Jeers to organizers of the Texas Republican Convention for exploiting an endangered African elephant on June 12.

Elephants or any other wild animals are not political props or entertainment. African elephant Paige is part of the East Texas Elephant Experience, a facility located in the Greater Houston area, which on its website touts itself as “the only place in the United States that offers the opportunity to experience the amazing African elephant up close and personal.”

Humans pay $125 for a ticket, and Paige, Krissy, and Jeanie pay in misery.

Extensive research by elephant ecologists and welfare specialists shows that places like the East Texas Elephant Experience with inadequate space are especially detrimental to elephants. They simply cannot meet the physical needs of elephants. In the wild, elephants are usually on the move up to 20 hours a day. Both their mind and bodies are actively engaged throughout the day searching over vast areas for food, water, companions and mates, or interacting with each other and their environment.

Transporting elephants also causes them a great deal of stress and psychological harm. During transport, the animals often endure extreme temperature and pressure changes, noise, vibrations, and inadequate space.

Sadly, it doesn’t shock us that the Texas Republican Convention exploited the animal it has as its symbol. The Trump Administration continues to put elephants in peril—it has allowed the trade in elephant trophies to soar in 2025. Three hundred elephants were slaughtered so their body parts can be imported into the United States in 2025, according to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity. This compares with 114 elephant parts registered as imported in 2018 under Trump’s first term. 

Any elephant killed and imported by vainglorious U.S. trophy hunters to hang on their walls of shame disgusts us. That’s why in 2021 Friends of Animals filed a rulemaking petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the importation of the sport-hunted “trophies” of threatened and endangered animals. Rest assured, we won’t stop our efforts until trophy hunting is dead.