Prof. Alfan Rija, Department of Wildlife Management, CFWT, SUA
In their Letter “Stop elephant hunting in Tanzania borderlands” (19 July 2024, p. 265), J. Poole et al. object to recent killings of elephants by trophy hunters on the grounds that the targeted animals were important to population sustainability and were part of a long-term research study in Kenya. Although we agree that this elephant population is crucial to species conservation, we consider only collared elephants to be under study, not the entire subpopulation or all elephants monitored, and we do not agree that the handful of elephants killed by trophy hunters puts the population at risk.
