An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon. Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner from Lodi, California, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the Lope-Okanda rainforest last Friday when he and his guide unexpectedly encountered five female elephants with a calf.
Safari operator Collect Africa confirmed the death of its client, according to the Daily Mail. The professional hunter guiding Dosio sustained serious injuries in the incident. A retired hunter who knew Dosio said he had been hunting since he could hold a rifle and that all his hunts were strictly licensed and registered as conservation culling.
Dosio owned Pacific AgriLands Inc, which manages 12,000 acres of vineyard land in Modesto, California, and provides services to wine producers. Officials from the US embassy in Gabon are coordinating the return of his remains to California.
Gabon's forests are home to approximately 95,000 forest elephants, most of the species' global population, which are considered highly endangered. The trophy-hunting industry claims tens of thousands of wild animals annually, with legal hunting tours popular among some wealthy Americans.
