

It’s not clear where Trump’s sons stood on the import debate and whether they spoke to their father about the issue. Before he was president, Trump had gone on record opposing the type of hunting his sons enjoy.

“My sons love hunting. I don’t,” Trump wrote on Twitter in 2012. He was replying to the singer Cher, who had disapprovingly posted a photograph of the Trump sons with a trophy kill.


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