Local novelist Lydia Millet takes a look at Tucson’s International Wildlife Museum for the New York Times:
On the outskirts of this city stands a fake-medieval castle with an elk statue atop its battlements. In the courtyard is a bronze relief of a man shouldering his rifle — one C. J. McElroy, a Texan who founded both this International Wildlife Museum in 1988 and, before that, in the early 1970s, Safari Club International, the trophy hunters’ group that’s headquartered here.
The wildlife museum contains, like its more pedigreed natural-history cousins in cities like New York and Washington, dioramas composed of the stuffed bodies of animals posed in sculpted woodlands or prairies with painted backdrops. These dioramas — as the scholar Donna Haraway has shown — have roots as colonial-era gardens of Eden in miniature. Some are very beautiful, too, with sublime and tragic qualities that captivate adults and children alike. And the dioramas have more to recommend them than the McElroy Hall, where hundreds of disembodied heads, many from animals shot by the museum’s founder, are lined up in long rows on knotty pine walls. The room is a monument to the scale of these kills. (Mr. McElroy reportedly took more than 100 safaris on six continents; his obituary says he claimed 425 trophies in the safari club’s record book.)
More than the dioramas, it’s this old-school trophy chamber — a victor’s hall of imperial conquest, plunder and braggadocio — that seems to lay bare the museum’s core. Giraffes soar toward the high ceiling while a polar bear and black bear stand on hind legs, paws raised, faces frozen in fearsome roars. In the middle, great cats are penned, one from each famous species in a phantom Ark. But most overwhelming are the heads, protruding from the walls all around. If I weren’t familiar with the bizarre conventions of taxidermy — if I were a child, for example — these gentle, doe-eyed faces on chopped necks would certainly haunt me.
Millet notes that the Safari Club International still encourages the hunting of threatened species around the globe:
Behind this surface of poor spelling, outdated information and missing science lies the power of big money and big politics. Safari Club International is no N.R.A. leviathan; it claims a mere 50,000 members and in 2014 reported revenues of about $24 million, more than half from its annual convention. (The museum draws some 70,000 visitors a year.) But its members have included prominent leaders like Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and the first President Bush, whose son presented himself as down home and authentic, just as this minor cultural outpost in Tucson does.
Trophy hunters are not Everyman. These world-traveling endangered-species shooters are a far cry from the hunters who spend weekends in the American outback near their suburban or rural homes. In the 1970s, Safari Club International asked the federal government to approve its import of 1,125 not-yet-killed trophies of 40 endangered species, including gorillas, orangutans and tigers, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
The club still promotes the “Big Five” African safaris of the colonial great white hunters of yesteryear; even today the richest of the rich can kill the “big five” (leopard, Cape buffalo, elephant, lion and rhino). In Namibia, for instance, you can bag a rhino — but only if you find you have $350,000 burning a hole in your pocket. The Dallas Safari Club recently auctioned a permit to kill a black rhino and as recently as this January attempted to sell a permit to hunt an elephant.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2015.
thanks Lydia, the schools setting up field trips back when my kids were in Tucson schools; made me sick. Safari Club is a far cry from education about our current knowledge and countdowns on expiring single animals, adding up to a horrifying extinction rate. Not just animal hinting, but habitat destruction. Huge issue, need more illumination on issue. Even with so many people worldwide working against this decimation, it is not enough.
I love that place! What a snack bar.
Your article tells me you hug trees. A little more investigation and less bias would be responsible journalism. I relive my encounters with gods beautiful animals every time I see my trophy mounts. Mounted in honor of the animal and a statement of who I am. Don’t criticize or paint another’s life choices. remember, There is a place for all gods animals, right next to the mashed potatoes. The rhino you mentioned, all the proceeds are for the preservation and health of the remaining herds. One to save many.
My understanding is that the African elephant will be extinct in the wild within approximately 20 years. People will always find some convoluted rational for trophy hunting which I believe is a much different beast than the hunter who puts food on his or her table. Trophy hunting is an out dated game for the wealthy that no one wins. I’d rather know that there are elephants alive and thriving in the wild rather than see a stuffed facsimile in a staged context.
I had a neighbor, artist that did some of the murals at the Museum, late at night, all by himself. He said the atmosphere was horrible. One thing, especially creepy was an elephant ear as a map of Africa, with small Dik Dik deer heads to mark cities. The mentality of “Death Museum” contributors that justify the rationalization to hobby kill by saying it good to kill a few so that one can have more to kill later is just as creepy and sick. Supporting this monument to death and greed with child brainwashing trips is like using scouting to train assassins.
I’ve always considered it a monument to impotence.
I am so tired of trophy hunters. Killing an animal does NOT honor it. And if a species is in danger killing one is not a viable answer. Raise money to save them not kill them.
One of the ways the Dead Animal Museum stays in business is that killers of wildlife fund endowments that pay the D.A.M. place to store all the stuffed dead animals that those killers have slaughtered during their lives, so that when they die, their wives won’t have all the taxidermy hauled to the dump.
I cannot understand the need to kill animals, especially when most of them are endangered..to encourage this is criminal in my opinion–the animals have no say in this world where humans are supposedly the superior species. Until we take care of out earth and learn to respect the web of life we are not superior in any way.
I’ve never set foot in that place and never will. It’s a twisted monument to killing for fun and glory. Trophy hunters are the lowest form of humanity and should not be encouraged. They are the perfect embodiment of arrested development.
Lower than jihadists?
Rat T, when you troll comments like this, it makes anything of substance in your other arguments on government issues null and void. Get a hobby, other than antagonizing people with tired rhetoric and cut/paste Left vs Right “arguments”.
What have you ever really done for the community in real life?
when trophy hunting in Africa was stopped most of the money for conservation and protection stopped also. The poachers now have their way. It sounds crazy but the money that came in was saving the wildlife.
BFR – Where are your punctuations? No biggie, I understood what you were saying. Wildlife needs an advocate. Maybe after that evil dentist killed his SECOND male lion, it is time that animals need an international human advocate!
I used to volunteer here, and a lot of the comments are so uneducated. First off, the majority of the animals in this museum are over 100 years old, negating the people saying that people are still killing animals for the sole purpose to put in this museum in this day and age. The majority of dead animals that are now recently coming in and have been in the past 25 years have died of natural causes and they are being sent to the museum by wildlife rehabilitation centers, State agencies, and even locals who have found the animals ALREADY DEAD OF NATURAL CAUSES in their backyard; this is Arizona, people. These animals have died of natural causes and were/are still being sent to the museum. Yes, McElroy did hunt and kill a majority of the animals in that museum today, but I can assure you that NOW in this day and age that the inflow of dead animals to the museum have died of natural causes. Trust me, I’ve been coming to this museum since I was literally 5 years old and I actually educated myself on where the animals were coming from, unlike the majority of the people who’ve commented narrow-minded, tree-humper comments.
That is usually the case with these armchair environmentalists and so called do gooders.
JoJoHolzel, spin the slaughter any way you want. The fact remains that the killers hold their conventions at the Dead Animal Museum. Predator Masters, for example, held their national convention at the Museum. These are the ass holes, like McElroy, who go out and kill as many animals as they can in one day and give each other prizes for the highest number of kills. This type of activity is extremely detrimental to the biological diversity of the deserts around Tucson. The Museum is a blight on Tucson and on Southern Arizona. I would like to verify your allegation about “natural causes”. I do not believe you.
I will never understand or accept the evil pos wild life killers who think they can just destroy every sentient being on this planet. Your time is coming and I hope I am their to witness your demise so I can stuff you and put you in a freaking museum and throw darts in your ugly face!
We teach our kids to be kind, loving beings from birth. We teach by providing a loving pet to grow with our children and encourage them on how to nuture and care for their pet. Then, when our children realize that there are people out there killing beautiful animals that simply are trying to survive in a vicious world, it’s hard for them to comprehend the difference. Hell, it’s hard for adults to comprehend the difference. We Americans criticize other nations for their barbaric killing and eating of dogs, cats, every kind of sea life and on and on but we slaughter animals simply for fun or thrills. It’s a sickness to deliberately want to kill for the sake of killing. Now, there is a calling for those type of killing fools and it’s called WAR. The people that like to kill should be the ones in the military for war. That way they can hunt to their hearts content, but they will also be hunted. Makes it more interesting. I call hunters with high powered rifles and tree stands and dogs and baiting a bunch of gutless weasels. Wish animals could arm themselves. I’d be the first to provide the weapons.