© Evan Vucci, APIn this April 26, 2019, photo NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre attends the National Rifle Association annual convention in Indianapolis.
Wildlife conservationists are outraged after video released by the New Yorker and The Trace Tuesday shows the head of the National Rifle Association and his wife fatally shooting two endangered elephants in Botswana in 2013.
The outlets said they obtained a copy of the video, which was originally filmed for an NRA-sponsored television series but never aired due to public relations concerns.
In the ten-minute video, Wayne LaPierre, Jr., executive vice president of the NRA, can be seen shooting and wounding a savannah elephant his guides tracked for him in Botswana's Okavango Delta. The video shows LaPierre failing to kill the animal with three shots at point-blank range as the animal lies immobile on the ground.
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"You want to do it for him?" one of the guides finally says to another before one man fires the final shot.
Afterward, the guides pat LaPierre on the back, saying "well done," "congratulations" and "That was one heck of an elephant hunt."
The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Savannah elephants were recently moved to endangered status on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Endangered Species, a global authority on the status of species, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
"Savannah elephants were just declared endangered by international experts, and these intelligent beings certainly shouldn't be used as paper targets by an inept marksman," Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
"It's sickening to see LaPierre's brutal, clumsy slaughter of this beautiful creature. No animal should suffer like this. We're in the midst of a poaching epidemic, and rich trophy hunters like the NRA chief are blasting away at elephants while the international community calls for stiffer penalties for poachers - what message does that send?"
© Provided by Tanya Sanerib, Center for Biological DiversityA savannah elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa, in October 2016.
The second half of the video shows guides assisting Susan LaPierre shoot another elephant. As she fires the first shot, the elephant falls to the ground. She fires another into the elephant's stomach before cutring off the elephant's tail and holding it up to the camera.
"Victory," she says, adding, "That's my elephant tail. Way cool."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Sickening': Wildlife conservationists outraged after NRA head Wayne LaPierre shoots endangered elephant in Botswana