Africa's Big Five: Sport-Hunted Trophies

The term "Big Five" refers to the most sought-after animals for trophy hunting in Africa. The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit collected and tabulated data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to find out how often sport-hunted trophies are legally imported into the United States. The current conservation status for each of the Big Five, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, is listed below. Trophy shipment data is as of August 15, 2015.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (data ranges from 8/5/00 to 8/5/15 and only includes U.S. sport-hunted trophy imports from Africa).
Note: NBC Bay Area omitted shipments with a quantity of more than 10 trophies because of the likelihood the data was entered incorrectly into the federal database.
Images courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and Getty.