Context. Whether trophy hunting is beneficial or a threat to the conservation of species is an open and hotly debated question. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is in charge of assessing the need for species protection at the global scale and providing a useful guide for sustainable exploitation and conservation. Consideration of the IUCN status in wildlife management and its consequences on the attractiveness of trophy-hunted species remains to be quantified.

Aims. The present study investigated the link between the IUCN status of the trophy species and its exploitation in 124 taxa. We expected that the number of trophies should be inversely correlated with the IUCN vulnerability status across species.

Methods. Using the database of the Safari Club International, one of the largest hunting associations worldwide, we investigated the effect (1) of the first status attribution and (2) of an upgrade of the IUCN status on the number of trophies recorded by the Safari Club International, by comparing the average number of trophies 5 years before and after a status change.

Key results. First, we found that the status attributed by the IUCN in a given year had no effect on the number of recorded trophies during the following 5 years. Second, upgrading the IUCN status led to an important decrease in the number of recorded trophies for most species (75%), except for the most vulnerable ones (African elephant, Loxodonta africana; banteng, Bos javanicus; lelwel hartebeest, Alcelaphus buselaphus lelwel; European bison, Bison bonasus).

Conclusions. Our results suggest that although a protective IUCN status lowers the exploitation of the moderately threatened species, hunting pressure on the most threatened one increases instead. The findings support the possibility of an anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE), i.e. a disproportionate exploitation of the rarest species.

Implications. The highly profitable exploitation of rare species could have harmful consequences, unless appropriate management actions and protection rules are enforced.