Trophy Hunting Video Prompts UPS Protest: ‘Stop Shipping Body Parts!’
PETA Video Shows American Repeatedly Shooting and Failing to Kill Curious Young Elephant, Whose Body Parts Were Preserved for Shipment to the U.S.
For Immediate Release:
August 5, 2020
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Holding signs proclaiming, “UPS Supports Elephant Killers” and “UPS: Stop Shipping Animal Body Parts,” PETA members will surround United Parcel Service (UPS) World Headquarters in a socially distanced protest to call on the company to stop transporting wildlife trophies, as more than 40 airlines have done since 2015.
When: Thursday, August 6, 12 p.m.
Where: UPS World Headquarters, 55 Glenlake Pkwy. N.E., Atlanta
The action follows PETA’s release of video footage of a Los Angeles–area trophy hunter gunning down a young elephant on land connected to Kruger National Park in South Africa, where no hunting is allowed. The video shows the elephant peacefully wandering out of the bush and Aaron Raby shooting him in the head. The elephant falls to his knees and continues to suffer as Raby—who paid $30,000 for the pleasure of killing him—gets multiple instructions from his guides on aiming better and then, without any sense of urgency, shoots four more times, causing the young animal to rumble in distress. It’s not known how many more shots, if any, were taken or how long it took for the elephant to die. Raby later paid nearly $20,000 to have the elephant’s body parts preserved for shipment to the U.S.
“Bloodthirsty pleasure killers are flying to Africa to gun down animals and line the pockets of safari companies, hunting ranchers, and farms that specifically breed animals to be shot,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on UPS to stop enabling this gruesome industry by transporting animals’ heads, feet, and other body parts.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
