Share to ClassroomAmerican Hunter Killed by Elephants in Gabon
A 75-year-old American millionaire and avid big-game hunter has died after being trampled by a herd of forest elephants in Gabon, central Africa. Ernie Dosio, a Californian vineyard owner from Lodi, was stalking the elusive yellow-backed duiker, a small forest antelope, in the dense Lope-Okanda rainforest last Friday when he and his professional guide unexpectedly encountered five female elephants accompanied by a calf. Startled by the intrusion, the herd charged immediately. The professional hunter was flung aside and seriously injured, losing his rifle, while Dosio— armed only with a shotgun supplied by the safari operator for the duiker hunt— was fatally crushed before help could arrive.
Dosio had paid roughly $40,000(around £30,000) for the licensed expedition, organised by the operator Collect Africa, and had spent decades hunting elephants, lions, leopards and buffalo across the continent. A retired hunter who knew him insisted that all of Dosio's expeditions were strictly licensed and above board, registered as conservation work tied to government culling quotas. Critics, however, contest this framing. Gabon shelters an estimated 95,000 critically endangered forest elephants— the largest remaining population of the species globally, according to recent conservation surveys— and conservationists argue that wealthy trophy hunters threaten fragile populations rather than protect them. International trophy hunting remains a multimillion-dollar industry; the South African market alone was valued at roughly $120million in 2015.
Officials at the United States Embassy in Gabon are coordinating the return of Dosio's remains to California, where he leaves behind a long-term partner, two sons and a substantial agricultural business managing 12,000 acres of vineyards near Modesto. Tributes have come from members of the Sacramento Safari Club and the local Elks lodge, where Dosio had served as Great Elk for thirty years and supported veterans, scholarships and disaster-relief programmes. His death is the second high-profile fatality involving an American big-game hunter in Africa within a year; in 2025, a 52-year-old Texan was gored by a Cape buffalo in South Africa. The incident is likely to renew debate over the ethics, safety and conservation impact of trophy hunting.
