I'd say from my limited knowlegde, that in the bigger picture, the relativly little tourist/sport hunting that is done nowadays will have no affect on genetics in african wildlife. Poaching, bushmeat hunting, and "do-it-yourself PAC" done by locals is probably a bigger problem.

I would think that the masses of big ivory that was taken out in the "good old days" had a much larger long term affect since the quantities were so tremendous.

Perhaps someone with more info can tell us what percentage of the elephant population is taken out yearly in a variety of southern african countries? I bet it's a lot less then is taken out of our northern Deer, Moose etc. About 10% of the moose population in Norway is taken out per year. Botswanas 130.000 large ele population is definatly not reduced every year by 13.000! Thus, I would presume that a lot of "good genes" are still wandering around in non hunting areas. It's maybe just that most of the big guys aren't seen by hunters in hunting areas. At least I've seen decent tusks in both Botswana (Okovango), Tanzania (Serengetti and Ngorogoro) and Uganda (Murchinson Falls).

Erik D.