Full Title Name:  For Trinkets, Tonics, And Terrorism: International Wildlife Poaching In The Twenty-First Century

FOR TRINKETS, TONICS, AND TERRORISM: INTERNATIONAL WILDLIFE POACHING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY^a1

Dr. Ranee Khooshie Lal Panjabi^aa1

Copyright (c) 2014 Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, Inc.; Dr. Ranee Khooshie Lal Panjabi REPINTED BY PERMISSION

Table of Contents

*2 I. Introduction

When Mother Nature enabled humans to become the dominant species on this beautiful planet, no one could have foreseen the havoc and chaos that would ensue. Given the stewardship of Earth, humans managed in a few centuries to change the climate, pollute the oceans, denude forest cover, turn rivers into sludge, destroy life in lakes, generate acid rain; in short, befoul the air, land and water to a point now that any thought of reversion to a pristine condition is fraught with hopelessness. In the process of “developing” our planet to suit our material needs, we have shrunk available space for other species who can only survive normally in a natural environment.

The human species, blessed with self-awareness and the ability to invent and innovate, has developed an unfortunate sense of entitlement to this gift of planetary dominance. As artist Dan Piraro once commented: “My least favorite human trait is the arrogant and small-minded belief that we are the only species that matters.”¹

The unfortunate result has been the commodification of all the species left in our charge and their use and abuse at our will and whim. No other species *3 has been spared. Plants, insects, birds and animals have been routinely driven to extinction. Additionally, the growing human population has left little room for other species, particularly large animals to live normally in habitats suitable for their lifestyle. Regrettably, it can be seen that far from being its stewards, we humans have become the worst predators that planet Earth has ever suffered.

What makes this conclusion all the more compelling is the realization that the numerous species are interlinked in a web of biodiversity that enables all life to flourish together or not to survive at all. When we destroy any species, we weaken the web of life for all others, including ourselves. Nature gave us just one planet, suitable for our needs but not adequate for our degree of greed. There is thus far no alternative spaceship but Earth. That reality alone should have generated a careful husbanding of the planet to ensure our own survival and that of other species. Unfortunately this has not happened uniformly and universally.

The predatory use of other species by humans is not a new phenomenon. It dates back farther than the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Romans who killed exotic animals routinely for tradition or as a form of public entertainment.²

However, human beings have also supported other species. The famous English Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham believed that animals are “sentient beings who can suffer and feel pain,” and therefore humans “are obliged not to inflict it on them.”³ The issue of wildlife poaching is a tale of two divergent types of human nature, a dichotomy that focuses on animals and what they mean to us. On the one hand there are the predators who kill and plunder at will and on the other are growing numbers of people worldwide who are trying to stop them. Public awareness is definitely increasing but governments still lack the political will to act resoundingly to deal with this crisis. Therein lies the problem.

Although many of us have realized the imminence and seriousness of this crisis, there is an official inability in many countries to act with urgency to alleviate this situation. Human beings have throughout history demonstrated a regrettable tendency to procrastinate in the face of imminent crises and to articulate promises with words rather than act with deeds to alleviate global problems.

*4 We proudly boast about the fact that ours is a globalized world where we can communicate instantly with the far ends of the planet, find information immediately and make our message heard and read in the most remote of earthly locales. Yet, we have failed quite miserably in acting globally to alleviate the major crises that currently plague our planet. Globalization has not brought international action to remedy either sectarian conflict and the consequent massive refugee crisis, or political terrorism and attendant violence that targets civilians.

Globalization has raised economic expectations around the world but fulfillment of these aspirations for employment, a decent home, clean water, adequate food and education elude millions of our fellow human beings. Although we function as the dominant species on planet Earth, we are failing miserably in fulfilling our role to sustain and protect all life.

Our lack of stewardship also extends to other species. Their fate is drastic, with extinction at human hands an ever-present threat. Justice for animals-all animals-remains an elusive concept in the twenty-first century. Awful as this admission is, the animals that are killed are perhaps more fortunate in that their suffering is brief. Those that are captured for trafficking are routinely and mercilessly tortured, maimed, “trained,” enslaved and worked to satisfy human whims and to provide human entertainment.

Human greed for trinkets, dubious tonics, and exotic food results in the slaughter of thousands of animals, birds and numerous other living species every year. Human greed perceives all other forms of life as useful commodities or resources. The result is the summary execution and enslavement of vast numbers of those whom we should instead be protecting. Never has the interconnected web of life been as endangered as it is at the present time.

“Illegal wildlife trade involves the illicit procurement, transport, and distribution - internationally and domestically - of animals, and animal parts and derivatives.”⁴ This Article will explore and analyze and hopefully provide some suggestions and solutions for the crisis facing elephants and rhinos, two charismatic and important species in the animal kingdom. The elephant and rhinoceros are part of the Big Five that, with reference to Africa, also include lions, leopards and Cape buffalo.⁵ These two iconic and majestic species were selected from many whose fate is equally imperiled *5 because of human greed. The discussion of these two animals can be readily extrapolated to include the hundreds of other species of insects, birds, fish, and animals whose survival is threatened by human activity. Martin Luther King said that the “arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”⁶ Human beings have persecuted and abused other species for centuries. One can only hope that a growing awareness of our terrible deeds will engender more justice for these other species with whom we share this planet. It is up to all of us to bend that arc toward eventual justice for all those who cannot do it for themselves.

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Interestingly, the global community in its United Nations fora has long had a keen awareness of this crisis and has created a plethora of universally-accepted instruments, global resolutions, and articulated international statements about ending the illicit slaughter of elephants and rhinos. The problem lies not in the abundance of words but in the absence of adequate actions to implement those fine commitments.

It is also important to note that many countries of Africa, home to these iconic animals, are suffering from ethnic violence, terrorism, poverty, and crime on a scale not witnessed in the past. Yet ironically, in terms of natural gifts, Africa is one of the richest of all continents. Its animal and bird populations alone make it a major tourist attraction. Africa also has abundant mineral wealth. Unfortunately, all these gifts of nature have generated serious problems. One can only agree that an “abundant endowment of high-value wildlife can be a resource curse that ultimately leaves human societies worse off.”⁷ Iconic animals are not given the space and respect they deserve. Instead, elephants are being slaughtered for the trinkets that can be fashioned from their ivory tusks and rhinos are being ruthlessly shot so that their horns can supply a human market for dubious medical tonics. The vast literature on this subject is largely in agreement about the egregious violations involved in the decimation of these noble animals for such frivolous human consumption. Unfortunately, the articulated horror about these practices does not yet translate into coherent, consistent, and concrete action on a global scale to save these animals.

*6 The picture is not all gloomy. Some nations have devoted economic resources to protecting animals and there have been a few successes with some animal populations growing. However, until animals are perceived not as commodities to which human beings have some form of entitlement but as neighbor species with a right to a safe life, the slaughter will not end.

In fairness to us, the dominant species, it must be stated that the illicit slaughter and trafficking of these animals is legally viewed as criminal activity in many countries of the world. This Article will also briefly explore that criminal aspect, hopefully to understand the motives and methods involved. The crimes are committed by poachers who are driven by a multiplicity of reasons, not least of which is their own poverty that impels them to make a living by killing and stealing the valuable parts of these animals. Elephant expert Joyce Poole pointed out that one dead elephant was worth a typical annual salary for an African poacher.⁸ This is perceived as an “obvious, unproblematic, way to pull themselves from the claws of poverty.”⁹ Because basic economic survival is imperiled, villagers fall prey to criminal networks eager to recruit¹⁰ and exploit them to do the dirty work of killing. However, the criminals are not confined to solitary poachers, desperate to make money for their families. Far more insidious players are involved, namely globalized crime syndicates that have brought their expertise gained from illicit arms and illegal narcotics to the mass killing and animal parts trafficking trade.

It is also important to note that this crime is truly a global venture with modern technology and gadgetry enabling the seller and the buyer to overcome vast distances to cater to a human market that literally transcends continental frontiers. Indeed, globalization has facilitated the creation of illicit trafficking and trading routes.¹¹ So it is a poaching crime and also a smuggling crime and there are numerous facets that make it akin to other notorious forms of criminal action, namely human trafficking¹² and the illicit *7 drug trade. Because the profits from wildlife trafficking are significant, the crimes continue to escalate and animals are dying every day. Our aspirations for environmental betterment in a globalized world have run up against a bunch of criminal miscreants who abuse our neighbor species and destroy them for the most frivolous of reasons, economic greed. This is a fight that we cannot afford to lose. If criminal activity results in the loss of biodiversity that sustains life on this planet, humanity will also eventually be imperiled.

It has to be emphasized that because of the hidden, insidious nature of this crime, illicit gains, black market values and other gauges of measurement are not precise and a variety of statistics exist to contradict each other and confound the researcher. However, the numbers do highlight the essential truth that this is a very lucrative business and a terrible crime based on destruction of hapless animals and fuelled by human greed and an inhuman imperviousness to the damage being done. Clearly, the protective measures put in place by harried governments are inadequate and far more has to be done urgently to save these iconic species from extinction. Sadly, at the present time, “[t]he incentives to kill . . . are threatening to overwhelm the capacity to protect.”¹³

The new millennium has witnessed a significant escalation in wildlife poaching and clearly, global crime demands global solutions. Having elucidated some of the features of the international problem in this Article, some suggestions for solutions are explored to ensure that the reader knows that there is a great deal that can be done to alleviate the plight of animals that are quickly vanishing into extinction. Various authors and non-governmental organizations as well as United Nations divisions have undertaken a great deal of activity to prepare and elucidate plans for national governments to take to protect and care for their animal species. What is lacking is not the actual list of solutions but the financial resources and the will to implement some, if not all of these brilliant ideas. Hopefully this Article will provide a brief blueprint for action so that the many suggestions can be activated and implemented to save as many species as possible as quickly as feasible.

In protecting biodiversity, humans ensure their own survival. Modern science has made us acutely aware of the interconnected nature of human life. We simply cannot continue to act criminally toward our neighbor *8 species disregarding their right to live with us. If they go, we eventually will perish. That realization has to make each of us turn into a veritable Noah and ensure that the animals, birds, fish, insects and plants survive. Their fate lies “in human hands.”¹⁴ U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, then Senator from Massachusetts, commented that “we have a special responsibility to future generations to live out our steward-caretaker responsibilities.”¹⁵ Humans have to stop ignoring and thereby enabling criminal predators and insist that we assume our original role as stewards and protectors of planet Earth. It has to be reiterated that to date we have no other world to which we can flee if this one becomes uninhabitable. Self-interest dictates that we ensure our own survival by acting quickly to avoid the extinction of other species.

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It is important to note at the commencement of this Article that precise numeric information remains elusive in all facets of this subject. First, enumerating the number of animals butchered in remote, barely accessible regions of the vast continent of Africa can be challenging. Counting live animals is equally difficult because of their amply justified fear of humans who have caused them so much suffering. Plans to put computerized collars on large animals have had some success but such programs require consistency and region-wide coverage to provide precise data. The secretive activities of wildlife poaching usually involve cash transactions that leave little or no digital trail to follow. This poses problems for gaining accurate information. Every aspect of this subject is clandestine, concealed, elusive and therefore hard to investigate. This explains why statistics are sometimes based on guesstimates and are frequently contradictory, but are nevertheless useful to provide some benchmarks to increase our understanding of the likely scale of the problem. One conclusion is, however, crystal clear: Wildlife poaching is one of the most lucrative and one of the least risky criminal ventures today and that applies to both the brutal killing of animals and to the smuggling of their horns and tusks across the world.

*9 It has aptly been suggested that the tragedy of wildlife crime is “actually about much more than wildlife.”¹⁶ Human beings who protect wildlife are dying as well. Sean Willmore, President of the International Ranger Federation estimated that at least 1,000 and possibly as many as 5,000 rangers have been killed in thirty-five countries across the span of a decade.¹⁷ The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned in March, 2014 that poaching had escalated across Africa in recent years.¹⁸ Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of UNODC explained that “rhino populations have . . . been decimated and thousands of elephants are being senselessly slaughtered each year.”¹⁹ In 2007 only thirteen rhinos were poached in South Africa, but by 2011 the number rose to 448.²⁰ The figure jumped to 668 in 2012 and in 2013, an estimated 1,004.²¹ International monitoring of elephant slaughter estimates state that 25,000 African elephants were poached in 2011.²² Donald Kaberuka and Jim Leape of Al Jazeera estimated that about 30,000 elephants were killed in 2012.²³ Mark Jones, head of Humane Society International commented that “[w]e are in the midst of a rhino poaching crisis.”²⁴ The same words apply to the slaughter of elephants.

The economic scale of this crime is very conservatively estimated at $2.5 million²⁵ as the illicit gains are spread across poachers and their enablers in Africa, to smugglers and their buyers in East and South-east Asia.²⁶

*10 TRAFFIC International, which is tasked with monitoring wildlife traffic for the UN, estimated in the early 1990s that wildlife trafficking was the third most profitable illicit trade after drugs and arms.²⁷ Because of the huge profits and the low risks, poaching and trafficking have, in the new millennium, attracted numbers of criminal syndicates, leading to massive escalation of these illicit activities. Rhinos and elephants have fallen victim to the illegal commercialization of their horns and tusks.

Biologist Lee M. Talbot commented very aptly that “the rhino's greatest misfortune is that he carries a fortune on his nose.”²⁸Between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s the value of rhino horn rose from $35 per kg to $9,000 per kg.²⁹ When ground into powder and sold medically, the price rose to between $20,000 and $30,000 per kilo, very much more than the price of gold.³⁰ Rhino horn is currently (as of 2014) said to be worth more than either gold or platinum in the world's black markets,³¹ and “an individual horn can fetch up to 150,000 dollars.”³² The price of rhino horn has even exceeded the price of illicit drugs like cocaine. Powdered rhino horn sold for as much as $55,000 per kilogram in Asia in 2012.³³ By 2014, the price was estimated to be $25,000 a pound.³⁴Again, because so much of the sale is via the black market, many of the figures are perforce estimates. Although the variety of statistics can be confounding, the ensuing conclusions are crystal clear and point in one direction: significant profits and very low risk to those seeking them.

*11 Elephants are also regrettably at risk because of their tusks, which command very significant prices. Again, estimates of prices vary widely. In 1976, ivory was worth almost $6 per kilo; by 2014, in retail, according to one source, the price had risen to over $3,000 per kilo.³⁵

The price of the tusk varies depending on quality, origin of the elephant and size, whether it is a whole tusk or smaller pieces that are easier to smuggle. Some carvers prefer certain types of ivory. There are numerous factors involved including the amounts utilized in bribery, the risks taken by poachers and the difficulty of the smuggling operation. There is always an implicit assurance of adequate payment by the retail purchaser to compensate every miscreant along the notorious chain that leads from Africa to Asia.

A sample of prices provides interesting clues with respect to the avid demand that exists. A kilo of ivory is valued in Asia at U.S. $850,³⁶ or higher.³⁷ Some estimates range between $1,000 and $1,500 in the Asian market.³⁸ By another estimate, the price of ivory in China (the largest market) rose from $157 a kilo in 2008 to a staggering $7,000 a kilo in 2011.³⁹ Statistics also vary quite widely because of the clandestine nature of the market. Additionally, the price also depends on what the buyer is willing to pay. The United Nations conservatively estimated profits from the ivory trade at approximately $100 million.⁴⁰ Other estimates are far higher. By one estimate, in some African countries, one adult elephant's tusks are worth more than ten times the annual average income.⁴¹

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The criminals involved in sourcing rhino horn and elephant tusks have even targeted Europe's museums, stealing rhino heads and rhino horns.⁴² According to EUROPOL, seventy-two rhino horns were stolen in 2011 from *12 museums in fifteen European countries.⁴³ The thefts are attributed to an organized criminal gang, allegedly active in Europe, Asia and North and South America.⁴⁴ Some museums have resorted to putting resin replicas of rhino horn in their display cases.⁴⁵ A particularly brazen thief used a chainsaw to hack off the tusk of an elephant displayed in the Paris Natural History Museum. The elephant had belonged to French King Louis XIV.⁴⁶ Taxidermist shops have also been attacked.⁴⁷ Even auction houses and private collections have not been exempt from this frenzy of thievery which has extended to Africa and the United States of America.⁴⁸

The frenzied hunt for ivory tusks and rhino horn is based on an equally frenetic demand for these products, primarily in China and Vietnam, where ivory has for centuries been carved into jewelry and decor, and horn is ground up and used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), supposedly to cure any number of ailments. This is the basis of the present transnational crisis where demand from Asia is decimating wildlife in Africa. It is only when demand ceases in Asia that the killing will stop in Africa. Globalization has facilitated this illegal trade. Only transglobal solutions can curb it before these wonderful animals become completely extinct.

It is indeed ironic that the wildlife poaching crisis in Africa is a direct consequence of economic prosperity in East and Southeast Asia. As the numbers of Asians ascending to the middle class have grown, their demand for exotic and expensive commodities has increased. The World Bank found direct linkages, suggesting that the “trade in wild plants and animals all over East and Southeast Asia appears to have been exacerbated by the regions' rising living standards and rapidly growing population.”⁴⁹ This East and Southeast Asian demand has now made ivory and rhino horn “the most valuable wildlife products in the world.”⁵⁰ At an estimated $19 billion a *13 year, wildlife trafficking has become the fourth most lucrative illegal activity after drugs, counterfeiting, and human trafficking.⁵¹

UNODC estimates for 2011 valued ivory smuggled from East Africa to Asia at over $31 million.⁵² Illegal trafficking of wildlife in just China was estimated to be worth a mind-numbing $10 billion.⁵³ However varied the statistics, the tragic conclusions are clearly expressed by Daniel Stiles: “[i] llicit commercial trade in elephant ivory is increasing globally and threatens the conservation status of many elephant populations in Africa and Asia.”⁵⁴

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Tragic as is the death of so much wildlife, the criminal activity reaches far beyond the illicit profit based on buying and selling tusks and horns. Money-laundering⁵⁵ enables the proceeds of crime to enter surreptitiously into legitimate economic activity and thereby corrodes economies. Alternatively, these funds can be used to promote even more criminal activity. Bribery and corruption are used to enable poaching on a vast scale.⁵⁶ It has been repeatedly alleged that some terrorist organizations are funding their activities by engaging in this nefarious trade.⁵⁷ It is crucial to point out, as does the World Bank, that “[w]ildlife is not traded in isolation. It is often part of a larger network of organized crime that involves drugs, guns, and people-smuggling.”⁵⁸ This is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional crime and one that is alluring to opportunistic criminals because the chances of being caught and jailed are minimal in most jurisdictions.

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The importance of effectively curbing wildlife poaching has generated considerable activity on the international level. Most notable was the acceptance by several countries in 1973 at Washington D.C. of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).⁵⁹ CITES entered into force on July 1, 1975,⁶⁰ and, at time of writing, has 180 member states termed Parties to the Convention.⁶¹

The very worthwhile aim of CITES is “to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”⁶² Over 35,000 species are specifically placed under various categories of protection,⁶³ termed Appendices. Appendix I includes species “threatened with extinction which are or may be affected by trade.” Appendix II is reserved for species “not necessarily now threatened with extinction” but which “may become so if their trade is not regulated.”⁶⁴ Appendix III species may be traded internationally using a system of permits.⁶⁵

With respect to elephants, the Asian elephant was listed on Appendix I in 1975, while the African elephant was placed on Appendix III in 1976, moved to Appendix II in 1977 and then Appendix I in 1989, the year that international trade in ivory was banned.⁶⁶

Parties to CITES are committed to adopting its principles in their national legal systems and to penalizing illicit trade in wildlife.⁶⁷ In 1989 while CITES banned international trade in ivory, it allowed countries with growing elephant herds to apply for permission to sell ivory from conservation culls.⁶⁸ That ivory ban has been generally considered effective because there was an *15 overall increase in the African elephant population,⁶⁹ and the ban also “resulted in a near-disappearance of the illegal elephant ivory market.”⁷⁰However, as the ban was always contentious, particularly with respect to a few African states that wished to continue selling ivory,⁷¹CITES allowed one-time ivory sales of stockpiles in 1999 and again in 2007-2008.⁷² The unfortunate victims of these international compromise deals were the elephants of Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe who were downlisted with restrictions to Appendix II in 1997 to enable a sale of stockpiled ivory to Japan in 1999.⁷³ In 2000, South African elephants were downlisted with restrictions to Appendix II, enabling a second one-time sale of ivory that occurred in 2008, when 102 metric tons went from these four African countries to Japan and China.⁷⁴

The sellers who had agitated at CITES for this concession were a few African States, the eager buyers were East Asian countries.⁷⁵Although this conclusion is controversial, it does appear that the sales opened the door to increased poaching and more elephants died. The existence of a legal trade enabled the proceeds of illicit poaching to merge into permissible, legally-acquired ivory and this complicated the situation. Elephants continued to be murdered brutally while the CITES delegates argued endlessly.

Regrettably, rhinos have fared no better at the hands of CITES. Although it banned trade in rhino horn in 1977,⁷⁶ members have been debating a permissible trade of sorts to meet the massive demand for rhino horn. For Asia, CITES has listed the Sumatran, Javan and Indian Rhino appropriately in Appendix I. However, the listings for Africa are more convoluted with the Black Rhino (the western black rhino became extinct in 2011⁷⁷) in Appendix I and the White Rhino in Appendix I except for those living in South Africa and Swaziland which are in Appendix II.⁷⁸ The South African downlisting *16 occurred in 1994 and that of Swaziland in 2004.⁷⁹ The problem is that some States like South Africa advocate a legal trade with the rather interesting argument that this will help to save the rhino.⁸⁰

The sixteenth meeting of the CITES Conference of the Parties took place in Bangkok, Thailand between March 3rd-14th, 2013. A cartoon in the Bangkok Post newspaper commemorated the meeting by showing a few iconic animals perched precariously in an ark named CITES sailing through rough waters!⁸¹ Participants at this meeting tasked the Secretariat to cooperate with UNODC to

further explore the most appropriate way to draw concerns with regard to the levels of illegal killing of elephants in Africa and the related illegal trade in elephant ivory, as well as the national security implications for certain countries in Africa of this illegal killing and trade, to the attention of the United Nations structures.⁸²

If one of the most important tasks of the United Nations and various international organizations is to raise and heighten global awareness of serious crises, such measures are of critical importance. In a world divided up and controlled by national sovereign governments, there are limits to what any international agency can achieve. Nevertheless, any researcher of the United Nations and its sister international agencies cannot but get extremely frustrated by the endless debating and frequent bickering that continues while global crises causing serious havoc escalate.

According to author Ronald Orenstein, “CITES has its fervent supporters and equally fervent naysayers.”⁸³ Prominent among the latter is Michele Pickover, a leading animal activist in South Africa, who believes that CITES is a “weak treaty, promoting trade rather than preventing it.”⁸⁴ Pickover *17 expressed concern over the silence of CITES on the fundamental ethical issue “of whether it is even appropriate to engage in international trade”; and its measures to regulate rather than prohibit such trade. CITES has also been referred to as the “animal dealer's charter.”⁸⁵

Unfortunately, while CITES has the authority to impose trade bans,⁸⁶ it has not proven adequate to controlling the numbers of criminals who violate its provisions with impunity and freely flout its prohibitions against the massacre of wildlife. “CITES can be effective only to the extent that Parties enact (and enforce) specific provisions” through national legislation,⁸⁷ and ensure that there is adequate law enforcement and a capable judicial system to act as effective deterrence to the poachers and their enablers.

The criminal aspects of this issue are to some extent also covered by other international instruments, namely the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Convention) and the United Nations Convention against Corruption. These conventions “enable the criminalization, investigation and prosecution of those aspects of wildlife . . . offences that are linked to organized crime or corruption.”⁸⁸

The Palermo Convention applies to a number of activities associated with the instant issue, including money-laundering and corruption, as well as “ ‘serious crime’ with a transnational organized criminal aspect.”⁸⁹ The Convention against Corruption is “the first global legally binding instrument against corruption.”⁹⁰ This legal instrument also includes preventive measures to ensure transparency and accountability in the multiplicity of agencies involved in wildlife protection, such as law enforcement, customs, and the judiciary.⁹¹ Implementation lags far behind however, and much of the criminal activity in the instant issue is facilitated by massive corruption at various levels both in the African states of origin and shipment and in the receiving Asian countries. Eradicating corruption is going to be a very significant challenge.

*18 Also important for the principles it elucidates is the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992.⁹² Unfortunately, while international law exists to protect animals, its tenets are violated and ignored and the absence of legal consequences acts to facilitate the illicit activities that now span the globe.

World-famous Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey complained about the “outrageous impunity” with which poaching ringleaders were operating in his country.⁹³ Appealing to the Kenyan President to take action, Leakey articulated the core of the problem: the fact that poachers operate with impunity because they have little fear of the laws and even kill their prey in guarded national parks and conservation areas.⁹⁴ An absence of adequate enforcement of the law along with various weaknesses in front line and other capacities⁹⁵ make protection of animals extremely difficult, given the ample resources for destruction available to the poachers. Leakey emphasized the risk to national heritage, stating that “you cannot regrow a wildlife species that disappears.”⁹⁶ The finality of the tragedy was also succinctly expressed by Richard Ellis in his interesting book Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn when he said that “extinction is extinction, no matter what the rationale or explanation.”⁹⁷

Traditionally, Africans have been careful stewards of the land and its biodiversity for the thousands of years that they have inhabited that beautiful continent; co-existing with other species with respect for nature in its myriad of forms.⁹⁸ The ancient Africans only hunted when necessary because animals “had an intrinsic spiritual value,” and they were “regarded as a gift from the gods.”⁹⁹Protection of wildlife is part of traditional African culture and essential to the preservation of the way of life of its people. Ending wildlife poaching brings Africa back to its roots in a compelling way that can only result in economic, political, and social benefits.

*19 II. Elephants

The predatory nature of some human beings and their complete indifference to the infliction of suffering can be gauged by a process called “the crush,” routinely inflicted on wild elephants, including baby elephants, captured in some Asian countries for use in heavy lifting. Although many Asian nations have laws against the enslavement of elephants, photojournalist Brent Lewin documented a crush where a baby elephant was tied between two trees and beaten for days, with food and water withheld, as a means of training and enforcing control. Lewin witnessed the terrified baby elephant crying till the life in her eyes disappeared.¹⁰⁰

Elephants are not just slaughtered for their ivory, they are also captured and sold live for human entertainment to zoos and circuses. They have also been used for centuries, mainly in Asia, in logging and other difficult tasks. In an article of limited word length, such usage can only be mentioned, but it has to be noted, as yet one more example of the cruel commodification by humans of other species.

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Iconic animals by any definition, and said to be millions of years old,¹⁰¹ elephants once roamed over vast areas of the earth, but are now threatened by poaching and loss of habitat to human development. John F. Kerry, then a Senator from Massachusetts, eloquently spoke of elephants as a “living connection to prehistoric times and a reminder of our responsibility to the future by preserving the past.”¹⁰²

At the beginning of the twentieth century about five million elephants “roamed the African continent.”¹⁰³ The African herds dwindled to approximately 1.3 million by 1979 and a mere 600,000 in 1990.¹⁰⁴ This decimation was driven mainly by demand for ivory from Japan.¹⁰⁵

Statistics are varied, as we have seen, mainly because of the challenges in conducting an accurate count and because, in some cases, active protection has increased the size of specific elephant communities. The global elephant *20 population was said in 2013 to number about 500,000.¹⁰⁶ TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, reported an estimate of between 550,000 and 680,000 elephants in Africa.¹⁰⁷ By 2013, their numbers were estimated to have fallen to between 420,000 and 650,000, over half of African elephants being located in Botswana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.¹⁰⁸ The remainder roam across 35-38 range States, and admittedly it is “very difficult to track [elephant population] trends at the continental level, let alone at the national level.”¹⁰⁹

International agencies attributed the steep decline to a “pronounced upward trend in both the poaching of African elephants and the illicit trade in ivory,” that was particularly evident from 2007.¹¹⁰ Although exact statistics remain elusive and are varied, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that the estimated 22,000 elephants killed in 2012, yielded a retail value worth $552 million.¹¹¹

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Habitat loss for elephants is also a critical factor that can only be briefly alluded to, given the length constraints in this Article. Because of their size and the amount they eat as well as their predilection for roaming over vast tracts of land, elephants are threatened both in Asia and in Africa by human development, rapid urbanization, and expansion of agriculture.¹¹² When humans and elephants compete for dwindling water resources, the conflict inevitably results in defeat for the animals. As Dan Wylie aptly commented: “[t]here are simply fewer and fewer places for elephants to go.”¹¹³

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Ecologists globally consider elephants to be a “keystone species,” because of their contribution to the ecosystem.¹¹⁴ Elephants have also been called “a lynchpin to Africa's ecosystem and losing them would be a detriment to other species.”¹¹⁵ There is little doubt that these majestic animals make a significant contribution to the environment. “Elephants as mega-herbivores are the churners of the forest.”¹¹⁶ They are nature's ultimate “landscape architects,”¹¹⁷ because, while they feed elephants prune vegetation, enabling other species to find food more readily. Smaller species can find both food and habitat from the ripping and tearing work performed by elephants on trees and bushes.¹¹⁸

Elephants also perform significant environmental duties in forest and savanna ecosystems, creating clearings and gaps in the canopy to enable tree regeneration, reducing bush cover to enable smaller animals to graze and disseminating many plant species by passing seeds through their digestive systems as they walk miles each day.¹¹⁹ They literally grow forests as they roam. According to John R. Platt of Scientific American: “As go the elephants, so go the trees.”¹²⁰ Elephant activity in seed distribution, generates food for numerous other species, including humans.¹²¹

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International concern over the plight of elephants was expressed early in the history of CITES. At the first meeting of the Conference of Parties to CITES, held in 1976, the Asian elephant species was placed in Appendix I and the African elephant in Appendix II of the International Convention. By 1989, (the year of the trade ban in ivory) the African elephant was *22 transferred to Appendix I status.¹²² In 1997, CITES Parties mandated the future development of two important systems, MIKE to Monitor the Illegal Killing of Elephants and ETIS, the Elephant Trade Information System.¹²³ MIKE and ETIS are essentially “monitoring tools used by CITES in the complex business of assessing policies for trade in elephant products.”¹²⁴ Daniel Stiles explained the significance of both systems: “MIKE provides a site-based system in elephant range states for tracking the illegal killing of elephants, while ETIS tracks illegal trade in elephant through analysis of elephant product seizure records.”¹²⁵

MIKE monitors close to half the total African elephant population and reported that 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011.¹²⁶The following year, MIKE reported that 15,000 elephants were killed at its forty-two monitored sites.¹²⁷ ETIS has also provided important data confirming that by 2011 the illicit ivory trade was three times greater than in 1998.¹²⁸

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The human attitude to elephants is riddled with contradictions. In 2013, the number of wild elephants left in India was estimated at only 24,000.¹²⁹ Traditionally, Indian mythology deemed the elephant one of the jewels of the world, requiring protection and preservation.¹³⁰ Some Hindus worship the god Ganesh, who has the head of an elephant and the body of a human.¹³¹ “One of the most venerated gods of the Hindu pantheon,”¹³² Ganesh is revered for wisdom, for removing obstacles and for bringing good fortune.¹³³ Elephant images fill Indian art and religious iconography.¹³⁴ Unfortunately, *23 reverence for the elephant god has not extended to the entire species. In India and other Asian countries, wild elephants were routinely enslaved and put to work lifting heavy logs and carrying enormous loads, work which may fulfill human requirements, but is not natural for this species. To provide just one example of such extensive enslavement, in Thailand during the late nineteenth century, thousands of elephants were used in the logging industry.¹³⁵

Historically, elephants preceded the tank and were used in numerous countries as massive war vehicles to terrify opposing armies. Seventeenth century King Narai of Thailand was said to have 20,000 captive elephants used for warfare and for transport.¹³⁶

Elephants by their sheer size and majesty also catered to a human need to show-off and impress. In 1876, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), rode in a gilded howdah on an elephant during his royal visit to India,¹³⁷ which was then Great Britain's wealthiest colony and its jewel in the crown. The elephant was perceived as a fitting symbol of Britain's imperial power.

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Elephants continue to fascinate us because of the normally gentle natures they display, except when severely provoked. Their self-awareness and memory are legendary features, now part of universal lore. Scientists who have watched them have given us amazing insights into the elephant world. Numerous studies have now shown that elephants live in complex societies, dominated by a protective matriarch whose female relatives together raise the calves and teach them valuable skills.¹³⁸ These include the ability to find the best water holes and other sources of tasty food. Family ties are important and elephants communicate in signals that most humans are not equipped to decipher.¹³⁹ They apparently communicate vocally and seismically via the ground.¹⁴⁰ They are able to use branches to clean their ears, and when collared with bells, can muffle the sound with mud so that *24 they can stealthily raid fruit orchards!¹⁴¹ Elephants have a special fondness for bananas and sugar cane, and have consequently come into serious conflict with farmers in Sri Lanka.¹⁴² Similarly, elephants feasting on a favorite delicacy, fruit, and vegetable crops in Kenya provoke the ire of farmers. A Kenyan farmer, lamenting the loss of his entire crop, said “I just don't see the benefit in having these animals that come and destroy everything.”¹⁴³ Farmers in India even “resort to poison, gunfire or dangling live wires from overhead electricity cables to try to deter elephantine raiders from their rice paddies.”¹⁴⁴

There are very interesting indications of elephants biologically adapting to ensure survival from human predators. Only male elephants in the Asian species have tusks and curiously, there is now a very high rate of tusklessness in Asian male elephants.¹⁴⁵

During the 2014 World Cup, the world was entertained by a video showing orphan elephants enjoying a game of soccer at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Nursery in Nairobi, Kenya.¹⁴⁶ Poaching has left many orphaned baby elephants in Africa.

Elephants, who do weep,¹⁴⁷ have complex ways of grieving; an emotion they experience far more frequently than they ought to, thanks to the predatory poachers. Elephant expert and zoologist, Joyce Poole laments the terrible suffering of animals who are being killed and injured, some to live on in terrible pain for months after the poachers have hacked off their tusks. Poole commented: “For every adult female who is killed, an orphan is left to die. Families are being destroyed.”¹⁴⁸

The social nature of elephants extends to public displays of mourning and there can be no doubt that these animals feel loss just as we humans do. In *25 India, this communal form of grief for a dead calf resulted in a herd of elephants blocking a road for twelve hours as they tried in vain to drag the remains into the forest. An earth-mover was eventually brought in to help with the task of moving the calf's body and the road was finally cleared for three hundred stranded vehicles.¹⁴⁹ Human and animal cooperation succeeded on this occasion. In 2013, when a train hit and killed an elephant in India, fifteen elephants, mourning the loss, damaged ten houses and a school and elephants have been known to stop trains as they keep vigil on the site of such accidents.¹⁵⁰

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The greatest threat to elephants comes from poachers who have been committing what author G.A. Bradshaw terms “wildlife genocide.”¹⁵¹ Their aim is to kill or incapacitate the elephants quickly, hack off their tusks and disappear before they are caught. Ashok Kumar and Vivek Menon aptly pointed out that “ivory comes from highly intelligent, social animals that are affected by death and are bound by close familial ties.”¹⁵²

At the commencement of the twenty-first century, four out of every ten African elephants that died, were victims of poaching. By 2013, that figure had risen to eight out of every ten.¹⁵³ Statistics vary widely but by one estimate, approximately 30,000 elephants are killed annually¹⁵⁴ to feed the frenzied desire for the trinkets fashioned from their tusks. The Wildlife Conservation Society estimated that ninety-six elephants were killed every day.¹⁵⁵ While statistics vary, the conclusion is definitive, namely that elephants are dying for the creation of tawdry trinkets and carvings.

The scale of this killing is not new but the growing awareness against its continuation is slowly taking hold across the world. Between 1979 and *26 1989, African elephants were killed at the rate of 75,000 annually in an ivory trade worth around $1 billion per year.¹⁵⁶The ivory ban was quite successful, but, in this century, the poaching escalated considerably from about 2006 onwards,¹⁵⁷ and, currently, every year there appear to be more and more cases of poaching, particularly in Africa.

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Even though they are icons and are endangered, the “world's largest terrestrial animals,”¹⁵⁸ African elephants, have been targeted to feed a significant traditional demand, emanating primarily from China¹⁵⁹ and other East and Southeast Asian countries for their ivory tusks. According to Oscar Holland and Suia Chen of The Independent, China in 2014 accounted for 70% of the global demand for ivory.¹⁶⁰ Kelvin Chan of the Associated Press explained that demand “is fueled by China's booming economy, which has created a vast middle class with the ability to buy ivory carvings prized as status symbols.”¹⁶¹ Agence France Presse reported that Chinese military officials regard ivory as a favorite gift.¹⁶²

Arguing for the easing of restrictions on the ivory trade, and supportive of his nation's demand for ivory, a Chinese wildlife trade official wrote in 2012 to CITES, arguing that as annual Asian demand required about 220 tons of raw ivory, his country should be allowed more purchases of confiscated tusks.¹⁶³ Two hundred twenty tons of raw ivory annually would mean the destruction of 20,000 elephants every year.¹⁶⁴

Ironically, the fact that poachers are driving elephants to extinction acts as an inducement to some buyers who envisage huge price increases once *27 extinction occurs and therefore see ivory as a good investment. This was revealed in a 2013 court action in New Zealand involving a prolific online ivory trader named Jiezhen Jiang who pleaded guilty.¹⁶⁵

In 2013, the United Nations reported that a doubling of poaching of elephants in a decade had endangered African elephants in Central, Western, Southern and Eastern Africa.¹⁶⁶ That same year, Mike Chase, founder of Elephants Without Borders, commented that “we are currently losing an elephant every minute in Africa.” With respect to South Africa, it is interesting to note that the nation's Environment Minister, Edna Molewa, denied in 2013 that any elephants had been poached in her country since 2008.¹⁶⁷ Her remarks were in sharp contrast to those of world-famous conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, who deemed the poaching in South Africa as unsustainable.¹⁶⁸ Regardless of the controversy over facts and numbers in some origin states, there can be no denying the reality that this decimation has reached frightening levels in this second decade¹⁶⁹ of the new century, with TRAFFIC and Save the Elephants estimating that between 25,000 and 35,000 elephants are killed annually.¹⁷⁰

Khazali Ahmad, Director-General of the Malaysian Customs Department, emphasized the scale of this criminal activity, explaining that his department had seized approximately fifty tons of elephant tusk between June 2011 and March 2013. This Malaysian seizure of illicit trade represented the killing in Africa of 1,500 elephants. According to Ahmad, “[a]ll the ivory comes from Africa and is headed towards China.”¹⁷¹ More to the point, if the seized ivory is just a portion of the smuggled merchandise, “[h]ow much more African ivory is slipping through?”¹⁷² A 2013 international report concluded *28 that “Malaysia is the paramount transit country”¹⁷³for shipments eventually bound for China.

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The Chinese love for ivory goes back centuries and amounts to near obsession amongst some collectors. Ivory has frequently been termed “white gold,”¹⁷⁴ with Asian ivory considered better for carving than the African variety.¹⁷⁵ Conversely, in some regions, African ivory was considered finer.¹⁷⁶ Regardless, all ivory ultimately consists of dentine, enamel, cementum, and pulp cavity and can “be carved into an almost infinite variety of shapes and objects.”¹⁷⁷

India has for centuries been world-renowned for the skill of its handicraft artists, and ivory carvers were no exception. Royal patronage by Indian rulers and princes provided high status to ivory carvers whose professional skills were prized as they created miniature paintings on ivory bases, inlaid boxes and decor with ivory, carved statues of Indian gods and goddesses, and produced intricately-designed bangles and other jewelry.¹⁷⁸

The affinity for ivory is even stronger in China. “Love for ivory is in our blood,” commented Wu Shaohua, President of the Shanghai Collectors Association.¹⁷⁹ In 2013, by one very conservative estimate, Chinese demand accounted for about 40% of the world's trade in elephant tusks.¹⁸⁰ The Chinese justified their fondness for ivory by using it in a number of ways. For instance, historically, ivory chopsticks were said to change color when in contact with poisons and TCM practitioners used powdered ivory to purge body toxins and, cosmetically, to create a luminous complexion.¹⁸¹

It is important to emphasize that ivory obsession was not confined to Asia and any visit to a European museum proves that point. In Europe, ivory was historically used for religious icons, particularly those dedicated to the Virgin Mary.¹⁸² Additionally, “[c]rucifixes, diptychs and triptychs depicting *29 biblical scenes, reliquaries, crosiers, rosary beads and other religious objects and statues abounded.”¹⁸³

Parts of Africa have traded ivory internationally for centuries. To provide only one example, the Portuguese purchased ivory from Mozambique between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries for resale in the lucrative markets of Asia. Asian traders provided the Portuguese with silks and spices which were so coveted in Europe.¹⁸⁴ By one estimate, this ivory trade from Mozambique amounted to 440 tons annually.¹⁸⁵ Europeans also learned to turn ivory into a “wealth of secular objects,” including spindles, cobblers' measures, hourglasses, plaques, belt-buckles, casket lids, dagger handles, mirror cases, covers for writing tablets, dice boxes, harp frames, spoons, shoes, ice skates and powder flasks.¹⁸⁶ Between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, British annual demand of 500 tons of ivory entailed the slaughter of approximately 65,000 elephants every year.¹⁸⁷

Every part of the world including, North America, found its own uses for this much-coveted substance and ivory has been used to carve chopsticks, bookmarks, figurines and jewelry as well as billiard balls and piano keys.¹⁸⁸ The scale of elephant slaughter can be gauged by just one estimate based on the fact that a piano keyboard required a pound and a half of ivory and that American production of pianos rose from 9,000 in 1852 to 350,000 in 1910.¹⁸⁹

The American fascination with ivory continued into the new millennium. Between 1995 and 2002, more than 5,400 shipments of worked ivory (over 32,500 items) were imported into the United States, mainly sourced from the United Kingdom.¹⁹⁰ In the same time frame, the United States also imported approximately 2,656 tusks, raw ivory from Africa, representing alleged elephant hunting trophies.¹⁹¹

*30 To its credit, the United States has also pioneered methodologies to curb the illegal trade in wildlife products. There has been collaboration between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other governmental agencies to prosecute importers of illegal ivory.¹⁹²In July 2012, two New York jewelers pleaded guilty to selling illegal ivory, a case that demonstrated, in the words of District Attorney Cyrus Vance, that “[p]oachers should not have a market in Manhattan.”¹⁹³

Additionally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has provided crucial funding to conserve elephant habitat in Africa.¹⁹⁴ In July 2013, President Barack Obama issued an executive order against the illegal trafficking of elephant tusks, rhino horns and other products and established a national presidential task force to increase anti-poaching efforts.¹⁹⁵ The United States, along with other countries, has also very publicly destroyed its stocks of seized ivory tusks. The United States pulverized six tons of contraband ivory in 2013,¹⁹⁶ mainly to demonstrate its commitment to ending the slaughter of elephants. The practice of destroying stocks of confiscated ivory was not initiated by the United States. In 1989 and 1991, Kenya destroyed seized ivory and, more recently, Gabon burned a large stock in 2012.¹⁹⁷ The Philippine Government destroyed five tons of confiscated ivory in 2013.¹⁹⁸ It is interesting to note that China, long the target of public criticism for its role in the ivory trade, sought to demonstrate its commitment to anti-poaching and publicly destroyed over six tons of ivory in Guandong in 2014.¹⁹⁹

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Demand for ivory during the 1980s in Japan resulted in an unusual situation. Japan joined CITES in 1980.²⁰⁰ Japanese ivory merchants were funding CITES-a bizarre conflict of interest-in order to ensure the continued production of an iconic musical instrument. The “baachi, an enormous plectron for the shamison lute, carved from a single tusk and producing an allegedly unique, culturally sacrosanct sound,”²⁰¹ inspired this rather unusual alliance between ivory vendors and CITES. The Japanese interest in ivory has continued into this second decade of the twenty-first century. Elga Reyes reported in August 2013 that a Japanese mobile communications company ignored international environmental calls to remove advertisements of elephant ivory as well as whale and dolphin products from its search engine website.²⁰² Despite this, Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC stated that same year that although Japan was previously “the largest consumer of ivory. . . . [t]hanks to campaigns and celebrities taking a stance, there was a major transformation, and Japan barely accounts for 1% of its heyday market.”²⁰³

There are examples of countries that traditionally utilized ivory but no longer do so. One example is Egypt. In 2005, Esmond Martin and Tom Milliken, conducting a study in Egypt for TRAFFIC International, found ivory fashioned into figures of Egyptian gods and animals including scarabs and camels as well as, sadly, elephants for sale. The trinkets included pendants, necklaces and bangles. It is interesting to note Martin and Milliken's conclusion that the ivory was fashioned for the tourist market because “[l]ocal Egyptians apparently consume virtually no ivory themselves.”²⁰⁴ This is a remarkable shift from ancient times when the domestic Egyptian market was very significant.²⁰⁵ Although between 1998 and 2005, the illegal ivory market in Egypt shrank by 43%, the occurrence in*32 2011 of the political uprising known as the Arab Spring augured bad news for elephants as political instability, economic disruption and weakened governmental control had a negative impact.²⁰⁶

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Although many countries have loved and used ivory for centuries, nowhere is it favored as much as in China. China's travelling tourist population looms large in the realm of ivory consumption. In a 2008 study of the ivory trade in Vietnam, Daniel Stiles found that “the main buyers of ivory were visiting Chinese (including Hong Kong and Taiwan).”²⁰⁷ An international report prepared in 2013 for the African Elephant Summit, stated that “[u]ltimately, the illegal killing of elephants for ivory is driven and sustained by demand from consumers who are willing to pay for illegal ivory, as measured by household consumption in China.”²⁰⁸ Continuing, the report concluded that “in recent years, China has become the world's largest consumer of illegal ivory.”²⁰⁹ The fact that so many Chinese nationals are now working at various projects in Africa has also brought about a proximity between seller and buyer that bodes ill for the elephant populations.

It has aptly been stated that “[n]owhere is the need for demand reduction more critical than in China,”²¹⁰ which became a party to CITES in 1981.²¹¹ Dr. Peter Li, professor of East Asian politics, and wildlife conservationist Iris Ho of Humane Society International succinctly articulated the global nature of this tragedy, stating that “demand in China is driving the slaughter on the African continent.”²¹² Per Liljas of Time Magazine was even more blunt: “Around 100 African elephants are being slaughtered daily just so people can carve ridiculous ornaments from their tusks.”²¹³ Senior U.S. State Department official Robert Hormats commented that “China is the epicenter of demand,” adding that “[w]ithout the demand from China, this would all *33 but dry up.”²¹⁴ According to Dan Levin of the New York Times, the Born Free Foundation estimated that over 32,000 elephants were illegally killed between early 2012 and March 2013.²¹⁵

In a very real sense, many Chinese are apparently not aware of the havoc they are causing half a world away in Africa. Gavin Shire, Public Affairs Specialist in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, explained one feature of the problem: “There are still huge misconceptions in some parts of the world that elephants are somehow anesthetized and their tusks are cut off and then they regrow, or that they fall out naturally. But elephants are killed horrifically and mutilated for people to get their tusks.”²¹⁶ In China, there is still a strong belief that the harvesting of ivory does not involve killing the elephant.²¹⁷ “Some people thought elephants lose tusks the way people lose teeth.”²¹⁸ They assumed that like milk teeth, tusks grow back and some polls demonstrated that seven out of ten people did not even realize that ivory came from elephant tusks.²¹⁹ An editorial in the Times (London) wryly commented that the “people of China must be weaned off their addiction to elephant teeth, just as - to some extent - the Japanese have been, just as Westerners were a generation ago.”²²⁰

Countering the flood of adverse publicity, especially with respect to ivory, spokesman Shifan Wu of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya issued a statement pointing out that ivory is also smuggled to Asia and the Middle East, Europe and U.S.A., and emphasized the strict legal controls exercised by the Chinese Government to monitor and administer the ivory trade.²²¹ There are indications that the Chinese Customs Department's efforts to tighten imports and ban trading of artworks fashioned from rhino horns and elephant tusks are leading to decreases in availability as seen in China's art auction markets.²²² Despite strenuous Chinese denials, the international *34 conservationist community perceives China as being a pivotal and leading “end-use market” in this nefarious trade, and a state that accounts for about 70% of global demand for ivory.²²³ Andrea Crosta, Executive Director of the Elephant Action League (E.A.L.) wants to bring the message directly home to the retail buyers of ivory by telling them that “[b]uying ivory, legal or illegal, you indirectly fund a long chain of criminal activities.”²²⁴ Crosta expressed his conviction that the ivory consumers are “the origin of everything.”²²⁵

An ancillary problem complicating the issue, especially with respect to China, concerns the existence of a legal trade in some ivory. CITES allows trade in pre-1989 ivory,²²⁶ and its acceptance of one-of sales have certainly complicated the issue. “It is extremely difficult to differentiate legally acquired ivory, such as ivory imported in the 1970s, from ivory derived from elephant poaching.”²²⁷While the prevalence of the legal trade has its adherents, opponents point out that that it only confuses consumers who have really no way of differentiating between ivory that is legally and illegallysourced. As Ronald Orenstein pointed out in his excellent book Ivory, Horn And Blood, “[o]nce the ivory had been carved, it became impossible to distinguish legal supplies from contraband.”²²⁸Mary Rice, Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency estimated that up to 90% of ivory in China is illegal.²²⁹Another estimate suggested that the illegal market is six times the size of the legal Chinese market.²³⁰

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Historically, as we have seen, in 1989 (responding to the destruction of half of Africa's elephants in the previous decade²³¹), 175 party states to CITES declared a moratorium on ivory sales.²³² African elephants were classified as Appendix I rather than the previous Appendix II category in *35 CITES as of January 1990.²³³ The value of ivory in the 1980s that had been nine times higher than in the 1960s,²³⁴ went into freefall after the ban (reaching a mere $2 per kilo in Africa) and poaching declined.²³⁵

As we have also seen, just when there appeared to be some hope for regeneration of elephant populations, in 1999 and 2008, a few countries including South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe were allowed by CITES to engage in a one-time sale of stored ivory, with the proceeds intended for conservation.²³⁶ It is significant to note that the United Kingdom, the European Union, and TRAFFIC endorsed China's application to be an “Approved Buyer” of this ivory.²³⁷ In 2008, an auction of stockpiled ivory in Africa provided a large supply for the Japanese and Chinese market.²³⁸ China purchased 62,333 tons of ivory, while Japan bought 39,434 tons²³⁹ in a sale that was intended to “undercut the illegal trade,” a goal that unfortunately failed miserably.²⁴⁰ CITES parties that supported the sales have been roundly blamed for their enormous miscalculation. These sales have generated considerable controversy based on allegations that legalized dealing in ivory fueled and increased the amount of illegal ivory poached in Africa and purchased in Asia. The legalized sales provided “ideal legal camouflage” for the purchase and sale of contraband ivory.²⁴¹ Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton told the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that the poaching crisis was exacerbated by the 2008 sale to China.²⁴² Ironically, the net financial benefit of the 2008 sale to the African sellers was paltry, $15,430,777, far less than the value of the ivory.²⁴³ Instead of dumping the auctioned ivory cheaply and flooding the market to kill the illegal trade, the Chinese Government sought to make very significant profits, selling the ivory in smaller lots at such enormous mark-ups, that this generated price increases throughout the ivory business, a factor that on its own was sufficient to induce more activity on the poaching front.²⁴⁴The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency claimed to have garnered *36 evidence that the Chinese Government had profited on the ivory from the 2008 auction.²⁴⁵

The Chinese Government has denied any connection between the national consumption of ivory via a legal trade and elephant killing in Africa.²⁴⁶ Conservationists disagree, as Iain Douglas- Hamilton stated: “The Chinese hold the key to the elephants' future.”²⁴⁷ He also observed that China values and protects its own wild elephants.²⁴⁸

There is considerable controversy with respect to the impact of one-time ivory auctions on wildlife poaching. The 2008 experience has generated a climate of caution in CITES, which, in 2010, rejected bids by Tanzania and Zambia for one-off sales of ivory stockpiles,²⁴⁹ amounting to 112 tons.²⁵⁰ Stanslaus Komba, a Tanzanian Government official, complained that his nation was “sitting on a treasure that we are not allowed to use to help our population, to help the poor build schools and roads.”²⁵¹ Will Travers, Chief Executive of wildlife advocacy group Born Free, explained the opposition of NGO's that “[o]ur fear was [that] more ivory . . . being put in the market would stimulate demand, not satisfy demand, and that the situation in Africa would get even worse.”²⁵²

The statistics broadly define which side in this controversy was probably justified. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, when legal trade of ivory was sanctioned during the 1980s, the African elephant population declined from 1.3 million to 600,000.²⁵³ It does appear that permitting any sales of ivory provokes increased poaching. While this decades-long argument continues, it is tragically obvious that “[t]here is no such thing as an air-tight marketing system for ivory.”²⁵⁴

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The African continent has for some years attracted Chinese investment because of its rich mineral wealth and its largely untapped resources. The growing Chinese population in Africa has allegedly impacted the demand for ivory. James Isiche, East African Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, commented that as “China expands its presence in Africa in the form of investments and infrastructure development in remote areas, and also areas with significant elephant populations, the incentive or temptation increases for the Chinese worker to look for ivory.”²⁵⁵ There are indications that “poaching increases in elephant-rich areas where Chinese construction workers are building roads.”²⁵⁶ NGOs monitoring wildlife have frequently suggested that some of the many Chinese nationals who now live in numerous African countries “have become the principle middlemen traders behind the large illegal movements of ivory to Asia.”²⁵⁷

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By 2013, along with China, Thailand had acquired the dubious reputation of being a major global “end-use” market for ivory,²⁵⁸ and the second largest illegal ivory market in the world.²⁵⁹ The capital city Bangkok “is the main hub for illegal ivory activities in Thailand,”²⁶⁰ and this vibrant city in 2009 contained over 70% of the retail stores in Thailand selling ivory.²⁶¹ By July 2014, ivory trading figures in Bangkok had increased dramatically, tripling over a preceding eighteen-month period.²⁶² Much of the ivory carved in Thailand is geared for markets in the United States and Europe.²⁶³ The domestic ivory market in Thailand is now thought to be the “biggest unregulated market in the world.”²⁶⁴ It is difficult to deter the trade when *38 profit margins are so lucrative and controls on illegal commerce are so poor.²⁶⁵ Ironically, elephants are respected as a national symbol in that country.²⁶⁶ Thailand acceded to CITES in 1983.²⁶⁷ The Government of Thailand has adopted laws to comply with CITES requirements. However, enforcement is lax.²⁶⁸ The impact of these governmental measures can be gauged by the fact that “[s]ome shop operators travel to China to buy ivory products to resell” in Thailand.²⁶⁹

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Although Vietnam is only ranked in third place in its use of illegal ivory,²⁷⁰ that small nation has developed a fascination, practically an obsession, for rhino horn that has generated a trail of havoc and death in Africa.

III. Rhinos

In May 2014, “a baby rhino from South Africa's Kapama Private Game Reserve made international news when it was found mourning over its mother's bloody body.”²⁷¹ This tragic, heart-wrenching scene is currently all too common for this iconic species. Rhino conservationist, Ian Player wrote that “[r]hino have a particularly plaintive cry, which once heard is never forgotten.”²⁷²

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An ancient iconic species pre-dating humans, rhinos have inhabited Earth for at least 35 million years²⁷³ and possibly as much as 50 million years.²⁷⁴ *39 Rhinos once roamed Europe, Asia and Africa and were known by early Europeans who depicted them in cave paintings.²⁷⁵

Between 1970 and 1987 the world lost 85% of its rhinos to poaching.²⁷⁶ If current poaching continues to escalate, rhinos will undoubtedly become extinct in the twenty-first century.

As of 2012, most of the world's remaining rhinos are in Africa, namely the species called the black rhino, deemed critically endangered, and the white rhino, considered near threatened.²⁷⁷ As of 2013, about 98% of Africa's rhinos roam in four range States: South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Zimbabwe.²⁷⁸ Two-thirds of extant rhinos are white rhinos mainly inhabiting South Africa.²⁷⁹

Having long ago disappeared from Europe, three Asian rhino species, the Indian, Javan and Sumatran, have been “hunted almost to extinction,”²⁸⁰ and the few individuals that survive are deemed “critically endangered.”²⁸¹ By 2011 the Sumatran and the Javan were deemed to be on the brink of extinction.²⁸² The Indochinese subspecies of Javan rhino became extinct when the last individual was shot for its horn in Vietnam in 2010.²⁸³ The Indian rhino is also deemed vulnerable to extinction.²⁸⁴ Despite serious efforts and some success at protection of this great herbivore, as at Kaziranga Wildlife Reserve in Assam, India,²⁸⁵ the future survival of any rhinos in Asia is problematic.

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*40 This leave the world with a diminishing contingent of rhinos (the black and the white rhino) in Africa, now home to most of the world's remaining rhinos. Efforts at conservation of the white rhino had somewhat succeeded until poaching took its toll. Four hundred forty-eight rhinos were poached in South Africa in 2011, 668 in 2012, and the figure rose to 1,004 in 2013.²⁸⁶ Delegates at the sixteenth meeting of the CITES Conference of the Parties were provided updated figures that were unfortunately even higher than those earlier recorded. These showed that between 2006 to early 2012, at least 2,387 rhinos were poached in Africa, and the 2012 continental total reached 745, representing an horrifying increase of 43% between 2011 and 2012.²⁸⁷ By 2013, CITES experts estimated that one rhino was slaughtered every eleven hours.²⁸⁸ In early 2014, nearly four hundred rhinos were slaughtered in South Africa, ironically, within the boundaries of national parks where these animals are supposed to be under protection.²⁸⁹Clearly, rhinos “are facing a crisis and there is no room for complacency”²⁹⁰ either nationally or internationally.

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The years-long decimation of rhino herds was taken very seriously by CITES, which placed the three Asian species (Sumatran, Javan and Indian) on Appendix I in July 1975.²⁹¹ At that time, an African sub-specie, the northern white, was also placed on Appendix I while the black rhino was categorized in Appendix II but was lifted to Appendix I in February 1977.²⁹² CITES banned international trade in rhino horn in 1993.²⁹³

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The reasons for the disappearance of this iconic animal are varied: A combination of poaching and loss of habitat to logging, human settlement, farming and development has already led to extinction of rhinos from several African countries, including the C te d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and, in Asia, Pakistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos *41 and Thailand,²⁹⁴ to name just a few countries where rhino populations have been destroyed. Mozambique lost its last rhino in early 2013,²⁹⁵demonstrating that the threat of total destruction of these ancient species is imminent and occurring now. Zimbabwean environmentalist and winner of the Goldman Prize, Raoul du Toit aptly commented that “[p]oaching is like a bush fire,” adding that “[i]t starts small, but it spreads and turns into a conflagration very rapidly.”²⁹⁶

The current rhino poaching problem is also international in scope, with “Asian demand for rhino horn . . . fuelling a rhino poaching spree in southern Africa.”²⁹⁷ World Wildlife Federation (WWF) rhino expert, Dr. A. Christy Williams commented that “the world's rhinos are under attack from poachers, traders and consumers who are after their horns.”²⁹⁸ Biologist and educator, Dr. Reese Halter, predicted that at present poaching rates, all species of rhinos will be extinct by 2022.²⁹⁹ Other predictions focus on 2026 as the year for extinction of the entire species.³⁰⁰

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There is tragic irony in the fact that an ancient and noble animal, the rhino has lived on this planet for millions of years,³⁰¹ but in this modern era has succumbed to human poaching for reasons that are so frivolous as to be almost beyond comprehension. Rhinos have essentially been killed for their horns. From ancient times, this protuberance on the animal's face has in some cultures acquired mythic, legendary status.

While rhino horn is a useful tool for the animal as it roams in its habitat, its usage by human beings provides no justification for the mass slaughter of *42 this animal. Rhino horns are composed mainly of a protein called keratin,³⁰² and grow slowly at a rate of 0.9 kilograms a year.³⁰³ CT scans have demonstrated that rhino horns are similar to horses' hooves, turtle beaks and cockatoo bills.³⁰⁴Keratin is the same protein that is found in human hair and fingernails.³⁰⁵

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In ancient Greece, rhino horn was thought to be a water purifier.³⁰⁶ For centuries, rhino horn vessels were prized in Europe, the Middle East and Asia because of a perceived ability to detect poison.³⁰⁷ In colonial times, hundreds of African rhinos were killed³⁰⁸for the trophies of their horns. The feet of rhinos were fashioned into ashtrays.³⁰⁹ This hunting for sport was also popular in Asia, and it decimated the rhino population. In the early 1900s, rhino hunting was prohibited in Assam and Bengal (India) and Myanmar (then Burma).³¹⁰

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During the early twentieth century, vast amounts of rhino horn were exported from East Africa to Great Britain to be fashioned into carriage fittings, riding crops, walking sticks, door handles, and other items that enabled the owner to show off his exotic purchase.³¹¹ In Europe and in the United States, there was a fashion craze for trinkets, cups and amulets carved from rhino horn.³¹²

In China, rhino horn has, over the centuries, been used for chopsticks³¹³ and additionally turned into every type of accessory from belt buckles to hair pins to buttons.³¹⁴ The Japanese carved kimono toggles out of rhino horn.³¹⁵

*43 Rhino horns were also carved into dagger handles.³¹⁶ In Yemen and Oman, men wore daggers with handles made of rhino horn.³¹⁷ These “jambiya” curved daggers were considered a status symbol and sign of manhood³¹⁸ and have been in use since about the eighth century.³¹⁹ As oil brought wealth to various parts of the Middle East, demand for such ostentatious symbols increased.³²⁰ Jambiyas of rhino horn were “regarded as the ‘Rolex’ or ‘Porsche’ version.”³²¹ Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, Yemen consumed the largest amount of rhino horn in the world.³²² The use of rhino horn proliferated until the Yemeni economy weakened.³²³ International pressure had earlier caused the Government of North Yemen to ban imports of rhino horn in 1982.³²⁴ The slaughter of rhinos was also denounced as contrary to the tenets of Islam.³²⁵ The association of rhino horn with macho accessories was not confined to Yemen. It is interesting to note that rhino horn was also fashioned into pistol grips in Europe during the 1920s.³²⁶

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The most prolific use, mainly in East and Southeast Asia of rhino horn today is for medicines, tonics that are supposed to cure a variety of ailments. This usage has been extensive and pervasive for centuries in China, Korea, and other countries in Southeast Asia.³²⁷

The linkage between the use of endangered animal parts and TCM has generated a considerable amount of negative publicity around the world and particularly in the West. However, TCM has a strong Asian following. As author Richard Ellis commented: “Make no mistake: those people who use rhino horn to cure medical ailments really believe it works. That's what *44 drives up the demand on which the poachers thrive.”³²⁸ Traditionally, TCM practitioners have utilized approximately 1,000 plant and thirty-six animal species including parts of now seriously endangered animals such as the tiger and rhino.³²⁹ This system also uses over 100 species of insects for medicinal purposes.³³⁰

The ailments supposedly helped by rhino horn include but also call into question the claims of TCM adherents and range from rheumatism and gout³³¹ to cancer;³³² from headaches to boils and even possession by the devil;³³³ as well as convulsions and delirium.³³⁴ Rhino horn has been used to treat extreme heat and vomiting blood as well as nosebleeds.³³⁵ Anyone suffering from confusion could ingest rhino horn, as could a person afflicted with “oppressive ghost dreams.”³³⁶

TCM has served East and Southeast Asia for centuries and is to this day used either in preference to, or in tandem with what is termed Western medicine. Ancient Chinese medical sources did indeed provide a large comprehensive array of possible cures from ingesting rhino horn. For example, among many ailments, it was said to cure typhoid, small pox, dysentery, and be an antidote for snake poisoning and food poisoning. Rhino horn could make its user very robust while simultaneously proving its worth as a sedative!³³⁷

Additionally, frequent assertions have been made that rhino horn can reducefever. Testing appeared to prove its ineffectiveness for humans in *45 this regard.³³⁸ On a popular level in East and Southeast Asia, rhino horn is perceived as a very dependable cure-all tonic. However, scientific investigation has, as we have seen, established that because rhino horn consists of keratin, the same substance that forms human nails,³³⁹ it is “pretty much useless for anything except hair treatments in beauty salons.”³⁴⁰

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To their credit, many practitioners of TCM “worldwide are shunning the use of endangered wild animal parts and using herbal alternatives instead.”³⁴¹ In an effort to convince patients to follow suit, some institutions are conducting scientific studies. Researchers at the Chinese University in Hong Kong found no medicinal value for humans in the doses usually prescribed of rhino horn.³⁴² Lixin Huang, President of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, rejected the use of rhino horn as a cancer cure and stated that “[r]hino horn is no longer approved for use by the Traditional Chinese Medicine profession.”³⁴³ The Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, based in the United Kingdom,³⁴⁴ has strongly condemned the “illegal trade in endangered species and has a strict policy prohibiting the use of any type of endangered species” by any of its members.³⁴⁵ A study conducted at Ohio University revealed little to support any substantive medicinal value.³⁴⁶ After testing extensively, Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffman-La Roche concluded that “rhino horn has no effect whatsoever on the human body.”³⁴⁷ Many scientists have opined that the user might as well chew his own *46 fingernails.³⁴⁸ More cheekily, Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence wondered “why we don't just send all our finger and toenail trimmings over to the East for them to chew on; it's the same thing.”³⁴⁹

In 1993, rhino horn was formally removed from the Chinese medicine pharmacopeia by the Government of China.³⁵⁰ Japan, Taiwan and South Korea did likewise.³⁵¹ According to Jo Shaw, Programme Officer Large Mammal Trade TRAFFIC, “[b]y the mid-1990s, all the important rhino horn consumer countries in Asia had banned the substance in their [TCM] industries.”³⁵² In March 2010, members of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies (based in Beijing) declared “that they did not want their industry tainted by the use of endangered species parts or derivatives.”³⁵³

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Much has been made of the fact that the Chinese and East Asians allegedly have used rhino horn as an aphrodisiac. Ironically, TCM practitioners did not consider rhino horn to have any value as an aphrodisiac. According to Kelly Enright, author of Rhinoceros, the “idea that rhino horn . . . is an aphrodisiac does not appear in any traditional Chinese medical literature.”³⁵⁴ This myth is now attributed to Western sources,³⁵⁵ spread by Western media but now, curiously, apparently gaining some following in Vietnam.³⁵⁶

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The country that poses the biggest threat to rhinos and is the “pre-eminent market destination for illegally sourced rhino horns,”³⁵⁷is interestingly, Vietnam, where a combination of dedication to TCM and a rising economy have enabled thousands to indulge in the most expensive of concoctions, *47 powdered rhino horn as a status symbol that is now more expensive than cocaine.³⁵⁸

Well over 60% of Vietnam's population is under thirty years,³⁵⁹ a fact that may explain some of the adventurous dabbling in exotic concoctions. Additionally, by one estimate, the number of multimillionaires in Vietnam grew by 150% between 2008 and 2013.³⁶⁰One tragic consequence: In Africa, hapless rhinos are being shot and their horns hacked or sawn off (sometimes while they are still alive³⁶¹) so that some affluent Vietnamese can indulge in this party-drug of choice.³⁶² Rhino horn is seen by this crowd as boosting the functioning of the liver, thereby enabling them to drink more alcohol and cure hangovers faster.³⁶³

Tom Milliken, East/Southern Africa Director for TRAFFIC, noted: “In all my years of monitoring rhino horn, I've never seen entire local industries catering to the consumption of horn like I have seen in Vietnam.”³⁶⁴ Despite the overwhelming evidence³⁶⁵ to the contrary, the Vietnamese Government reported to CITES in 2012 that “rhino horns are neither commonly nor widely used in Viet Nam.”

It is worth noting that rhinos became extinct in Vietnam in 2010, when the last individual was killed for its horn.³⁶⁶ Tran Thi Minh Hien, Vietnam Country Direction for WWF lamented that “Vietnam has lost part of its national heritage.”³⁶⁷ Those Vietnamese rich enough to indulge in status symbols like to give gifts of rhino horn to family, business contacts or to those in authority because “[r]hino horn consumers are wealthy and powerful and as such are seen as influential people within Vietnamese society.”³⁶⁸

*48 Ironically, these animals are considered symbols of immortality and are killed and the horns gifted to “smoothen business deals,” and to show respect to one's superiors.³⁶⁹

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Early in this new century, a rumor spread in Vietnam that a politician had been cured of cancer by imbibing rhino horn powder.³⁷⁰The persistence of this rumor resulted in frenzied efforts by sick Vietnamese and their families to get access to rhino horn. Joseph Stromberg and Sarah Zielinski reported that, subsequently, poaching, “particularly of black and white rhinos in South Africa, ramped up.”³⁷¹

In recent years, cancer rates have risen in Vietnam, with about 150,000 new cases annually.³⁷² Waiting times for medical care and treatment are long and this grim reality provides an opportunity for unscrupulous peddlers selling rhino horn to prey on desperate patients and their families in hospitals, promising miraculous cures if they ingest rhino horn.³⁷³ Vietnam's mortality rate from cancer was estimated at 73% in 2013, one of the highest in the world.³⁷⁴ This human tragedy has boosted the butchering of rhinos half a world away in Africa, with ruthless poachers “leaving orphaned rhino calves to starve to death while they pine next to their dead mothers.”³⁷⁵ The obvious conclusion is that much work needs to be done to convince the people of East and Southeast Asia that hundreds of rhinos are dying for a fake medicinal cure that has no scientific or medical value, especially for those afflicted with cancer.

Scammed over a fake cancer cure, the Vietnamese have now developed an additional penchant for rhino eyes for alleged medicinal usage.³⁷⁶ Rusty Hustler, Manager of South Africa's North West Parks and Tourism Board, was quoted by Time journalists Hannah Beech and Alex Perry: “The *49 Vietnamese have started keeping the eyes for medicine.” Hustler added that this was “a new thing.”³⁷⁷

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There can be no doubt that Nature has provided many of the sources for our current medicines and this prevails in all parts of the world. The World Health Organization reported in 2007 that nearly 80% of the world's population depended on primary health care from plant and animal-based medicines.³⁷⁸ It is also true that while “Western medicine has moved mainly to synthetics. . . . Chinese medical practice still emphasizes the use of ‘natural’ products-animal, vegetable, and mineral-in its 3,000-year-old quest for the cures and prevention of disease.”³⁷⁹

Given the Western predilection for science-based medicine, famous for its emphasis on repeatable experimentation and extensive testing, it is hard to be entirely understanding of TCM which is very much older than our system but in some instances is grounded in theorizing and assumptions that are difficult for us to appreciate. When such scientifically unproven remedies in TCM demand use of the parts of endangered animals, the misunderstanding and controversy escalate to a multiplicity of levels: modern vs. traditional; Eastern vs. Western; human medical priorities vs. protection of wildlife, to name just a few. Essentially it becomes a clash of cultural values and the only way to deal with those is through mutual understanding and education that enlighten both sides. Regrettably, time is of the essence because while Vietnamese citizens quaff their rhino horn drinks, on the other side of the world, an iconic species is being slaughtered into extinction.

This is the kind of problem that will not yield to any heavy-handed insensitive assertions by Western scientists or NGO's proclaiming the superiority of developed world science over developing world “superstitions.” There can be a nationalist backlash to heavy-handed tactics by the West. To cite just one instance, Jia Qian, retired Head of the National Traditional Chinese Medicine Strategy Research Project, believes that rhino horn is a cure-all for diseases including SARS and AIDS, and has been calling for a relegalization of rhino horn in TCM.³⁸⁰ He has condemned the 1993 Chinese Governmental ban of rhino horn usage in medicines, deeming it a consequence of Western-trained professionals, being “tainted by Western *50 thought,” and others succumbing to “foreign pressure.”³⁸¹ This is precisely the type of nationalistic defensiveness that can imperil the ultimate aim of saving wildlife. The awareness campaign has to come from within such societies and to be a logical progression of local values, not an outside product.

Time will tell whether the advertising campaign launched by TRAFFIC and the WWF will succeed. These advertisements that have appeared in Southeast Asia state: “Rhino horn is made of the same stuff as human nails. Still want some?”³⁸² The agenda is to curb the killing in Africa by reducing demand in East Asia,³⁸³ truly a global solution for an international problem.

IV. Aspects of Multi-national Criminal Enterprise

Wildlife crime is complex, multi-faceted, multi-layered, global in its reach, spreading its tentacles from Africa through Asia and tragic in its consequences both for animals and for humans. It is today as dangerous and threatening as narcotics and weapons trading crimes and could very soon surpass those nefarious activities because of the enormous profits and the low risks involved for the perpetrators. For those who love animals, it is a searing tragedy of gigantic proportions, creating horror and grief, as do those other international crimes, human trafficking,³⁸⁴ and child enslavement.³⁸⁵ All these terrible international crimes thrive on secretiveness and a lack of public awareness. However, every day, the human and animal toll of victims extends in all parts of the world. Jacqueline Schneider, in an interesting article on the illicit trade in endangered wildlife, commented on the “invisible nature of this trade, coupled with its underresearched and underpoliced status,” that generates a “basic void of knowledge.”³⁸⁶

Wildlife poaching takes a tragic toll in human life-rangers, poachers, villagers- and in animal life. It flourishes and continues because it is *51 essentially about “poverty, ethnic rivalry, terrorism and civil war.”³⁸⁷ The killing of wildlife has become a route to finance and fund the killing of human beings. The connection is inextricable and the consequence is disrupted governance, breakdown of law and order and economic and social devastation. The ivory trinkets and rhino horn tonics purchased in destination countries leave trails of horror, death and unspeakable suffering in the lands of their origin.

Testifying in 2012 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, eloquently articulated the serious nature of the transnational poaching-smuggling crime (valued at between $7.8 and $10 billion annually), pointing out that

there is an escalating crisis in poaching across Africa. It is driven by demand in China. The demand exceeds the supply. It creates security threats as well as conservation impacts, much of the trading being led by organized crime which undermines good governance, destabilizes security, and causes the illegal killing of elephants on a massive scale. Urgent action is critical to stem this decline.³⁸⁸

The long-term tragic consequences were elucidated by John Scanlon, Secretary General of CITES, who explained that the criminals

are depriving local people of legitimate development choices and they are depriving states of revenue, not to mention robbing states of their cultural heritage and their natural resources. This is undermining governments. It is undermining the rule of law. It is undermining security and it must be stopped.³⁸⁹

John Sellar, head of the Enforcement Office for the CITES Secretariat, called rhino horn poaching “the most sophisticated organized crime that the convention has had to face in its history,”³⁹⁰ a conclusion that is equally applicable to the theft of elephant tusks. Organized criminal syndicates, seeing the opportunity for enormous profits, have added wildlife crime to *52 their equally notorious activities including drug and human trafficking.³⁹¹ In 2011, the United Nations and INTERPOL estimated that global environmental crime was worth as much as $213 billion.³⁹² Statistics on the clandestine profits of such crime are varied because they are very difficult to estimate, particularly in an age of instantaneous monetary transfers. The non-profit Stimson Center which was founded in 1989, estimated in 2014 that the annual amounts from wildlife poaching used to finance terrorists and other criminals amounted to about $19 billion annually.³⁹³ According to CITES, the proceeds from the massacre of wildlife and its trafficking are usually shielded through an intricate network of money-laundering schemes, utilizing anonymous shell companies, “often layered via multiple jurisdictions.”³⁹⁴

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In Kenya, where there is considerable poaching, the criminals are well-organized and equipped with night vision goggles, automatic weapons and chainsaws to disable the hapless animals and cut off their horns and tusks very quickly and with gruesome effectiveness.³⁹⁵ Elephant poachers resort to very cruel methods of killing, including the use of poison. Poisoned arrows are less noisy than guns and are a preferred form of killing used by many poachers, particularly in Kenya.³⁹⁶ Waterholes frequented by entire elephant families are poisoned and often fruit like oranges are poisoned and temptingly placed where elephants feed.³⁹⁷There have been reports that poachers in Zimbabwe have used cyanide to kill hundreds of elephants at a nature reserve.³⁹⁸ In Tanzania, villagers poison pumpkins and leave them for *53 elephants to eat.³⁹⁹ Every type of food attractive to elephants, like pineapple and cabbage is turned into a killing system.⁴⁰⁰ Because elephants need salt, one method is to hang from trees acid-filled bottles wrapped in tempting banana leaves that are soaked in saline.⁴⁰¹ This must cause unimaginable suffering to the elephants. Equally gruesome methods consist of snares and traps, some studded with long poison-tipped nails and placed in the path of animals.⁴⁰²

Poachers and their enablers use any means expedient to slaughter their victims. On the one hand this can involve fairly basic methods as seen above or more sophisticated military equipment including helicopters and aerial killing of entire families and herds of animals.

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The smuggling phase of this crime also depends on a variety of transport systems including air and land and more recently, the use of shipping containers, few of which are ever inspected globally.⁴⁰³ “By sea, air and internet, [Asia] and Africa have never been so closely linked.”⁴⁰⁴

National frontiers clearly mean nothing to these bands of wildlife criminals, as poachers “in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan and Kenya move across borders with near impunity.”⁴⁰⁵ It has appropriately been suggested that “[i]llegal domestic and international wildlife trade is a commodity business driven by a wide variety of socioeconomic and cultural forces.”⁴⁰⁶ The intensive research for this Article points to a possible correlation between regions of extreme poverty and unrest and wildlife poaching. This conclusion appears to be sustained by the data collected for elephants by the monitoring system MIKE.⁴⁰⁷

An ancillary and unavoidable conclusion that flows from this research is that that a major impediment to curbing poaching relates to the prevalence of a legal trade in ivory. Over the years, the legal trade has enabled the proliferation of the illegal trade because the “legal ivory trade can serve as a *54 cover for illegal trade.”⁴⁰⁸ The Environmental Investigation Agency has investigated the illicit ivory trade for over two decades and concluded that “any ‘legal’ trade in ivory sends mixed messages which confuse consumers and provides an opportunity to launder black market ivory onto the market.”⁴⁰⁹

A surreal aspect of this crime flowed from the South African Government's decision to permit some legal trophy hunting of rhinos and other iconic animals, a venture that brings almost $125 million into the economy and employs about 70,000 people.⁴¹⁰ From about 2003, such hunting permits to kill rhinos were increasingly and surprisingly sought by Vietnamese nationals, by 2010, their number rising to 171.⁴¹¹ This was puzzling because Vietnam is not commonly considered a society with a hunting culture. Vietnamese syndicates, frantically searching for rhino horn to meet the frenzied home market demand, abused the South African permit system to generate fake hunts and smuggle the “trophies” back to Vietnam.⁴¹²

Some of these Vietnamese “hunters” included women who had never fired a rifle and “seemed almost embarrassed to be there.”⁴¹³Vietnamese, especially women, are not known to be avid sport hunters. However, between 2003 and 2010 Vietnamese nationals, some of them women on “holiday” in South Africa successfully “hunted” at least 329 rhinos and “legally” exported to Vietnam between two and three tons of horn, worth between $200 million and $300 million on the black market.⁴¹⁴

Even more surreal were the rhino horn activities of Thai national Chumlong Lemtongthai, who employed Thai women working in South African brothels and strip clubs to go on “hunting” holidays and pose for pictures with the rhinos they had supposedly shot.⁴¹⁵Lemtongthai, in his early forties,⁴¹⁶ was arrested in 2011, pleaded guilty and received a forty-year jail sentence in 2012.⁴¹⁷ The sentence was the most severe given for *55 poaching in South Africa.⁴¹⁸ The numerous locals who were involved in this pseudo-hunting scam did not fare as badly. South Africa tightened up its permit system.⁴¹⁹

Lemtongthai's sentence was unique, as in many jurisdictions wildlife crime is not yet prosecuted with enough vigor and resources, treated as a misdemeanor that often results in minimal legal consequences. As Julian Rademeyer correctly complains, “[f]ines imposed for wildlife crime . . . have virtually no deterrent effect. . . . The criminal syndicates see them as little more than an irksome business expense-a tax on stupidity for those caught and unable to bribe their way out of trouble.”⁴²⁰

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The challenge for law enforcement is massive. The global scale of the poaching-smuggling crime makes for a very difficult situation in terms of catching and prosecuting the miscreants who are driven by greed for the vast profit involved. As Loretta Napoleoni has explained: “Globalization has provided criminal and armed organizations with the opportunity to build and share international economic infrastructures: Islamic banks, offshore tax havens and state-shell economics. . . . [as well as] money-laundering institutions.”⁴²¹

John Sellar of CITES explained that “it can be very difficult to prove a conspiracy that reaches from Vietnam to South Africa and in between.”⁴²² Such trans-national crimes require global cooperation amongst police forces and district attorneys in a number of jurisdictions. A significant step in the direction of coordinated effort was made in 2010 with the launch of the International Consortium On Combating Wildlife Crime, composed of INTERPOL, UNODC, the World Bank, the World Customs Organization, and the CITES Secretariat.⁴²³ A global approach to policing a globalized crime is vital. Recognition of this twenty-first century reality was *56unanimously endorsed by delegates from 141 countries at INTERPOL's General Assembly held in Doha, Qatar in November 2010.⁴²⁴

The problem is that while many poachers are killed on site or are caught, they can be easily replaced. The challenge for law enforcement is to get to those enablers who finance the poachers, sell the wildlife product and particularly those at the top of the notorious command structure who keep their own hands clean while reaping the largest share of the profits from illicit wildlife crime. Justin Gosling, INTERPOL's Environmental Crime Liaison Officer for Asia and the South Pacific, explained that with the resources available, if the authorities could “target and prosecute a handful of significant individuals,” there could be a “massive dent in these crimes.”⁴²⁵

John Scanlon, Secretary General of CITES, has suggested that smuggled ivory be treated like heroin or cocaine, adding that there is a need to start deploying the same tactics that are used to fight narcotics: “Don't just seize it in the port when you find it. Track it, find out who ordered it, find them, convict them and give them heavy penalties.”⁴²⁶ As Kanitha Krishnasamy, TRAFFIC Senior Program Officer, commented: “Until you make someone pay the price for what they've done, who knows how long . . . [poaching and illegal trade of animal parts] will continue.”⁴²⁷ Tom Cardamone, Managing Director of Global Financial Integrity explained to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations that locating the head of a criminal syndicate is difficult because such individuals conceal themselves “behind legal structures throughout the world in various jurisdictions around the globe. . . . So there are layers upon layers of opacity in the financial system and in the corporate structures that enable” these kingpins to hide.⁴²⁸

Another challenge facing those who wish to prosecute and convict the perpetrators is that some of the criminals lead normal lives as acceptable members of society, while moonlighting in wildlife poaching. In a 2012 case *57 brought in South Africa, the alleged poachers included a safari tour operator, a helicopter pilot, and strangely, even some veterinarians.⁴²⁹

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The success or failure in coping with this crime can depend to a great extent on the amount of financial and human resources that any government is willing to devote to the protection of its wildlife. All too frequently, particularly in countries suffering from political unrest, those who are struggling to protect animals find themselves “outmanned and outgunned.”⁴³⁰ John Sellar commented that “poachers, smugglers, and dealers are likely to be better armed, better equipped, better educated, better paid, and better organized than many wildlife enforcement officers.”⁴³¹ In the decade preceding 2014, approximately 1,000 park rangers have died protecting animals from poachers.⁴³²

It is interesting to note that wildlife charities and advocates believe that poaching does not involve vast numbers of criminals. In Kenya, for instance, the core group of criminals may be only between twenty or thirty people.⁴³³ Although they are well paid by local standards, they are not making the massive profits involved. They risk their lives but earn very little of the vast sums paid by end use buyers of ivory and rhino horn.⁴³⁴ In 2013, African poachers earned between $50 to $100 per kilo for ivory, which in China could, by one estimate, command $3,000 per kilo.⁴³⁵ However, any amount is preferable to the miserable poverty of their lives and when it is a choice between seeing their families starve or poaching, they “know it's wrong, but the temptation is just too strong.”⁴³⁶ As environmental investigator for the E.A.L., Andrea Crosta commented: “One elephant with [a] nice pair of tusks *58 represents a few years of salary for someone who has no salary and maybe 10 people waiting at home for him. So you can imagine the temptation.”⁴³⁷

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There is growing evidence for the existence of another group of poachers, notorious for the complete inhumanity and cruelty with which they slaughter entire families of animals. Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times reported in 2012 that Garamba National Park in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo suffered the mass killing of twenty-two elephants including babies, many killed by a single headshot.⁴³⁸ Park officials, scientists and Congolese officials alleged that the “Ugandan military-one of the Pentagon's closest partners in Africa-killed the 22 elephants from a helicopter and spirited away more than a million dollars' worth of ivory.”⁴³⁹The militarization of the ivory trade has turned elephant tusk into the equivalent of the earlier blood diamonds that for years fueled terrible conflict in Sierra Leone.⁴⁴⁰ The possible alleged involvement of Ugandan politico-military elites⁴⁴¹ emphasizes the serious challenge faced by the global community in its attempts to eradicate wildlife poaching.

Both rogue Congolese army soldiers and militia commanders have also been accused of engaging in elephant poaching in the Democratic Republic of Congo.⁴⁴² Kenya-based conservationist Esmond Martin alleged in 2005 that Sudanese armed forces had illegally massacred thousands of elephants and sold the ivory to China.⁴⁴³ Thousands of Chinese nationals have worked in Sudan in the petroleum, construction, and mining sectors.⁴⁴⁴ Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times reported that: “Members of some of the African armies that the American government trains and supports with millions of taxpayer dollars-like the Ugandan military, the Congolese Army and newly independent South Sudan's military-have been implicated *59 in poaching elephants and dealing in ivory.”⁴⁴⁵ American scientist and elephant expert John Hart accused the Congolese military of being “the main perpetrator of illegal elephant killing.”⁴⁴⁶

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Corruption in African and Asian bureaucracies greases the wheels and enables the proliferation of poaching. John Webb, a former U.S. Justice Department wildlife case prosecutor, explained that the “overarching impediment to effective enforcement against poaching and trafficking is corruption.”⁴⁴⁷ Because there are so many players involved in wildlife trafficking, corruption is almost inevitable along the long chain that brings the parts of massacred African animals to eager East Asian consumers. Corruption is also alleged to be responsible for the low risk element of this crime.

Corruption probably prevails at many levels in this sordid saga. Because it is so pervasive and so hard to track, and even harder to prove, it manages to facilitate the criminal activity while simultaneously debilitating the efforts of those who are trying to protect wildlife. The apparent difficulty of law enforcement, and legal and judicial systems to either deter or punish those caught committing wildlife poaching/smuggling, contributes to its encouragement and proliferation. As Catrina Stewart reported, “[w]hen poachers are caught and brought to justice, they escape with trivial fines or short custodial sentences. Rarely are the brains behind the organized crime syndicates that drive the illicit trade brought to justice.”⁴⁴⁸ A study conducted by WildlifeDirect found that less than 5% of wildlife criminal convictions resulted in jail sentences, and the average fine ranged between $100 and $300.⁴⁴⁹ In 2013, a Chinese national caught in Kenya smuggling ivory was fined as little as $1 per piece.⁴⁵⁰

With respect to the ivory trade, elephant expert Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC commented that the largest profits were being made by “those middlemen who are bridging Africa and Asia-those syndicate traders who *60 are moving the large consignments.”⁴⁵¹Milliken added that because of the availability of ready buyers, these middlemen were able to garner quick profits.⁴⁵²

Thus far, the poachers and enablers appear to be gaining ground and one can only hope that elephants and rhinos will not become extinct by the time the world's governments can work together to eradicate this crime. Richard Vigne, CEO of the Kenya-based Ol Pejeta Conservancy, explained the present grim situation: “The risk/reward equation remains heavily stacked in favor of poachers and will only move in favor of conservationists when BOTH the demand and supply side dynamics are successfully addressed.”⁴⁵³

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The smugglers are also very adept at camouflaging their ill-gotten gains and this facet alone requires extensive training for customs officials to enable them to spot the contraband goods. Chinese smugglers have concealed ivory in shipments of timber and in 2013, even used a Chinese garlic exporting business as cover.⁴⁵⁴ In 2013, a Vietnamese national was caught at Nairobi airport carrying 488 ivory bangles that had been painted brown to pass them off as soapstone.⁴⁵⁵ On occasion, ivory has been disguised to look like a wooden statue.⁴⁵⁶ Chinese websites suggest wrapping ivory in tin foil to fool airport X-ray machines.⁴⁵⁷ Ivory leaving from Somalia is sometimes hidden in crates of charcoal.⁴⁵⁸ Ivory has also been concealed in shipments of avocados, anchovies and even wrapped in chili peppers, to confuse sniffer *61 dogs.⁴⁵⁹ It is possible to change the identity of containers originating from Africa so that once they arrive in Asia, these will draw less attention.⁴⁶⁰

Additionally, specially constructed shipping containers have secret compartments to facilitate this clandestine trade conducted by “Africa-based, Asian-run crime syndicates.”⁴⁶¹ By one estimate, less than 5% of containers are inspected to detect contraband ivory, even though a large amount of the seizures have been from containerized shipping.⁴⁶² Globalization has so increased trans-world trade that no nation has sufficient manpower to search every container leaving or entering its ports.⁴⁶³ This fact alone is a significant benefit for smugglers moving all kinds of products, including wildlife. Currently, the port of Mombasa in Kenya is the primary ivory trafficking hub servicing the entire continent,⁴⁶⁴ while Malaysia is a major transit country for ivory proceeding to China.⁴⁶⁵

There are positive signs that some African countries are committed to serious measures to protect these iconic animals. An anti-poaching summit, termed the African Elephant Summit, was convened between December 2 and 4, 2013 at Gaborone in Botswana.⁴⁶⁶ Participants discussed the record high number of seizures of illicit ivory, a trend that might point to better enforcement.⁴⁶⁷ Tanzania indicated that enforcement was now a high priority.⁴⁶⁸ Most important, the delegates agreed to define wildlife trafficking as a “serious crime” thereby qualifying range states for support through the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.⁴⁶⁹ This could result in “stronger enforcement of asset seizure and forfeiture, extradition of suspects, mutual legal help,” and a variety of other measures to increase criminal accountability.⁴⁷⁰ These steps if taken firmly and consistently could go a long way to diminishing the poaching/smuggling operations of these multi-national criminal syndicates. Time alone will tell *62 whether these lofty promises articulated at international conferences will translate into active measures to save wildlife before it is too late. Sadly, while human beings have created this tragedy through their greed, it can now only be resolved by human intervention.

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If there was some magic way by which words could instantaneously be translated into deeds, the United Nations and its sister international organizations would be viewed with much less cynicism and despair by those of us who have for years studied this world organization. It is not an understatement to suggest that while a veritable feast of words flows at the U.N., there can all too frequently be a real famine of meaningful action. Delegates come to the endless meetings and talk themselves and their colleagues into a near stupor, argue endlessly about the use of particular words in an array of draft resolutions, pass a usually-watered down consensus agreement and then go home satisfied at their glorious verbal achievement. Meanwhile, the many horrors facing the world's people, whether it is slavery⁴⁷¹ or child labor⁴⁷² or in the instant case, wildlife crime, continue and even escalate in violence and impact.

To be fair to the U.N., drawing attention to these violations of rights, discussing them, publicizing them and passing resolutions against them can provide greater global awareness and this is a meaningful activity for an entity that has no sovereign power. It can also be said, in defense of the world organization, that it provides a forum where people from around the world can meet and discuss and agree and disagree in a relatively moderate tone and sometimes even achieve greater understanding of each other's perspectives. Unfortunately, the world's problems are now so compelling and the perpetrators of criminal violations are so brazen, cruel and inhuman in their behavior, that one can only lament the absence of firm, resolute international action to deal decisively with them.

It could also be that thanks to modern technological marvels like the internet and social media, we are all informed instantly about issues around the world. Never before have so many people known and had the ability to respond and react to events at such speed. When ordinary people become so quickly aware of issues, they want solutions and resolution at the same speed and this, regrettably, is still beyond human capacity. It takes time, huge *63 amounts of money, a great deal of diplomatic maneuvering and lengthy negotiation to create international coalitions to deal with serious rights violations anywhere.

Public impatience grows when there are considerable time lags between mutual consensus and implementation on the ground. In 2013, the 16th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES met in Bangkok and took what was termed “decisive action” against elephant and rhino poaching and smuggling.⁴⁷³ A number of crucial issues were discussed at this conference and consensus emerged on a need to treat such crimes as serious; to coordinate global, regional and national enforcement; to work with origin, transit and destination countries; to utilize forensic methodologies to combat this crime and support legislation on asset forfeiture and against money laundering. Most interesting of all was the agreement for critical assessment of the implementation of this plethora of measures when the Conference next convenes in South Africa in 2016.⁴⁷⁴ On a constructive note, the emphasis on implementation strikes an optimistic note. However, absent effective implementation of these worthy measures, the world might in 2016 be lamenting the further destruction of wildlife, the proliferation of crime and the increased use of poaching to fund terrorist operations.

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Unfortunately, all the measures in Africa will not stop wildlife poaching and smuggling until the demand in Asia dries up. This criminal enterprise is entirely demand-driven and efforts of equal vigor have to be taken to insist that Asians abandon their centuries-long addiction to rhino horn tonics and ivory trinkets and carvings. Although destination countries have taken some measures like seizing smuggled contraband, there is still an apparent reluctance to deal resoundingly with this issue.

On the buyer side of this crime, it is worth noting that China has vigorously defended its role and demanded more objective assessment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei insisted that his nation's penalties for smuggling ivory and other products “are among the strictest in the world.”⁴⁷⁵ However, experts estimate that about 70% of illicit ivory *64 winds up in China and a significant number of Chinese nationals have been arrested in Africa for smuggling ivory.⁴⁷⁶

China's compelling need for raw materials and resources to fuel its growing industrial complexes has resulted in sizable investment in African countries. China's indifference to democratic values and human rights concerns-its own record is shaky in those realms-makes for a mutually beneficial and expedient relationship with the elites of dictatorships such as Zimbabwe under its nonagenarian President Robert Mugabe. China exports vast numbers of armaments to Zimbabwe and has assisted President Mugabe with extensive investment and aid including projects in diamond and coal mines.⁴⁷⁷ In 2014, Chinese currency was accepted as legal tender in Zimbabwe and although there is no clear evidence of any Chinese-inspired poaching link, Varun Vira and Thomas Ewing are apprehensive about the future of wildlife in that country.⁴⁷⁸ Economic conditions in Zimbabwe have deteriorated to the point that its soldiers have since 2009 been fed on elephant meat, and there are reports of widespread poaching and the plundering of national resources by the ruling ZANU-PF officials.⁴⁷⁹

Although on the face of it, using education and legal measures to curb Chinese and East Asian demand for ivory and rhino horn may appear to be significant steps in the right direction, Adam Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA believes that this is not enough, partly because this “could take years and years to accomplish.”⁴⁸⁰ He insists that one has “to look at all the different choke points . . . including the shipping routes.”⁴⁸¹

As we have seen, this multi-faceted crime has multiple layers and is complex and clandestine. It will take international coordination on a massive scale to deal with it. One can only hope that human beings can curb if not eradicate the crime. It would be egregious and tragic if rhino and elephant poaching finally ends, not because of positive human intervention against the criminals but because all the animals have died and these two ancient iconic species have become extinct.

*65 V. Terrorism

One of the most troubling consequences of this butchery of so many species of wildlife, including elephants and rhinos, is the alleged nefarious use by terrorists of the profits from the crime of poaching. There are increasing indications of an unholy nexus between poaching syndicates and terrorist organizations. Much of the information is admittedly anecdotal. However, this anecdotal evidence continues to proliferate and is indicative of a pattern whereby groups of terrorists, desperate to fund their operations,⁴⁸² turn to the easiest source at hand.⁴⁸³

Displaying the dark side of globalization, the frenetic demand for ivory as a status symbol in East Asia draws miscreants of all stripes, including terrorists, to the vast profits garnered from killing iconic animals. Hence, “the growing demand for ivory has made the poaching industry a much more pivotal player in the financing of terror.”⁴⁸⁴ The International Conservation Caucus Foundation reported that “[i]llegal wildlife products are a substantial lifeline to African-based terrorism.”⁴⁸⁵ As Michael Marshall commented in NewScientist: “On the surface, terrorism and wildlife crime may seem unrelated, but the evidence suggests they are increasingly linked.”⁴⁸⁶

Robert Hormats of the U.S. State Department explained one of the problems associated with this issue: “It's very hard to get evidence, because this is really a very shady area.”⁴⁸⁷ Because so much of the information/evidence is anecdotal in nature,⁴⁸⁸ this particular subject requires far more on-site investigation. That poses serious challenges. Terrorist organizations operate in a secret world of need-to-know small cells, clandestine operations, hidden identities and terrible retribution for any members who even inadvertently reveal important information. Their revenue streams are not easily traceable.⁴⁸⁹ Terrorist organizations are also known for their distrust of any outsiders and prone to kill anyone that they *66 feel poses a threat. The acquisition of precise and correct data is a huge challenge.

An additional problem is to sort out the various players and understand what appears to be a growing affiliation between non-political “garden variety” criminals and politically-motivated terrorists who pose a very serious threat to national security. These challenges of gaining precise information are likely to continue.

The obvious and easily-acquired financial success of poaching and trafficking syndicates may have impelled some cash-strapped terror organizations to follow suit. After all, targeting wildlife is an easy way to make quick money. The animals are fairly easily accessible, defenseless against modern weapons and their parts yield vast sums for the purchase of weapons and other materials. So terrorists or those poachers they employ enter national parks and wildlife habitats on horseback or in vehicles, butcher numerous animals and disappear “like the wind.”⁴⁹⁰

This notorious linkage between poaching and terrorism raises wildlife killing to the level of a matter that is important for the national security of many states primarily those in the Western and democratic Asian world that are specifically targeted by terrorists. Their aim is apparently to destabilize entire societies and harming civilians is one method frequently used to increase the terror.

Wildlife traffickers also bankroll “rebels and their militias, conducting military-style assaults on elephants and terrorists fund their violent agenda through the burgeoning market for luxury goods, religious articles, carvings and medicines.”⁴⁹¹ U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats, in an interview with AllAfrica, commented that his government views wildlife protection as a “huge, huge national security issue.”⁴⁹² Leaving aside the now trite cliche about one person's terrorist being another person's freedom fighter, sorting out who is a rebel and/or a militant as opposed to a terrorist can really be a matter of personal opinion and ideological inclination. The underlying consequences, societal destabilization and wildlife destruction prevail, regardless of the moniker applied to the perpetrators.

The lethal combination of endless demand for ivory and rhino horn and the existence of hapless animals that constitute the ultimate in soft targets, cannot but attract the attention of terrorist organizations who need a constant stream of funding to carry out their attacks and gain public notoriety. *67 Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented that there is “growing evidence that the terrorist groups stalking Africa are funding their activities ‘to a great extent from ivory trafficking.’ “⁴⁹³ In 2013, Mrs. Clinton presented an $80 million plan to combat elephant poaching in Africa.⁴⁹⁴ The Clinton Global Initiative inspired seven African nations (Botswana, C te d'Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, South Sudan, Malawi, Uganda) to commit to ending the slaughter of elephants and ivory trafficking by banning domestic trade in ivory.⁴⁹⁵

In 2014, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman stated that wildlife poaching was funding both terrorism and corruption, and hence it had become a global security threat.⁴⁹⁶ Clearly many divisions of the U.S. Government are very concerned about the nexus between poaching and terrorism. Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes commented to Reuters correspondent Deborah Zabarenko that the merger between Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab made “the link between wildlife poaching and extremist ideology and terrorism more clear,” and Hayes considered this a “meaningful national security issue.”⁴⁹⁷

United Kingdom Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brooke Darby named some of the terror organizations allegedly associated with wildlife crime: Al-Shabaab, the Lord's Resostamce Army (L.R.A.) and the Janjaweed,⁴⁹⁸ all based in Africa. The increasing linkage between poaching and terrorism was also emphasized by U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague, who claimed that the problem was “especially true in fragile states.”⁴⁹⁹

The terrorist organization most closely associated with the crime of poaching is an Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Somalian group Al-Shabaab (it's name means “Youth”⁵⁰⁰) which is alleged to finance about 40% of its operations *68 from ivory trafficking.⁵⁰¹ It has also been accused of poaching rhino horn.⁵⁰² This group attacked the Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2013, killing sixty-seven people.⁵⁰³ Al-Shabaab is said to have an army of about 5,000 fighters.⁵⁰⁴ These men who are better paid than many government soldiers, earn approximately $300 a month plus weapons, food, water and a popular recreational drug called khat.⁵⁰⁵

The group is also alleged to have extorted “ivory taxes” from commercial poaching gangs.⁵⁰⁶ According to Ian J. Saunders, Director of The Tsavo Trust, “[i]vory is a source of revenue too convenient for Al Shabaab to ignore, and it would be na ve to think otherwise.”⁵⁰⁷ Ironically, in the convoluted world of wildlife crime and terrorism, this organization has developed a reputation for reliability and good business practice. Al-Shabaab pays a good price for ivory, thereby encouraging sellers to deal with this organization.⁵⁰⁸ Additionally, Al-Shabaab is known for its skill in business dealings and for paying its sellers on time.⁵⁰⁹ This terror organization is also known to have purchased rhino horn.⁵¹⁰

In an effort to learn more about this clandestine trade, in 2011-2012, Andrea Crosta of the E.A.L. led an undercover team investigation of elephant poaching in Kenya. This team spoke to dozens of poachers, traffickers, ex-warlords and others and found that many of the poachers and brokers were in fact “selling to Al-Shabaab. The group then sells the ivory on to markets in Asia, at a huge mark-up.”⁵¹¹ Crosta and his associates “revealed the carefully defined business perspective of an organization that has waged war against western and democratic influences in the Horn of *69 Africa.”⁵¹² According to one source, Al-Shabaab could be “turning over $600,000 a month,” from its ivory deals.⁵¹³ To avoid detection, the ivory is shipped by Al-Shabaab from different ports, to Iranian, Korean and Chinese ships waiting in the Indian Ocean.⁵¹⁴ The E.A.L. has aptly called ivory “The White Gold of Jihad.”⁵¹⁵

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Another group allegedly implicated in ivory poaching is the L.R.A. led by Joseph Kony, who was indicted in 2005,⁵¹⁶ and is wanted by the International Criminal Court⁵¹⁷ for war crimes and crimes against humanity.⁵¹⁸ Kony has also been hunted by U.S. Special Operations troops.⁵¹⁹ U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon presented a Report to the Security Council on May 20, 2013, explaining the growing security concerns in Central Africa from the presence of various armed groups including the L.R.A.⁵²⁰ In 2013, Jan Eliasson, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General connected Kony to the illegal ivory trade in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.⁵²¹

Kony is most notorious for kidnapping approximately 66,000 children (boys and girls), some just five years old, and converting them into child *70 soldiers who carry out his attacks.⁵²² Kony (in his fifties⁵²³ at time of writing) and his supporters are said to inhabit very remote areas in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a refuge said to be the size of France, impenetrable except by small aircraft or on foot.⁵²⁴ Between 2004 and 2013, the L.R.A. is alleged to have killed over 11,000 elephants in Gabon, as well as numbers of elephants in Cameroon in 2012 and Chad in 2013.⁵²⁵ In an excellent article in the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman reported on a 2012 incident during which L.R.A. poachers left a squad of rangers in Kenya “outgunned and outnumbered.”⁵²⁶ Defectors from the L.R.A. and some fortunate escapees provided information about Kony's orders to kill elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo,⁵²⁷ where Kony's alleged target is a U.N. world heritage site, Garamba National Park.⁵²⁸ According to the L.R.A. Crisis Tracker 2012, some escapees saw the killing of elephants and the exchange of ivory in return for rations delivered by persons who arrived by helicopter.⁵²⁹

In 2013, the Enough Project and the Satellite Sentinel Project visited Garamba National Park to interview park rangers and former L.R.A. members. They wished to document Kony's activities of exchanging ivory for arms, ammunition and food.⁵³⁰ Kony's patrons and enablers appear to be from the North Sudanese military, itself complicit both in ivory poaching and trafficking as well as the commission of terrible human rights atrocities, including the Darfur genocide, attributed to its Arab tribal auxiliaries.⁵³¹

Ivory is allegedly the “primary source of income” for the L.R.A.⁵³² The U.N. Security Council has formally condemned the L.R.A. and expressed *71 support for an end to its attacks.⁵³³ The 2013 U.N. Secretary General's Report on the L.R.A., referred to earlier, concluded that “[p]oaching and its potential linkages to other criminal, even terrorist, activities constitute a grave menace to sustainable peace and security in Central Africa.”⁵³⁴ The publishing of condemnatory reports is unlikely to have much impact on the L.R.A., or on its massacres of wildlife. However, exposing wrong-doing and naming and shaming are very significant aspects of what the U.N. can do quite successfully. One can only reiterate that the U.N. is not a world government. It only has the powers that its Members will allow it to possess.

Because of this fact, it is up to the U.N. Member States to act cohesively and decisively to end wildlife killing and thereby hopefully avert future terrorist attacks. In this globalized world we inhabit today, the frontline for North American and European security may well be located in a terrorist hideout somewhere in Africa.

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In a very real sense, “[t]oday, elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn have become currencies of war.”⁵³⁵ To provide just one example, Sudan has endured decades of violence that have killed thousands of people and animals. The decline in elephant numbers has occurred because the lengthy war “opened a door for poachers to slaughter them easily without stoppage from any authorities,” commented Lt. Col. Charles Laku Losio.⁵³⁶ The slaughter of numerous elephants in Cameroon in 2012 has been attributed anecdotally to the Janjaweed, a group alleged to have also committed ruthless killings of villagers in Darfur, Sudan,⁵³⁷ and in Niger and Chad.⁵³⁸ Clearly, where human and animal slaughter are involved, such terrorist organizations violate national borders with impunity. Ashish Kumar Sen of the Washington Times included the notorious Boko Haram of Nigeria in the list of militants trafficking ivory.⁵³⁹

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Those who work to protect wildlife face a particularly serious dilemma when confronting the nexus between poaching and terrorism funding. Law enforcement networks have for years-and particularly since 9/11-been moderately successful in tracking and curtailing the finances of some terrorist organizations. While this is a positive development, it also means that some terror organizations are desperate for funding for their nefarious operations and eager to get it no matter what the source. The very success of law enforcement in halting conventional means of terrorist financing may have driven these groups to wildlife poaching as an easy way to make quick money. When we consider that “[t]errorist financing is aimed at the future-new attacks and outrages,”⁵⁴⁰ the preservation of wildlife becomes an imperative linked to our own protection from terrorism. The preservation of iconic wildlife is the ultimate national security issue for humanity.

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This reality is increasingly being acknowledged worldwide. The decision in 2013 by the United States to destroy twenty-five years' worth of seized ivory “capped a year of strong rhetoric from U.S. government and conservation nonprofits that had framed the illegal killing of elephants as a threat to national security-ivory profits, the message has been, fund terror groups.”⁵⁴¹ The United States was justifiably concerned because in 2013 it ranked as “the second-largest market for ivory.”⁵⁴²

As we have seen earlier in this Article, Kenya and Gabon also destroyed vast amounts of confiscated ivory. However well-intentioned, this action has proved controversial. As Brad Plumer of the Washington Post aptly explains: “We know that destroying stockpiles reduces supply, but not necessarily demand.”⁵⁴³ The persistent demand facilitates the nefarious agenda of terrorist organizations and fraternal criminal gangs by driving up the price of ivory and raising the consequent profitability of poaching.⁵⁴⁴The United States has also emphasized the environmental components of multilateral trade agreements,⁵⁴⁵ a move that could eventually reduce demand for animal parts and hopefully reduce, if not eradicate wildlife poaching.

*73 In February 2014, Prince Charles and British Foreign Minister William Hague hosted a meeting of forty-six heads of state and eleven international organizations⁵⁴⁶ to end the illegal wildlife trade,⁵⁴⁷ a veritable “global criminal industry,”⁵⁴⁸ now estimated at $19 billion.⁵⁴⁹ The consequent London Declaration which was adopted by acclamation, called for “further measures to eradicate markets for illegal wildlife products, ensure effective legal deterrents, strengthen law enforcement, and support sustainable livelihoods.”⁵⁵⁰ Time will tell whether this important Declaration will be implemented in time to save the rhinos and elephants.

VI. Some Suggested Solutions

In a very real sense, the massacre and trafficking of so many wildlife species can no longer be considered an exclusively environmental issue that can be filed in a particular ecological niche,⁵⁵¹ and dealt with, or not, depending on other global priorities. It is not hyperbole to suggest that this is the ultimate international issue that covers political, military, economic, social and any number of other matters that should be of concern to every person on this planet. Nor is it exclusively a moral and ethical issue, although those criteria alone should justify far more action and activism on our part. Because wildlife poaching and consequent trafficking and smuggling are so complex, multi-faceted, multi-layered and involve so many different countries, there is no “one size fits all”⁵⁵²solution. Any blueprint has to consider that all the nations that are involved have unique cultural values, political systems and ethnic and religious sensitivities that cannot be overlooked if any solution is to be successful. That said, there is clear evidence now of an increasing acknowledgment on the part of African nations that their wildlife is part of their ancient and rich heritage and is worthy of protection and preservation. We have now a wonderful opportunity to use twenty-first century technology and international *74determination to exercise our caretaker and stewardship role over other species that are millions of years old. No one who has seen the pictures of orphan elephants and baby rhinos mourning their murdered mothers can fail to be moved by the sheer horror of these crimes.

The extensive research for this Article demonstrates very clearly that the most involved countries need strong law enforcement and customs officials, honest judiciaries, and well-trained and equipped game wardens to deal decisively with poaching and smuggling. In 2012, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime produced an excellent Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit that provides detailed and comprehensive information about many aspects of this subject. That extensively-researched document laments the fact that “less than half of CITES Parties have adequate domestic legislative, regulatory and institutional measures that effectively implement CITES.”⁵⁵³ The CITES Secretariat has even prepared a model law template on international trade in wild fauna and flora that can be used by states to develop their own legal framework.⁵⁵⁴ With so much effort at the international level, every national government should be encouraged and persuaded to pass relevant legislation that covers CITES' concerns and is yet domestically appropriate within its own jurisdiction. Very briefly, such laws need to be clear and easy to understand. The law must define the offences, determine whether or not there should be strict liability (meaning that conduct would be deemed criminal regardless of intent),⁵⁵⁵ and provide mandatory sentences that are commensurate with present-day perceptions of the seriousness of poaching and wildlife trafficking. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes suggests a country to country harmonization of penalties to avoid a criminal perception of some places being soft targets.⁵⁵⁶

Institutionally, there are any number of agencies at the international level which have developed an impressive expertise in all aspects of wildlife trafficking. Additionally, a vast array of NGOs are involved and have engaged in a number of worthy activities ranging from public awareness campaigns to sheltering orphan animals in Africa. One cannot but admire their idealism and dedication to saving our neighbor species. The expertise of all these agencies could be put to greater use by governments concerned about the loss of wildlife.

The London Conference of 2014 demonstrated that governments, especially in Africa, now view this matter with the seriousness it truly *75 deserves and that they are willing to devote resources and funding to dealing decisively with the crime. While there may be some excuse for African countries that are enduring civil war, rebellion, terrorism and ethnic conflict, the rampage of poaching even occurs in more stable societies like South Africa.

The main principle recommended here is for every government to deem wildlife crime as a primary issue, a matter that concerns national security, destruction of national heritage, a threat to law and order, which ultimately couldlead to social breakdown. Criminals who have gained a foothold in any country will certainly not withdraw once the wildlife has been destroyed. They will simply shift their activities to other soft targets. The lethal combination of a failed state, egregious poverty and rich foreign shipping targets in the vicinity resulted in turning Somalia into a haven for pirates.⁵⁵⁷ The very lucrative illicit trafficking of people is already a terrifying reality in regions of Africa plagued with poor governance and absence of effective authority.⁵⁵⁸

It is important to remember that the various types of criminals who perpetrate these crimes view the killing of wildlife as expedient, low-risk, high profit and ultimately, the easiest type of crime possible. It is imperative that governments utilize the tools of globalization to fight this crime effectively and efficiently, using every available twenty-first century technological invention.

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In view of the fact that this is both a criminal issue, as well as a challenge to national security for many nations, and above all a very significant environmental threat, solutions have tobe implemented with both dedication and a sense of urgency. This cannot be placed on the back burner while the world continues to focus on other important matters like the never-ending Middle East conflict, the issues in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and the crisis in Ukraine, among others. This issue of wildlife protection has to be raised at every opportunity to the level of a matter of international crisis because in a very real sense, we are the only hope for the survival of these iconic species. Their very existence depends on us being able to control and deal resoundingly with those who are so indifferent to life that they would gladly destroy these animals in order to gain profit. Those of us who care deeply *76 about wildlife need to insist globally on the funding and implementation of a comprehensive blueprint that will establish a new role for humanity, not as predator but as actively engaged steward of all species entrusted to our care. Many governmental agencies, NGOs, environmentalists and conservationists from a myriad of nations have proposed ideas that are excellent, practical and pragmatic. Journalists and bloggers from all nations have been raising awareness about this issue. The challenge is to make governments act with will and vigor to implement the many constructive ideas that exist to deal with this crisis. There is no dearth of solutions,the problem lies in the non-implementation of these excellent suggestions. It is now all about political will and determination.

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A transnational coordinated strategy that addresses every aspect of the illicit trade, all the way from the animal to the individual retail customer is necessary to end this terrible crime. Absent that type of coordinated effort, sporadic actions here and there are pointless, as the criminals are adept at adapting to threats. Closing off one method or route only leads them to open up alternate channels. When one nature park gains extra protection for its animals, the poachers move to other parks and as they operate continentally in Africa, with no nod to national boundaries, the need for coordination among all targeted countries is imperative.

Similarly with the smuggling end of this crime, when customs officials in one country dedicate themselves to seizing illegal materials, the kingpins who direct the criminal operations simply move the illegal cargo to alternate export and import ports or airports as the case may be. Dealing with such adept miscreants requires flexible, coordinated, rapid and efficient measures and, as John Scanlon appropriately said: “We need to find out who is ordering the contraband, find them, prosecute them, convict them, and incarcerate them.”⁵⁵⁹

A transnational sharing of intelligence is vital to achieve the aims elucidated by Scanlon and so many others who want to bring an end to this terrible crime. Technology can play a major role in this operation. The massive number of satellites circling the Earth could be easily utilized to provide real-time intelligence to African governmental and law enforcement agencies which have displayed a serious commitment to ending wildlife *77 poaching. Thanks to Edward Snowden, the whole world is now aware of the considerable capacity of surveillance systems. Putting these technological eavesdroppers to work to assist land forces to catch poachers is a vital initial step in curbing the killing of animals.

In an interesting report on the L.R.A., Kasper Agger and Jonathan Hutson provided a comprehensive list of necessary technology including airborne reconnaissance, satellite surveillance, geospatial information along with real-time intelligence sharing.⁵⁶⁰ Twenty-first century criminals need to be fought with twenty-first century technology. All too often, the protectors are, as we have seen, disadvantaged in that regard.

Hence, a need for international, multi-state cooperation, sharing technological tools between the police and armed forces, intelligence agencies and customs officials is critical if this nefarious activity is to be stopped. There is compelling evidence that when such cooperation occurs, it can be very successful. In early 2014, law enforcement officers from twenty-eight countries engaged in a joint operation code-named Operation Cobra II against wildlife poaching and trafficking.⁵⁶¹ This venture involved police, customs and wildlife officials, and funding was obtained from various governmental agencies including the U.S. State Department, the China Wildlife Conservation Association and the Canadian Embassy in Kenya.⁵⁶² The operation succeeded in catching several wildlife kingpins, and about 400 criminals and also resulted in the seizure of thirty-six rhino horns and over three metric tons of ivory along with various other endangered species.⁵⁶³ Steve Galster, Director of Freeland, a participating agency, commented: “This operation was a great example of governments, international organizations and nongovernment organizations collaborating to break up wildlife trafficking networks. We need to do this more.”⁵⁶⁴

Johan Bergenas and Monica Medina have suggested that “[t]op U.S. defence officials should routinely discuss wildlife trafficking in meetings with African military leaders.”⁵⁶⁵ Bergenas and Medina emphasize that the “U.S. military's post-Afghanistan plans must explicitly include poaching in Africa and illegal trafficking of wildlife as new ‘fronts' in the war on *78 terror.”⁵⁶⁶ This is an excellent idea as it serves a mutual benefit, simultaneously protecting African wildlife and American security.

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Strengthening judiciaries and ensuring judicial accountability⁵⁶⁷ in all involved states are vital to secure convictions and sentences that might prove to be an effective deterrent if conscientiously applied. For far too long, judges have given slap on the wrist sentences to those involved in poaching and kingpins have only recently been actively pursued. Aside from utilizing a strengthened criminal law to deal with poachers, there is another useful legal method. In 2013, a court in Mozambique awarded $3.5 million in damages to Miti, a container freight company which had sued a Chinese firm, Mozambique Tienhe Trading Development Ltd., for utilizing Miti's containers to smuggle ivory.⁵⁶⁸ Miti argued successfully that this misuse of its container damaged its corporate reputation and amounted to defamation. The judge agreed.⁵⁶⁹

If every form of legal action possible (criminal and civil) can be brought against the perpetrators along the entire supply chain, this might be one way to combat this crime. Additionally, in view of the global nature of poaching/smuggling, civil actions could be filed in courts in a variety of countries with the world's media provided ample information to ensure news coverage across the planet.

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The extensive research for this Article has led me to conclude that a complete ban on trade and purchase has to be implemented globally in order to stop the slaughter. A total ban on any purchases or sales of ivory and rhino horn, either internationally or domestically, is the only way to save these species. Any concessions to one-off sales of seized stocks or small auctions or to old ivory provide wiggle room for illicit material to creep through. These loopholes have to be closed. There will inevitably be complaints from some African countries who have persistently asked CITES to sanction limited sales. As we have seen in this Article, the experience of earlier one-time sales was drastic and tragic for elephants and rhinos. It was confusing for customers in China who were no longer sure about the legalities surrounding ivory. It opened the door to the escalation in poaching *79 and the decimation of wildlife. It enhanced the lucrative aspect of globalized crime and resulting in terrorist networks being able to fund their nefarious activities. When CITES sanctioned those earlier one-time sales, it plunged the world into a maelstrom which has impacted negatively on both animals and people in a number of countries.

Because rhino horn and elephant ivory are easily convertible to cash,⁵⁷⁰ those in possession, either through poaching, theft or illicit purchase, have easy access to weapons and could, someday even be able to purchase, steal or manufacture weapons of mass destruction. There appear to be no moral limits to the havoc that some terrorists seek to cause, no compunction about the loss of civilian lives involved in their operations. We cannot afford to ignore the threat posed by a situation where soft targets, namely hapless, largely unprotected animals, carrying a fortune on their face, are at the mercy of predatory and criminal human elements who use animal slaughter to fund operations that could result in massive loss of human life. As Mark Quaterman, Research Director of the Enough Project, commented: “Only effective local, national, and transnational action can stop this horror.”⁵⁷¹

Globally, heads of state and governments need to rally the same level of resources, commitment and energy to wildlife protection that they devote to national security. Make no mistake, this is an issue of national security for every country that is presently targeted by terrorists. We cannot continue to expect park rangers and game wardens to defend this ultimate interest and deal with well-armed, well-trained and utterly ruthless terrorist organizations. Too many game wardens have lost their lives gallantly protecting animals. They need the best of weaponry, helicopters, computer systems, tracking devices, whatever it takes, because they are ultimately on the front line of a daily war on terror and international crime. The global community has urgently to realize that, as Ian J. Saunders of The Tsavo Trust aptly commented: “No wildlife agency in the world is set up to fight terrorism, insurgents and rebel armies.”⁵⁷²

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African governments, all too aware of the vulnerability of their nations to terrorist organizations, have sought technological help.⁵⁷³In 2013, The Economic Community of Central African States agreed to jointly deal with elephant poaching and hoped to equip a 1,000 strong force with vehicles, satellite phones and aerial support.⁵⁷⁴ All such calls to the developed world should be deemed a priority because by equipping African states that are genuinely trying to fight poaching, we are in effect, defending our own societies. Self-interest and idealism can combine to deal cohesively with a terrible crime that is plaguing the world. A necessary mindset is one that realizes that every time an elephant or a rhino or any other iconic species is saved from a poacher's gun, a violent terrorist operation targeting civilians might be thwarted. If on a global basis, the entire official world views this issue from that perspective, the amount of resources directed to saving wildlife might just be sufficient to put an end to the wanton destruction of wildlife.

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It is important to cut off the sources of funding from all these miscreants, whether they are terrorists with a political or religious agenda or garden-variety greed-driven criminals. Again, if globally, financial institutions can be impelled or compelled to cooperate far more to reveal illicit accounts, that might also have an impact. Banks around the world, especially in tax havens, should also be urged to cooperate enthusiastically in investigations of corruption. Although financial institutions are inclined to protect the privacy of their clients, they also have a social obligation not to become indirect enablers of crime. Those countries that do not yet have strong legal controls over their banking systems should be provided with any help their governments need to create appropriate legislation to achieve that aim. Corruption is a significant enabler of the poaching/smuggling crime. Absent corruption, the chain from Africa to East Asia would be filled with hindering knots and this would make operations more difficult for the kingpins.

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Terrorist organizations require a constant and dependable source of funding, both to retain loyalists and to pay for their operations. As we have seen earlier in this Article, wildlife poaching provides a very easy method to *81 meet this need. Post-9/11, it has been widely acknowledged that the way to cripple any terrorist organization is to deprive it of its funding. With reference to wildlife poaching, the obvious solution is to make it impossible for either the poaching or the smuggling to continue. A related solution is to develop sophisticated systems to track the money trail of these criminals and thereby catch, arrest and convict the kingpins and the middlemen who reap the largest share of the profits. The United States Department of Treasury has established an Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with a multi-faceted approach, including intelligence analysis, sanctions administration, financial regulatory action, and most important, outreach to the international community and financial agencies.⁵⁷⁵ If the United States could assist many other countries to develop similar sophisticated agencies and encourage collaboration on a global scale, there could well be a drastic reduction in the financial activities of terrorist organizations with consequent benefits for the whole world. By offering its expertise, but diplomatically acknowledging the nationalistic pride of developing nations, the United States could strengthen its own national security apparatus via constructive cooperation with African and Asian states. The terrible crime of wildlife poaching could then bring about a cooperative, mutually beneficial and multilateral approach to combat this problem. As the United States is unfortunately the prime target of so many terrorist organizations, it needs to diplomatically extend its hand in as many such collaborative activities as it can, creating these important routes to ensure its own national security.

I would also suggest even more affiliation and active linkages between the United States and the numerous NGO's that have developed a tremendous on-site expertise in this area. Some NGO's may be hesitant to compromise their independent stature, but they can, nevertheless be invited to provide the benefit of their knowledge about wildlife, a crucial factor in the whole picture.

Johan Bergenas and Monica Medina have suggested collaboration between African governments and the western private sector to improve security at borders, ports and roads, an infrastructure market that could in a few decades be worth at least $60 billion.⁵⁷⁶Such defense-oriented technologies which will inevitably protect wildlife and people could include satellites and data collection systems, sensors, drones⁵⁷⁷ and a variety of *82 other technologies, some still to be invented. African governments have to become far more proactive in protecting their wildlife. This may be a challenge, especially in areas where governance is weak or non-existent, because of ethnic and religious conflict. However, in those African states that do have sovereign working governments, wildlife protection has to become a top priority. Their countries are not just losing wildlife, they are losing revenue, a vital natural resource, and their cultural and natural heritage. There are indications in countries like Kenya and South Africa of heightened awareness at the official level, with South Africa deciding in 2011 to station police officers and members of the National Defence Force in Kruger National Park.⁵⁷⁸

Steve Galster of FREELAND believes that generally there is considerable underestimation of the size of this illicit trade. Galster said that he had “never worked with a government that is detecting more than 5 percent of what is actually going on.”⁵⁷⁹ The revenue gains from improved systems could also be considerable and these could be dedicated to wildlife conservation and to providing employment for African villagers, jobs specifically protecting wildlife.

An affiliation between U.S. companies and African governments and NGOs can only be a considerable boost if it can demonstrate and implement improved measures to protect wildlife. The Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington D.C., recommended that an “increased role by defense and security organizations, defense contractors, and technology firms could also be particularly effective at combating the problem.”⁵⁸⁰ Of course, there always has to be a clear recognition and appreciation of the fact that Africans are a proud people whose cultural values and norms have to be understood and not dismissed by those who are sent to provide such assistance. Collaboration between equals based on mutual respect will inevitably succeed. Any other approach is doomed to failure.

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Joyce Poole, Co-Director of Elephant Voices, told the South China Morning Post that “[i]vory isn't worth much to the [Chinese] economy, but *83 losing the elephants will make a huge difference to African countries.”⁵⁸¹ One realm where the difference will be felt economically and in a multitude of ways will be from the impact on tourism. Africa has always been famous for its wildlife and it is imperative that the world now acts collectively to save and protect these species that have made an African safari such an unforgettable experience. Tourism is a major economic boost for much of the continent and the wildlife is the draw for thousands of visitors. In Kenya alone, approximately half a million people are employed in the tourist industry.⁵⁸² Visitors come to Africa from all over the planet to see the world as it once was-a world that has now largely disappeared from many of the other continents. That safari experience and the sight of wildlife make the African adventure truly unique. It would be a massive tragedy if the world failed to stop the poaching and allowed these neighbor species to become extinct. Besides damaging the environment, poaching impacts negatively on the tourist trade, “which represents a key part of many national economies.”⁵⁸³ Pragmatically, the financial benefits of tourism could be even greater with enhanced protection of wildlife and assured safety for tourists.

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There appears to be a recognition amongst some governments that large amounts of funding will have to be provided to save the remaining elephants and rhinos from complete extinction. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged $10 million to be used for the training of park rangers and police officials in Africa and Premier Li Keqiang of China matched that pledge.⁵⁸⁴ The United States Congress, committed $45 million to stop poaching and trafficking.⁵⁸⁵ Additionally, the Government of the United Kingdom promised the equivalent of $17 million to the war against poaching.⁵⁸⁶

Although such amounts are important, giving the vast trans-global nature of this crime, this is not even a drop in the bucket in terms of a permanent eradication of wildlife poaching. One possible solution to part of the funding issue was suggested in an interesting article in Scientific American. The suggestion was for the United States to “preferentially give foreign aid to those countries that have demonstrated a commitment to protecting *84 wildlife.”⁵⁸⁷ If all developed aid donor countries included this principle in their foreign aid programs that might go far toward curbing wildlife poaching. The security gain for the developed countries would be very significant. By assisting African governments to save their animal populations, the developed world countries would be taking steps to guarantee their own security. It is important to consider that the slaughter of just one elephant and the illicit sale of its tusks would have sufficed to fund the U.S. Embassy bombings by terrorists in 1998.⁵⁸⁸ The Western world and its global allies face a very compelling danger and in a very real sense, our fate is now inextricably linked with that of these iconic and threatened animals.

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The collection of reliable and accurate data on elephant and rhino populations is crucial for any blueprint aiming at conservation. Despite the enormous challenges of enumerating animals that are now shy, wary and quite afraid of humans who are justifiably perceived as predators, there are ways to achieve as nearly accurate an enumeration as possible. The creation of a reliable global census is the main way to monitor poaching and trafficking. A number of conservation NGOs have decided to undertake what is being termed the Great Elephant Census, with financing provided by philanthropist, Paul G. Allen.⁵⁸⁹ This enumeration will survey elephants and other large herbivores in thirteen African countries.⁵⁹⁰

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In 2008, Jacqueline Schneider, suggested a market reduction approach to the illicit wildlife trade, proposing that States Parties collect, analyze and disseminate information for the development of “an international clearinghouse of data” to facilitate law enforcement, conservation and crime reduction.⁵⁹¹

ENVIRONET, a global real-time communication tool, was launched in 2009 to combat trans-border environmental offences. As a platform for the *85 sharing of information, it can be accessed by law enforcement, Customs officials and international organizations.⁵⁹² The creation of similar systems to share information across the vast national parks and conservation areas in Africa would be a huge benefit to park wardens and to local police and magistrates. The research for this Article demonstrated a clear need for such technological assistance provided the systems are user-friendly, uniformly applicable and easily accessible across national borders. Animals are blissfully unaware of political boundaries and they and the criminals easily cross borders, while park wardens are sometimes unable to pursue the poachers beyond their own national frontiers.⁵⁹³

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Raoul Du Toit's comments about rhinos are also appropriate for elephants: “The future of rhinos [and elephants] . . . in all of Africa . . . will come down to two things: local communities and land use. How these two interests intersect means everything.”⁵⁹⁴ Local community involvement is critical for the success of any attempt to save wildlife from poachers. By one estimate, in 2012, approximately 350 million people lived in and around forests.⁵⁹⁵ Effectively tying their economic interests to the goals of wildlife protection can be a major way to combat poaching, particularly when it is carried out by terrorist organizations and criminal syndicates. It is obvious that there is a nexus between rural poverty and wildlife poaching. When fundamental human needs are met, wildlife protection becomes easier to implement.

There have to be financial incentives so that villagers opt for the honest approach rather than working to assist the criminals. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Congolese Nature Conservation Institute has recruited villagers to expose poachers in return for financial aid for community projects.⁵⁹⁶

The inclusion of local communities, particularly at the village level in Africa can be a decisive factor in determining the success or failure of any anti-poaching projects. If these communities can be convinced to partner in the goal of preserving wildlife, they will be less inclined to engage in predatory activities and assist the criminals. The obvious method is to use the same inducements provided now by the miscreants who often recruit *86 villagers to do the dirty work of killing and mutilating the animals, in return for guns and food along with very small cash payments. Governmental agencies are in a position to provide more permanent benefits to villagers, including clean water, electricity, cell phones, accessible roads, hospitals or at least, medical clinics, schools and dependable avenues of employment. Varun Vira and Thomas Ewing in their comprehensive study of ivory, propose community-based conservation measures, including the “sharing of economic benefits, local representation on management councils, . . . prioritizing local employment . . . and educating communities on the tangible benefits of conservation.”⁵⁹⁷

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I would suggest that U.S. computer and software manufacturers could advance their own interests and those of African nationals by providing free computers on a mass scale in return for regional and national action by governments to facilitate and expand available internet service to remote areas. Such benefits should be directly and clearly tied to a community's activities in protecting wildlife, reporting against poachers and assisting, wherever possible, local law enforcement. A quid pro quo approach with such long-term benefits can far outweigh any occasional sums paid by criminals. The proliferation of computer-use in African schools, especially in remote areas, has to be a priority. That is where Africa's next generation of wildlife protectors will be educated.

Africans have adopted cell phones with zeal. Expansion of such technologies is imperative to enable instant communication between the most remote regions and the nearest law enforcement agencies. The profits to be gained from enabling Africans to connect easily with each other are significant. This is an economic opportunity for adventurous technological entrepreneurs and a social improvement for African consumers. If such technology results in real-time photographic evidence of poaching and instantaneous reporting of criminal activity, that can only be useful for law enforcement and for prosecutors. Currently, as Varun Vira and Thomas Ewing have stated, “large numbers of elephants die in near-complete invisibility, with carcasses not documented until months or years after the fact.”⁵⁹⁸

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I would also suggest that the appeal to the youth of Africa, via social media should expand considerably to include a strong message about the vital role young people can play in protecting iconic animals. More, if young people in African countries become increasingly able to connect via social media with young people in China, Vietnam and Thailand, there will be an instant recognition and acknowledgment of the way this globalized crime is hurting both Africa and Asia. Young people have an enthusiasm and share an idealism that can be essential in a war of this type. An enhanced Africa-Asia social media linkage can provide numerous benefits to both cultures. The improved mutual understanding and mutual appreciation is bound to be beneficial. It might be worthwhile for school teachers and principals in various countries to place greater emphasis on trans-national classroom to classroom interactive discussions on wildlife poaching and its consequences, for school curriculums around the world to include study of this subject at all levels and for provision of scholarships for university students seeking to specialize in the many academic facets of this issue.

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If the African wilderness is indeed one more battlefield in the war on terror, then the role of park wardens is particularly important. The intensive research for this Article demonstrated that there are a considerable number of dedicated park rangers who are committed to protecting wildlife, even at the cost of their own lives. Assisting them should be a priority of the international community. Their needs are many and varied. To give just one example, park rangers in Congo's exquisite Garamba National Park need surveillance drones as a priority for their monitoring efforts.⁵⁹⁹ U.S. General Carter Ham, former Head of AFRICOM, agreed with the use of drones in Africa as “not only desirable, but . . . also likely to be very effective.”⁶⁰⁰ Google is reported to have donated $5 million to the World Wildlife Fund for this particular use.⁶⁰¹ If corporate donations like this can be sourced, the effectiveness of the wardens could only be enhanced.

A number of wildlife protectors are inadequately equipped in contrast to the poachers. To protect the animals they need excellent weaponry, efficient and fast vehicles, night-vision goggles and all forms of training.⁶⁰² The *88 military forces of the developed countries could assist in numerous ways by providing the type of training and intelligence gathering methods to their African counterparts who are tasked with protecting wildlife.

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There is no doubt that the raising of public awareness in the Asian countries addicted to rhino horn and elephant tusk has to be a major part of any campaign to eradicate poaching. One interesting suggestion came from Andrea Crosta who led an undercover investigation into elephant poaching in Kenya and discovered evidence of the terrorist linkage to wildlife poaching. Crosta wished to inform buyers that their ivory “is directly connected to someone dying in Africa, to a terrorist attack, to orphans and widows.”⁶⁰³

The domestic trade in ivory and rhino horn that occurs so normally in the end user countries has to be legislated out of existence. Given centuries-long myths that have prevailed, especially with respect to the alleged curative powers of rhino horn, such action by governments will be controversial. One should not, however, underestimate the adaptability of any population to new ideas. Arthur Schopenhauer's words give hope: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self- evident.”⁶⁰⁴

To give just one example of the adaptability of some Chinese to new ideas and new norms, one has to consider the long-held Chinese belief that eating dog meat on the summer solstice brings year-long health benefits.⁶⁰⁵ This “festival” is based in Yulin, Guanxi province, southern China and an estimated 10,000 dogs are slaughtered and consumed for this event.⁶⁰⁶ However, growing prosperity in China and the consequent upward mobility into the middle class has led to more Chinese keeping dogs as pets and experiencing the wonderful love that animals can bring to human life. The result has been a backlash inside China against the eating of dogs who are increasingly viewed as friends, not food. This “sea-change” in Chinese attitudes has been encouraged by foreign animal activists but it is essentially internally-based and spreading rapidly. Although there have been official *89 fears that this may be one more example of China bowing to Western cultural standards, the concept of Man's best friend is overtaking an old tradition and reducing it to the level of an archaic, unacceptable practice.⁶⁰⁷ If the Chinese can be persuaded to view elephants and rhinos as important, iconic species, worthy of preserving and protecting, it seems highly likely that a similar new understanding could motivate a change of heart concerning the consumption of wildlife products. An appeal to the heart of the Chinese and Vietnamese people is probably going to be all-important, an appeal that emanates from their own cultural milieu-not the West-and articulates a need to shun ivory and rhino horn. As author Carol J. Adams said, “[y]ou don't lose pleasure changing; you change what gives you pleasure.”⁶⁰⁸

The message for Chinese, Vietnamese and other wildlife products consumer countries has to be detailed and compelling, articulated to arouse conscience and engender a sense of horror and personal guilt. Laurel Neme, Andrea Crosta and Nir Kalron stated the required message very eloquently:

Buyers of ivory must understand that they are not simply purchasing a beautiful trinket. They are taking part in the slaughter of elephants. They are contributing to the death of rangers, men and women who lose their lives protecting elephants and rhinos. They are harming farmers, who have seen an increase in attacks by elephants traumatized by poachers. They are harming villagers and disadvantaged communities, who have been exploited by the poachers or forced into criminal activities.⁶⁰⁹

Inculcating a sense of shame⁶¹⁰ and emphasizing the terrible price involved in the massacres of animals could, if applied with persistence and respect, result in a changed mindset. Once the demand for these products dies, inevitably, the killing will end. Criminals are not going to engage in any venture when there are no ill-gotten gains to be made.

*90 The reduction of demand is critical for this criminal activity to cease. History establishes the success of such actions. When Japan, Yemen, South Korea and Taiwan reacted to international pressure and implemented trading bans on rhino horn, there was a positive impact, demonstrable by the low numbers of rhinos-averaging fourteen a year-poached in South Africa between 1990 and 2005.⁶¹¹

There are clear indications of a new mindset in some parts of the major end-use countries. An article in the prestigious Bangkok Post supported a ban on ivory, bluntly stating that “[i]t is time for governments to impose bans on certain uncivilized consumption. . . . By trying to phase out . . . the ivory trade, we may find that dinosaur-era mindsets lingering in the psyches of many Thais will be made extinct. And that would certainly be preferable than the end of elephants.”⁶¹²

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The key to effective resolution of this wildlife crisis comes with a realization that the safety of human beings is now inextricably linked with and dependent upon the safety of this planet's wildlife. It is all too easy to connect the dots between dead elephants and rhinos and criminal violence, including politically-motivated crime, namely terrorism. We have to view this as a primary issue and commit resources to dealing with it urgently. Tom Cardamone expressed the priority eloquently when he called for international effort, international focus and global political will.⁶¹³

VII. Conclusion

As we have seen, in a number of countries, “[d]emand for illegally obtained wildlife is ubiquitous.”⁶¹⁴ John Calvelli of the Wildlife Conservation Society aptly commented that a “major wave of poaching has been moving across Africa from west to east and north to south.”⁶¹⁵ From a global perspective, the trafficking of rhino horn and elephant ivory amounts to a “large-scale illicit resource transfer from Africa to Asia.”⁶¹⁶ Aggressive *91 poaching of rhinos and elephants by organized criminal syndicates could lead to extinction within a decade or two, possibly even earlier. Environmentally, this would be catastrophic; economically it would cause serious detriment to the financial structure of African countries that are fortunate to still have wildlife; socially it would be damaging in emphasizing the triumph of organized crime over law enforcement; and politically it would weaken both the rule of law and legitimate governing structures in that continent. In combating this terrible crime that trails so much tragedy in its wake, “[w]e all have a role to play.”⁶¹⁷

Extensive global cooperation with the entire world uniting to end this terrible crime is the only way. While the developed world can provide resources and expertise, it must lead the way by insisting on a total universal ban of all trade in ivory and rhino horn. I am convinced that international trade and domestic trade must both be eradicated. We have much to lose in the Western world if we deem the wildlife poaching crime to be primarily a developing world issue. As we have seen in this Article, many of the chief miscreants have an ultimate agenda of targeting our democratic, secular, multicultural societies and the fight for elephant and rhino survival is clearly linked to our own national security.

The end-user countries have to be persuaded to abandon their traditional cultural practices because of the terrible savagery they are indirectly, perhaps unthinkingly, unleashing a world away in Africa. As Martin Luther King said: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”⁶¹⁸ If ownership of ivory becomes a matter of shame and consumption of rhino horn an indication of regressive thinking, the tide may turn in a direction favorable to conservation.

The African governments have the largest role to play in devoting their considerable energies to protecting and preserving this wonderful gift that Mother Nature has bestowed on them. It would be shameful if future generations of Africans blamed those now living for having neglected and lost this greatest of all gifts.

The future role of CITES is pivotal and it should attempt to cease being a lightning rod for conflicting opinions and work to generate cohesion that alone will save these iconic species. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director articulated this role eloquently: “CITES must re-engage on illegal wildlife crime with a renewed sense of purpose, commitment, creativity, cooperation and energy involving range *92 states and transit countries to consuming nations of products such as ivory.”⁶¹⁹ Dr. Holly Dublin, Chair of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group, has stressed the need for “political will” to address the issue.⁶²⁰ Political will is the main ingredient that is now required.

For international organizations, this issue must remain at the forefront of global attention. It has to be consistently and frequently aired, discussed and articulated in those rhetoric fests that the U.N. and its sister organizations are so adept at organizing. Above all, we need to consider that every day, these two iconic animals, elephants and rhinos are being butchered brutally. We have to generate and assert an international people's initiative to act together to eradicate this terrible crime in all its brutal manifestations.

The human world has to remember its obligations to act as steward and care-taker and protector of all the species on this planet. This is our responsibility and our duty as well as our mandate. Finally, the last words to John F. Kerry, who as United States Senator, succinctly commented: “It is said that the elephant never forgets. Well, nor should we.”⁶²¹

a1

Although I came up with this title on my own, I later found some parts of it in two sources. First, an opinion article by U.S. Senator Rob Portman. His title was “Elephants Slaughtered for Trinkets and Terrorism.” Rob Portman, Elephants Slaughtered for Trinkets and Terrorism, CNN Opinion, Feb. 8, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/08/oinion/portman-elephants. Accordingly, this title is used with apologies to Senator Portman. There was also an article in National Post entitled “A ‘Heinous Crime’ for Trinkets and Chopsticks: Elephant Family of 12 Slaughtered as Poaching on the Rise.” A Heinous Crime for Trinkets and Chopsticks: Elephant Family of 12 Slaughtered as Poaching on the Rise, Nat'l Post, Jan. 9, 2013, http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/09/a-heinous-crime-for-trinkets-and-chopsticks-elephant-family-of-12-slaughtered-as-poaching-on-the-rise/ [hereinafter A ‘Heinous Crime’]. Accordingly, my title is used with apologies to the National Post.

aa1

The author, who is a Labor Relations Arbitrator also serves as a Full Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. She holds a law degree with Honors from the University of London (England). She has published extensively in the fields of international law, human rights and environmental law. In addition to writing a book on the Earth Summit at Rio, she has also written a series of articles tracing the nexus between human rights and globalization. These articles include a study of twenty-first century international slavery, child labor, organ trafficking, the global water crisis and the pirates of Somalia.

I dedicate this Article to my wonderful parents: my idealistic father, Khooshie Lal Panjabi, author, journalist and diplomat; and my loving mother, Lata K. Panjabi, poet, playwright, artist, musician, linguist and diplomat, who inspired me to write on this topic. Of all the wonders of the world revealed to me as I accompanied my diplomat parents on their many postings, most compelling were the few years spent in Africa. Driving on safari, through so much of that amazing continent, we encountered a natural world of wildlife that was spell-binding and spiritually uplifting. The resilience and strength of the African people and their sheer enjoyment of the gift of life were uplifting and unforgettable.

This Article acknowledges with great admiration and respect the contribution of thousands of men and women across the globe who are daily dedicating their lives to save animals. These people range from park wardens who risk their lives in Africa to educators in Asia who urge their compatriots to reject ivory and rhino horn. Whether they shelter orphaned animals or bravely speak out against their own cultural traditions, they are all truly heroes and worthy of emulation. I must also mention the significant contribution of many non-governmental organizations whose members work so hard to save our planet in so many ways. I also dedicate this Article to good friends, Mike and Michelle M. who will, I hope, someday travel to Africa. I thank Lenny, Jeffy, Davey, Pierre and the whole B.V. group for simply everything. This is especially written for Thirty-Four, “always and forever.”

1

Mark Hawthorne, Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering 422 (2013) (quoting Dan Piraro, Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro (2006)).

2

Julie Ayling, What Sustains Wildlife Crime? Rhino Horn Trading and the Resilience of Criminal Networks, 16 J. Int'l Wildlife L. & Pol'y 57, 57-80 (2013).

3

Piers Beirne, For A Nonspeciesist Criminology: Animal Abuse As An Object of Study, 37 Criminology 117, 117-47 (1999), reprinted in Environmental Crime: A Reader 185 (Rob White ed., 2009).

4

Liana Sun Wyler & Pervaze A. Sheikh, Cong. Research Serv., RL34395, International Illegal Trade in Wildlife: Threats and U.S. Policy 1 (2008).

5

G.A. Bradshaw, Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity, at xv (2009).

6

Bruce Friedrich, Foreword to Mark Hawthorne, Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism 13 (2008) (quoting Martin Luther King Jr., Out of the Long Night, The Gospel Messenger, Feb. 8, 1958, at 14, available at https://archive.org/details/gospelmessengerv107mors).

7

Varun Vira & Thomas Ewing, Ivory's Curse: The Militarization & Professionalization Of Poaching In Africa 5 (2014).

8

Elephants Face Extinction if Beijing Does Not Ban Ivory Trade: China Accounts for Nearly Half of the 40,000 Killed Every Year for Their Tusks, MailOnline (June 17, 2013), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343137/Elephants-face-extinction-Beijing-does-ban-ivory-trade-China-accounts-nearly-half-40-000-killed-year-tusks.html [hereinafter Elephants Face Extinction].

9

Kelly Enright, Rhinoceros 125 (2008).

10

Elephants in the Dust: The African Elephant Crisis, A Rapid Response Assessment 6 (Christian Nellemann et al. eds., 2013), available at http:// www.cites.org/common/resources/pub/Elephants_in_the_dust.pdf [hereinafter Elephants in the Dust].

11

Save the Rhino International, Poaching: The Statistics, available at http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/poaching_statistics.

12

See Ranee K.L. Panjabi, Born Free Yet Everywhere in Chains: Global Slavery In The Twenty-First Century, 37 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 1, 1-28 (2008).

13

Ivory and Insecurity, The Global Implications of Poaching in Africa: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, 112th Cong. 10 (2012) [[hereinafter Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations] (statement of Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton).

14

Iain Douglas-Hamilton OBE, Foreword to Ronald Orenstein, Ivory, Horn and Blood: Behind the Elephant and Rhinoceros Poaching Crisis 10 (2013).

15

Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, supra note 13, at 13 (statement of Sen. John F. Kerry, Chairman, S. Comm. on Foreign Relations).

16

Donald Kaberuka & Jim Leape, Breaking the Gridlock on the Global Wildlife Crime Crisis, Aljazeera Am. (May 26, 2013), http:// www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/20135262017481252.html.

17

AFP, Ruthless Crime Gangs Driving Global Wildlife Trade, Hindustan Times (India) (Sept. 3, 2013), http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/ruthless-crime-gangs-driving-global-wildlife-trade/article1-1023550.aspx.

18

AFP, Counting the Cost of East Africa's Poaching Economy (Mar. 24, 2014) [hereinafter Counting the Cost], http:// newsroom.wildlifedirect.org/tag/unodc/.

19

Yury Fedotov, How Tracking Their Financial Footprint Can Keep from the Animal Trail (Mar. 3, 2014), http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1439116/how-tracking-their-financial-footprint-can-keep-poachers.

20

U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Environmental Crime: Trafficking in Wildlife and Timber, available at http:// www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/environmental-crime.html (last visited Dec. 20, 2014).

21

Save the Rhino International, supra note 11.

22

New Figures Reveal Poaching for the Illegal Ivory Trade Could Wipe Out a Fifth of Africa's Elephants Over Next Decade, cites.org (Dec. 2, 2013), http://www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2013/20131202_elephant-figures.php.

23

Kaberuka & Leape, supra note 16.

24

Marwaan Macan-Markar, In Vietnam, Rhino Horns Worth Their Weight in Gold, Inter-Press Serv. News Agency (May 15, 2013), http:// www.ipsnews.net/2013/05/in-vietnam-rhino-horns-worth-their-weight-in-gold/.

25

Fedotov, supra note 19.

26

Alistair Doyle, Three Nations Do Least to Halt Trade in Animal Parts - WWF, Chi. Trib. (July 22, 2012), http:// articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-22/news/sns-three-nations-do-least-to-halt-trade-in-animal-parts-wwf-20120722_1_wwf-conservation-group-animal-parts-elephant-ivory.

27

Uli Schmetzer, Old Chinese Cures Endangering Wildlife, Chi. Trib. (Sept. 26, 1993), http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-09-26/news/9310010039_1_endangered-species-rhino-horn-white-rhinos.

28

Enright, supra note 9, at 119 (citing Lee M. Talbot, Marco Polo's Unicorn 563 (1959)).

29

Richard Ellis, Poaching for Traditional Chinese Medicine, European Ass'n of Zoos and Aquaria 24 (2005), available at http:// www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/117/1175857527.pdf.

30

Id.

31

Fedotov, supra note 19.

32

Macan-Markar, supra note 24.

33

Mike Ives, Vietnam Craves Rhino Horn; Costs More Than Cocaine, Associated Press (Apr. 4, 2012), http://news.yahoo.com/vietnam-craves-rhino-horn-costs-more-cocaine-062134928.html.

34

Elizabeth Kolbert, Save the Elephants, New Yorker (July 7, 2014), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/07/save-the-elehants?printable.

35

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 50.

36

Counting the Cost, supra note 18.

37

A ‘Heinous Crime,’ supra note *.

38

Susan Donaldson, Ivory Trade, Aid Animals! (Mar. 22, 2014), http:// www.animal-rights-action.com/ivory-trade.html.

39

Alexandra Wexler, Chinese Demand Revives Ivory Trade, Wall St. J. (Sept. 20, 2011), http:// www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904106704576580020012406 (statistics from Environmental Investigation Agency).

40

A ‘Heinous Crime,’ supra note *.

41

Jeffrey Gettleman, Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits, N.Y. Times (Sept. 3, 2012), http:// www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/world/africa/africas-elephants-are-being-slaughtered-in-poaching-frenzy.html?_r=0.

42

Esther Addley, Epidemic of UK Rhino Horn Thefts Linked to One Criminal Gang, The Guardian (Aug. 8, 2011), http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/08/rhino-horn-thefts-chinese-medicine.

43

Ives, supra note 33.

44

Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, supra note 13 (statement of John Scanlon, Sec'y Gen., Convention on Int'l Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).

45

Anne Davies, Rhino Horns Sold For $92,500 in Sydney, Sydney Morning Herald (Mar. 31, 2014), http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/rhino-horns-sold-for-92500-in-sydney-20140331-35t0p.html

46

Thief Hacks Tusk off Elephant Exhibit at Paris Museum, EuroNews (Mar. 31, 2013), http://www.euronews.com/2013/03/31/thief-hacks-tusk-off-elephant-exhibit-at-paris-museum/.

47

Ives, supra note 33.

48

Orenstein, supra note 14.

49

World Bank, Going, Going, Gone . . . The Legal Trade in Wildlife in East and Southeast Asia 4 (2005) [hereinafter World Bank].

50

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 125.

51

How to Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade from Funding Terrorist Groups, Sci. Am. (Nov. 19, 2013), http:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-stop-the-illegal-wildlife-trade-from-funding-terrorist-groups/.

52

Counting the Cost, supra note 18.

53

Kathleen E. McLaughlin, Borderland: China's Dangerous Appetite for Rare Animals, globalpost (Oct. 26, 2010), http:// www.globalpost.com/dispatch/china/101014/border-trafficking-endangered-species-animals.

54

Daniel Stiles, An Assessment of the Illegal Ivory Trade in Vietnam 2 (2008).

55

Fedotov, supra note 19 (explaining that the UNODC estimated in 2009 that of the $1.6 trillion laundered by criminals, constituting 2.7% of global GDP, about $8-$10 billion was estimated as being from profits of wildlife crime).

56

Jon Herskovitz & Ed Stoddard, Poachers make 2012 a Deadly Year for Africa's Rhinos, Elephants, Reuters (Dec. 27, 2012), http:// reuters.com/article/2012/12/27/us-africa-poaching-idUSBRE8BQ05920121227.

57

Id. (alleging involvement by the L.R.A. in the horn and ivory trade in Uganda).

58

World Bank, supra note 49, at 5.

59

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 53.

60

Id.

61

Member Countries, CITES, https:// cites.org/eng/disc/parties/index.php (last visited Dec. 20, 2014).

62

What is CITES?, CITES, https://cites.org/eng/disc/what.php (last visited Dec. 20, 2014).

63

Id.

64

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 54.

65

The CITES Appendices, CITES, https://cites.org/eng/app/index.php (last visited Dec. 20, 2014).

66

Elephant Ivory Trade-Related Timeline with Relevance to the United States, Humane Soc'y Int'l [hereinafter Elephant Ivory], http:// hsi.org/assets/pdfs/Elephant_Related_Trade_Timeline.pdf (last visited Dec. 20, 2014).

67

Ayling, supra note 2, at 58.

68

Jane Perlez, Ivory Trade Is Banned To Save The Elephants, N.Y. Times, Oct. 17, 1989, available at http:// www.nytimes.com/1989/10/17/science/ivory-trade-is-banned-to-save-the-elephant.html.

69

See Andrew M. Lemieux & Ronald V. Clarke, The International Ban on Ivory Sales and Its Effects on Elephant Poaching in Africa, 48 Brit. J. Crim. 451 (2009).

70

Wyler & Sheikh, supra note 4, at 10.

71

Perlez, supra note 68.

72

Jason Bell-Leask, IFAW's J. Leask on the 20th Anniversary of the Ivory Trade Ban, Int'l Fund for Animal Welfare (2009), http://ifaw.org/united-states/node/2314.

73

Elephant Ivory, supra note 66.

74

Id.

75

See Bell-Leask, supra note 72.

76

John Roach, Legal Horn Trade Could Save Rhinos From Cliff of Extinction, Experts Argue, NBC News (Feb. 28, 2013), http:// science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17133892-legal-horn-trade-could-save-rhinos-from-cliff-of-extinction-experts-argue.

77

Id.

78

The CITES Appendices, supra note 65. See also Born Free Foundation, Facts, http://www.bornfree.org.uk/animals/rhinos/.

79

Tunya Sukpanich, CITES Wraps Up in Bangkok to Mixed Reviews, Bangkok Post (Mar. 17, 2013), http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/340932.

80

Bekezela Phakathi, SA to Keep Open Mind on Rhino Horn Trade, Says Molewa, Bus. Day (Feb. 28, 2013), http:// www.bdlive.co.za/national/science/2013/02/28/sa-to-keep-open-mind-on-rhino-horn-trade-says-molewa.

81

Sukpanich, supra note 79.

82

UN Security Council Urges Regional Cooperation to Tackle Lord's Resistance Army Threat, Including Alleged Involvement in Elephant Poaching and Related Illicit Smuggling, CITES, https:// cities.org/eng/news/sundry/2013/20130531_un_lra.php (last visited Dec. 21, 2014) [hereinafter UN Security Council].

83

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 55.

84

Julian Rademeyer, Killing For Profit: Exposing The Illegal Rhino Horn Trade 109-11 (2013).

85

Michele Pickover, Animal Rights In South Africa 54 (2005).

86

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 54.

87

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit 15 (2012) [hereinafter Analytic Toolkit].

88

Id. at 13.

89

Id. at 17.

90

Id. at 18.

91

Id. at 19.

92

See Ranee K.L. Panjabi, International Law and the Preservation of Species: An Analysis of the Convention on Biological Diversity Signed at the Rio Earth Summit In 1992, in The Earth Summit at Rio: Politics, Economics and the Environment (1997).

93

Counting the Cost, supra note 18.

94

Id.

95

See World Bank, supra note 49, at vi, 3.

96

Counting the Cost, supra note 18.

97

Richard Ellis, Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn: The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine 9 (2005).

98

Khooshie Lal Panjabi, diplomat and my father, gained this knowledge through discussions with local chiefs and village elders in many communities visited during our years in East Africa.

99

Lawrence Anthony & Graham Spence, The Last Rhinos 319 (2012).

100

Hawthorne, supra note 1, at 434-36.

101

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 19.

102

Kerry, supra note 15.

103

Portman, supra note *.

104

Merrill Goozner, Elephants Or Fancy Signatures? Ivory Ban Worries Japan's ‘Hanko’ Carvers, Chi. Trib. (Sept. 20, 1992), http:// articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-09-20/news/9203250809_1_elephant-ivory-hank.

105

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

106

Rich Lowry, Pity the Elephants, Nat'l Rev. (Aug. 2, 2013), http:// www.nationalreview.com/article/355008/pity-elephants-rich-lowry.

107

TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC's Engagement in the Fight against Illegal Trade in Elephant Ivory (2012), available at http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals74.pdf.

108

Elephants in the Dust, supra note 10, at 6.

109

Status of African Elephant Populations and Levels of Illegal Killing and the Illegal Trade in Ivory: A Report to the African Elephant Summit 2, CITES, IUCN & TRAFFIC (2013), available at https:// cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/african_elephant_summit_background_document_2013_ en.pdf [hereinafter Status of African Elephant Populations].

110

Elephants in the Dust, supra note 10, at 6.

111

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 5.

112

See Elephants in the Dust, supra note 10.

113

Dan Wylie, Elephant 140 (2008).

114

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 17.

115

Silence the Guns, Sunday Standard (Dec. 9, 2013), http:// www.sundaystandard.info/article.php?NewsID=18643&GroupID=4.

116

A. Rangarajan, The Elephant in the Room, Frontline (Dec. 13, 2013), http://www.frontline.in/environment/the-elephant-in-the-room/article5389669.ece.

117

Jody Morgan, Elephant Rescue: Changing the Future for Endangered Wildlife 36 (2004).

118

Id.

119

Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, supra note 13 (statement of Ginette Hemley, Vice President, World Wildlife Fund & Tom Milliken, Elephant & Rhino Leader, TRAFFIC) [hereinafter Hemley & Milliken].

120

John R. Platt, What Happens When Forest Elephants Are Wiped Out In An Ecosystem?, Sci. Americans Blog (Mar. 1, 2013), http:// blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/forest-elephants-wiped-out-ecosystem/.

121

See id.

122

Daniel Stiles, The Elephant and Ivory Trade in Thailand, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, at v (Apr. 2009), http:// portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/Traf-107.pdf.

123

Id. at 4.

124

Elephants: MIKE and ETIS, CITES, https://cites.org/eng/prog/mike_ etis.php.

125

Stiles, supra note 54, at 4.

126

Elephant Poaching Doubled & Illegal Ivory Trade Tripled in Recent Years, CITES (Mar. 6, 2013), https://cites.org/eng/news/pr/2013/20130306_ ivory.php [hereinafter CITES].

127

Status of African Elephant Populations, supra note 109, at 1.

128

Id. at 11.

129

Rangarajan, supra note 116.

130

Indian Elephant, World Wildlife Fund, http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_ do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/indian_elephant (last visited Dec. 21, 2014).

131

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 21.

132

An Assessment of the Domestic Ivory Carving Industry and Trade Controls in India, TRAFFIC India (2003), http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals20.pdf [hereinafter An Assessment].

133

Morgan, supra note 117, at 8.

134

Wylie, supra note 113, at 74.

135

See Stiles, supra note 54.

136

Id.

137

Wylie, supra note 113, at 119.

138

Morgan, supra note 117, at 134.

139

With the exceptions of conservationists Joyce Poole and Peter Granli, who have developed an online gestures database and have discovered that elephants “have a sense of self and a sense of humor.” Christy Ullrich, Elephants Communicate in Sophisticated Sign Language, Researchers Say, Nat'l Geographic (Apr. 24, 2013), http:// www.voices.nationalgeogaphic.com/2013/04/24/elephants-communicate-in-sophisticated-sign-language-researchers-say/.

140

Lowry, supra note 106.

141

Id.

142

Sri Lankan Elephant, World Wildlife Fund, http:// www.wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/sri_ lankan_elephant/ (last visited Dec. 21, 2014).

143

Elephant Appeal: Why Conservation is about Forging a Friendship, Independent (Dec. 19, 2013), http:// www.independent.co.uk/voices/coment/elephant-appeal-why-conservation-is-about-forging-a-friendship-9016536.html.

144

Wylie, supra note 113, at 165.

145

Christina M. Russo, How China Is Driving the Grim Rise in Illegal Ivory, The Guardian (Jan. 23, 2012), http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/23/china-rise-illegal-ivory.

146

Simon Worrall, Baby Elephants Have Sharp Soccer Skills, New Video Shows. World Cup Prospects? Probably Not (June 23, 2014), http:// news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/1_40623-world-cup-soccer-elephants-sheldrick-wildlife-trust-kenya/.

147

Lowry, supra note 106.

148

Charley Lanyon, Demand for Ivory in China Has Led to Illegal Poaching in Africa, S. China Morning Post (July 16, 2013), http:// www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1281175/demand-ivory-mainland-has-led-illegal-poaching-africa.

149

K. Shiva Kumar, Grieving Elephants Block BR Hills Road for 12 Hours, New Indian Express (Dec. 15, 2014), http:// www.newindianexpress.com/states/Karnataka/Grieving-Elephants-Block-BR-Hills-Road-for-12-Hours/2013/12/15/article1946411.ece.

150

Alok K.N. Mishra, ‘Mourning’ Elephants Refuse to Leave Accident Site, Times of India (Aug. 5, 2013), http:// www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Mourning-elephants-refuse-to-leave-accident-site/articesshow/21608618.cms.

151

Bradshaw, supra note 5, at xix.

152

Ashok Kumar & Vivek Menon, Ivory Tower Sustainability: An Examination of the Ivory Trade, in Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability 135 (David M. Lavigne ed., 2006).

153

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 77.

154

Tara D. Sonenshine, The War on Tusks, Nat'l Geographic (July 10, 2013), http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/10/the-war-on-tusks/.

155

Lauren Kirchner, The Economics of Illegal Ivory, Pac. Standard (Nov. 20, 2013), http://www.psmag.com/environment/economics-illegal-ivory-poaching-animal-70303/.

156

Donaldson, supra note 38.

157

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

158

African Elephants, World Wildlife Fund, http://www.panda.org/what_ we_do/endingered_species/elephants/african_elephants (last visited Dec. 21, 2014).

159

Elephants Under Threat as Trade in Illegal Ivory Triples Over Past Decade, UN Report Says, UN News Centre (Mar. 6, 2013), http:// www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44295&Kw1=elephant&Kw2=#.VE5jadR4qKw [[hereinafter Elephants Under Threat].

160

Oscar Holland & Suia Chen, In China, You Don't Have to Look Far to Find Illegal Ivory, Independent (Jan. 1, 2014), http:// www.indepdendent.co.uk/voices/comment/in-china-you-don't-have-to-look-far-to-find-illegal-ivory-9033012.html.

161

Kelvin Chan, Hong Kong's Ivory Cache Poses Risk, J. Gazette (Dec. 2, 2013), http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20131202/BIZ/312029991.

162

Charging China Demand Drives Deadly Ivory, Inquirer (Feb. 28, 2013), http://globalnation.inquirer.net/65923/charging-china-demand-drives-deadly-ivory-trade/.

163

Dan Levin, From Elephants' Mouths, An Illicit Trail to China, N.Y. Times (Mar. 1, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/asia/an-illicit-trail-of-african-ivory-to-china.html.

164

Id.

165

Edward Gay, Trader Thought Ivory Would Make Good Investment, N.Z. Herald (Apr. 17, 2013), http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_ id=132&siteid=2121&id=1816180&t=1366185509.

166

Elephants Under Threat, supra note 159.

167

Melanie Gosling, Legal Ivory Trade ‘Will Fuel Demand,’ Cape Times (Capetown, South Africa) (Dec. 13, 2013), http:// www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/legal-ivory-trae-will-fuel-demand-1.1622278#.VFAr4IfF_wx.

168

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13, at 6.

169

AVA Sending Illegal Ivory Worth $2.5 Million Back to Africa, Today (Singapore) (July 23, 2013), http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/ava-seizes-18-tonnes-raw-ivory=tusks=worth-s25-million.

170

Daniel Cressey, Nations Fight Back on Ivory, Nature (Nov. 26, 2013), http://www.natureco/news/nations-fight-back-on-ivory-1.14247.

171

Baradan Kuppusamy, Ivory Course Runs From Africa to Malaysia to China, Inter Press Service (Kuala Lumpur) (Aug. 12, 2013), http:// www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/ivory-course-runs-from-africa-to-malaysia-to-china/.

172

Id.

173

Status of African Elephant Populations, supra note 109, at 16.

174

Morgan, supra note 117, at 16.

175

See Chris R. Shepherd & Vincent Nijman, Elephant and Ivory Trade in Myanmar, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia 23 (2008), http:// cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/elephant_and_ivory_trade_in_myanmar.pdf.

176

Wylie, supra note 113, at 16.

177

Edgar O. Espinoza & Mary-Jacque Mann, Identification Guide for Ivory and Ivory Substitutes 5-6 (2d ed. 1992).

178

An Assessment, supra note 132, at 7-9.

179

Levin, supra note 163.

180

Elephants Face Extinction, supra note 8.

181

Levin, supra note 163.

182

Wylie, supra note 113, at 154.

183

Id.

184

Tom Milliken et al., No Peace for Elephants: Unregulated Domestic Ivory Markets in Angola and Mozambique, 11 TRAFFIC Online Report Series 24 (Apr. 2006), http://www.traffic.org/species_reports/traffic_species_ mammals26.pdf.

185

Id.

186

Wylie, supra note 113, at 154.

187

Id.

188

Kuppusamy, supra note 171; Morgan, supra note 117, at 16.

189

Wylie, supra note 113, at 156.

190

Douglas F. Williamson, Tackling the Ivories: The Status of the US Trade in Elephant and Hippo Ivory, TRAFFIC North America 1-2 (Sept. 2004), http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals28.pdf.

191

Id. at 2.

192

Kerry, supra note 15, at 3.

193

Lily Kuo, New York Jewelers Admit Sale of 1 Ton of Illegal Ivory, Reuters (July 12, 2012), http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/13/us-usa-ivory-poaching-idUSBRE86B1IS20120713.

194

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13, at 5.

195

Sonenshine, supra note 154.

196

Kirchner, supra note 155.

197

Brad Plumer, The Grisly Economics of Elephant Poaching, Wash. Post (Nov. 6, 2013), http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/06/the-grisly-economics-of-elephant-poaching/.

198

Lanyon, supra note 148.

199

Thousands of Pieces of Ivory Found for Sale on Myanmar's Border with China, TRAFFIC (Jan. 13, 2014), http:// www.traffic.org/home/2014/13/thousands-of-pieces-of-ivory-found-for-sale-on-myanmars-bord.html.

200

Nigel Leader-Williams, The World Trade in Rhino Horn: A Review, Traffic Int'l (1992), http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_ mammals45.pdf.

201

Wylie, supra note 113, at 162.

202

Elga Reyes, Softbank's Yahoo! Japan Refuses to Take Down Unethical Ads Selling Elephant Ivory, Whale Products, Eco-Business (Aug. 14, 2013), http://www.eco-business.com/news/Softbank-yahoo-japan-refuses-take-down-unethical-ads-selling-elephant-ivory-whale-products/.

203

Per Liljas, The Ivory Trade Is Out of Control, and China Needs to Do More to Stop It, Time (Nov. 1, 2013), http://world.time.com/2013/11/01/the-ivory-trade-is-out-of-control-and-china-needs-to-do-more-to-stop-it/.

204

Esmond Martin & Tom Milliken, No Oasis: The Egyptian Ivory Trade in 2005, TRAFFIC Int'l (2005), http://www.trafficj.org/publication/05_No_ Oasis.pdf.

205

Id. at 1.

206

Andy Coughlan, Ivory Traders May Be Benefitting from Arab Spring, New Scientist (Feb. 1, 2013), http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21412-ivory-traders-may-be-benefitting-from-ara#.VHPuZ76przJ.

207

Stiles, supra note 54, at vi.

208

Status of African Elephant Populations, supra note 109, at 7.

209

Id.

210

Elephants in the Dust, supra note 10, at 7.

211

Leader-Williams, supra note 200, at 26.

212

Peter Li & Iris Ho, China Must Help to Stop Bloody Ivory Trade, S. China Morning Post (July 25, 2013), http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1289900/china-must-help-stop-bloody-ivory-trade.

213

Liljas, supra note 203.

214

Gettleman, supra note 41.

215

Levin, supra note 163.

216

Id.

217

Liljas, supra note 203.

218

Wexler, supra note 39.

219

Angus Walker, The Dirty Business of the Lucrative Ivory Trade From Africa to Asia, Knysna Elephant Park (Jan. 13, 2013), http:// www.knysnaelephantpark.co.za/the-dirty-business-of-the-lucrative-ivory-trade-from-africa-to-asia.

220

China's Demand for their Tusks is a Grave Threat to Africa's Elephants, African Wildlife Trust (Feb. 4, 2013), http:// legacytalk.blogspot.com/2013/02/chinas-demand-for-their-tusks-is-grave.html.

221

Shifan Wu, Kenya: China Has a Zero Tolerance on Illegal Ivory Trade, Star (Feb. 8, 2013), http://allafrica.com/stories/201302081534.html.

222

Xinhua, Ivory Artworks Trading Ban Affects Auction Turnover, China.org (Feb. 13, 2013), http://www.china.org.cn/china/Off_the_Wire/2013-02/12/content_27945780.html.

223

Charging China Demand Drives Deadly Ivory, supra note 162.

224

David Leveille, When You Buy Ivory, You May be Funding al-Shabab Terrorists, No Animal Poaching (Oct. 8, 2013), http:// www.noanimalpoaching.org/animal-poaching-news/when-you-buy-ivory-you-may-be-funding-al-shabab-terrorists.

225

Id.

226

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 96.

227

Plumer, supra note 197.

228

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 59.

229

Levin, supra note 163.

230

Charging China Demand Drives Deadly Ivory, supra note 162.

231

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 59.

232

Plumer, supra note 197.

233

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 63.

234

Id. at 59.

235

Id. at 63-64.

236

Plumer, supra note 197.

237

Ivory Trade Experts Are Still Avoiding the Key Issue, Envtl. Investigation Agency (Apr. 12, 2012), http://eia-internationa.org/ivory-trade-experts-are-still-avoiding-the-key-issue.

238

Levin, supra note 163.

239

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 84.

240

Levin, supra note 163.

241

Id.

242

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

243

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 84.

244

Levin, supra note 163.

245

Ivory Trade Experts Are Still Avoiding the Key Issue, supra note 237.

246

China Says Its Legal Ivory Trade Not to Blame for Poaching, Reuters (May 21, 2013), http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-china-ivory-idUSBRE94K0CL20130521.

247

Levin, supra note 163.

248

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

249

UN Rejects Bids to Sell Ivory Stock, Al Jazeera (Mar. 23, 2010), http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010322141910559975.html.

250

The Deadly Trade in Ivory Escalates, Envtl. Investigation Agency (Mar. 11, 2010), http://eia-international.org/the-deadly-trade-in-ivory-escalates.

251

UN Rejects Bids to Sell Ivory Stock, supra note 249.

252

Id.

253

Pro-Ivory Trade Report Shows “Shocking” Bias, Envtl. Investigation Agency (July 17, 2012), http://eia-international.org/pro-ivory-trade-report-shows-shocking-bias.

254

Bill Dollinger, Ivory-War Angst, Chi. Trib. (June 27, 1997), http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-06-27/news/9706270091_1_elephant-populations-elephant-herds-convention-on-inernational-trade.

255

Wexler, supra note 39.

256

Gettleman, supra note 41.

257

Hemley & Milliken, supra note 119, at 53.

258

Elephants in the Dust, supra note 10.

259

China Says Its Legal Ivory Trade Not to Blame for Poaching, supra note 246.

260

Donaldson, supra note 38.

261

Elephant-Size Loopholes Sustain Thai Ivory Trade, World Wildlife Fund (June 19, 2009), http://www.panda.org/wwf_news/press_releases/? 167341/Elephant-size-loopholes-sustain.

262

Major Increase in Thai Ivory Market Shows Need for Action at Wildlife Trade Meeting, World Wildlife Fund (July 2, 2014), http:// wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/press_releases/?224691/Major-increase-in=Thai-ivory-market-shows-need-for-action-at-wildli.

263

Thailand's Flourishing Ivory Trade, Al Jazeera (Mar. 13, 2010), http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2010/03/20103138635482810.html.

264

Major Increase in Thai Ivory Market Shows Need for Action at Wildlife Trade Meeting, supra note 262.

265

How to Tell Real from Fake Ivory, TRAFFIC (Jan. 27, 2011), http:// www.traffic.org/home/2011/1/27/how-to-tell-real-from-fake-ivory.html.

266

Thailand's Flourishing Ivory Trade, supra note 263.

267

Leader-Williams, supra note 200.

268

Apinva Wipatayotin, Ivory Sellers on the Horns of a Dilemma, Bangkok Post (Mar. 10, 2013), http:// www.bangkokpost.com/lite/topstories/339664/ivory-sellers-on-the-horns-of-a-dilemma.

269

Id.

270

Adam Welz, Amid Elephant Slaughter, Ivory Trade in US Continues, The Guardian (Feb. 13, 2014), http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/13/elephant-slaughter-ivory-trade-us.

271

Kolbert, supra note 34.

272

Rademeyer, supra note 84, at xi.

273

Ayling, supra note 2, at 57-80.

274

Rademeyer, supra note 84, at xi.

275

Lixin Huang, Traditional Chinese medicine and harmony of the planet: Lixin Huang at TEDxWWF, World Wildlife Fund (June 2012), http:// wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/multimedia/tedxwwf/events/Singapore/speakers/lixin_ huang/.

276

Ayling, supra note 2, at 62.

277

Julie Scardina & Jeff Flocken, Wildlife Heroes: 40 Leading Conservationists and the Animals They Are Committed To Saving 50-51 (2012).

278

Sixteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties, Bangkok, Thailand, CITES (Mar. 2013), http://www.cities.org/eng/cop/16/doc/E-CoP16-5-02.pdf.

279

Scardina & Flocken, supra note 277, at 50.

280

Ellis, supra note 97, at 247.

281

Kolbert, supra note 34.

282

Hannah Beech & Alex Perry, Killing Fields, Africa's Rhinos Under Threat, Time (June 13, 2011), http:// content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2075283,00.html.

283

Richard H. Emslie et al., African and Asian Rhinoceroses - Status, Conservation and Trade, CITES (Nov. 20, 2009), http:// www.cites.org/common/cop/15/doc/E15-45-01A.pdf.

284

Scardina & Flocken, supra note 277, at 53.

285

Subir Bhaumik, INDIA: Rhinos Turn Kaziranga Park Into Maternity Ward, InterPress Service (May 10, 1999), http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/05/india-rhinos-turn-kaziranga-park-into-maternity-ward/.

286

Update on Rhino Poaching Statistics, S. Afr. Envtl. Affairs Dep't (Jan. 17, 2014), available at https:// www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/rhinopoaching_statistics_17Jan2014.

287

Sixteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties, Bangkok, Thailand, supra note 278, at 3.

288

Id. at 4.

289

Kolbert, supra note 34.

290

Emslie et al., supra note 283.

291

Leader-Williams, supra note 200.

292

Id.

293

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

294

Habitat Loss, Save the Rhino International, http:// www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/threats_to_rhino/habitat_loss (last visited Oct. 29, 2014).

295

Karl Ammann, How Rhino Horns End UP in Asian Jewellery Shops, The Star (Aug. 2, 2013), http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-130563/how-rhino-horns-end-asian-jewellery-shops.

296

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

297

Time Magazine Exposes Plans for Chinese Rhino ‘Farming,’ TIME (June 7, 2011), http://www.traffic.org/home/2011/6/7/time-magazine-exposes-plans-for-chinese-rhino-farming.html.

298

Rhinos Listed Among the Most Threatened Species, World Wildlife Fund (Sept. 11, 2012), http://wwf.pnad.org/wwf_news/?206150/Rhinos-listed-among-the-most-threatened-species.

299

Reese Halter, Insatiable Demand For African Rhino Horn Spell Extinction, Huffington Post (Apr. 18, 2014), http://www.huffintonpost.com/dr-reese-halter/insatiable-demand-for-afr_b_4055075.html.

300

One-Off Sale of Rhino Horn Stockpiles, Save the Rhino Int'l (2013), http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/thorny_issues/legalizing_the_horn_ trade/one-off-_sale_of_rhino_horn_stockpiles.

301

Ellis, supra note 29.

302

Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction, Nature (PBS), http:// www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/rhinoceros-rhino-horn-use-fact-vs-fiction/1178/ (last visited Oct. 8, 2014).

303

Roach, supra note 76.

304

Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction, supra note 302.

305

Id.

306

Facts About Rhino Horn, Office of Law Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/le/pdf/rhino-horn-factsheet.pdf (last visited Oct. 8, 2014).

307

Id.

308

Ellis, supra note 97, at 133.

309

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

310

Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros, World Wildlife Fund, http:// wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endingered_species/rhinoceros/asian_rhinos/indian_ rhinoceros/.

311

Ellis, supra note 97, at 127.

312

Enright, supra note 9, at 119.

313

Susan Barrett, Rhino Horn use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Safaritalk (Apr. 8, 2012), http://safaritalk.net/topic/8258-rhino-horn-use-in-traditional-chinese-medicine/.

314

Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction, supra note 302.

315

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 38.

316

Point-less Rhinos = Pointless Concoction, RhiNOremedy, http:// www.rhinoremedy.org/medicine/point-less-rhinos (last visited Oct. 8, 2014).

317

Enright, supra note 9, at 123.

318

Id.

319

Leader-Williams, supra note 200.

320

Enright, supra note 9, at 123.

321

Poaching for Jambiya Handles, Save the Rhino Int'l (2014), http:// www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/threats_to_rhino/poaching_for_jambiya_handles.

322

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 41.

323

Enright, supra note 9, at 124.

324

Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction, supra note 302.

325

Enright, supra note 9, at 124.

326

Facts About Rhino Horn, supra note 306.

327

Id.

328

Ellis, supra note 29.

329

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Endangered Animals, Britannica: Advocacy for Animals (Oct. 22, 2007), http:// advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-and-endangered-animals/.

330

Maneka Sanjay Gandhi, Chinese Medicine Eating Up the Animal Population, Mathrubhumi (Dec. 17, 2013), http:// mathrubhumi.com/english/columns/faunaforum/chinese-medicine-eating-up-the-animal-population-142383.html.

331

Using Endangered Animal Species in Traditional Chinese Medicine, 11 Asiabiotech 1196, 1197 (2007), available at http:// www.asiabiotech.com/publication/apbn/11/English/preserved-docs/1117n18/1196_ 1197.pdf.

332Point-less Rhinos = Pointless Concoction, supra note 316.

333

Rhishja Larson, Rhino Horn: All Myth, No Medicine, Nat'l Geographic (July 7, 2010), http:// voices.nationalgeographic.com/2010/07/07/rhino_horn_and_traditional_chinese_ medicine_facts/.

334

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Endangered Animals, supra note 329.

335

Lauren Gloekler, Role of Toxic and Endangered Plants and Animals in Chinese Medicine, Nicholas Sch. Internship Blogs (July 13, 2012), http:// blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/internshipblogs/role-of-toxic-and-endangered-plants-and-animals-in-chinese-medicine/.

336

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 39.

337

Ellis, supra note 29.

338

Alternatives to Rhino Horn, J. Chinese Med., http:// www.jcm.co.uk/endangered-species-campaign/rhinoceros/alternatives-to-rhino-horn/.

339

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340

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 40.

341

Keep Endangered Species Out of TCM, Animal Concerns Research & Education Society, http://www.acres.org.sg/campaigns/current-campaigns/keep-endangered-out-of-tcm.html (last updated 2014).

342

Gloekler, supra note 335; Alternatives to Rhino Horn, supra note 338.

343

Ruth Becker, Medical Claims for Rhino Horn: You're Better on an Aspirin or Biting Your Nails, Africa Check (Sept. 22, 2013, 9:55 AM), http:// africacheck.org/reports/medical-claims-for-rhino-horn-youre-better-on-an-aspirin-or-biting-your-nails/.

344

Current Response of the Profession, J. Chinese Med., https:// www.jcm.co.uk/news/asiatic-black-bear-current-response-of-the-profession/ # (last updated 2014).

345

The Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, J. Chinese Med., http:// www.jcm.co.uk/endangered-species-campaign/statements-from-the-chinese-medicine-profession/rchm/ (last updated 2014).

346

Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction, supra note 302.

347

Ellis, supra note 97, at 98.

348

Wildlife in Traditional Medicines, supra note 339.

349

Anthony & Spence, supra note 99, at 256.

350

Point-less Rhinos = Pointless Concoction, supra note 316.

351

Ayling, supra note 2, at 61.

352

Jo Shaw, Supply and Demand: The Illegal Rhino Horn Trade, Save the Rhino Int'l (2011), http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/threats_to_ rhino/poaching_for_traditional_chinese_medicine/supply_and_demand_the_illegal.

353

TIME Magazine Exposes Plans for Chinese Rhino ‘Farming,’ supra note 297.

354

Enright, supra note 9, at 120.

355

Id.

356

Becker, supra note 343.

357

Javan Rhino Extinct in Viet Nam, TRAFFIC (Oct. 25, 2011, 6:01 AM), http://www.traffic.org/home/2011/10/25/javan-rhino-extinct-in-viet-nam.html.

358

Gwynn Guilford, Why Does a Rhino Horn Cost $300,000? Because Vietnam Thinks It Cures Cancer and Hangovers, The Atlantic (May 15, 2013, 1:19 PM), http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/why-does-a-rhino-horn-cost-300-000-because-vietnam-thinings-it-cures-cancer-and-hangovers/275881/.

359

Profile of a Rhino Horn User, WWF S. Afr. (Aug. 15, 2013), http:// www.wwf.org.za/what_we_do/rhino_programme/?8683/profile-of-a-rhino-horn-user.

360

Guilford, supra note 358.

361

Id.

362

Id.

363

Id.

364

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

365

Emslie et al., supra note 283, at 5.

366

Guilford, supra note 358.

367

Javan Rhino Extinct in Viet Nam, supra note 357.

368

Martin Harvey, Pioneering Research Reveals New Insights Into the Consumers Behind Rhino Poaching, TRAFFIC (Sept. 17, 2013), http:// www.traffic.org/home/2013/9/17/pioneering-research-reveals-new-insights-into-the-consumers.html.

369

Profile of a Rhino Horn User, supra note 359.

370

Guilford, supra note 358.

371

Joseph Stromberg & Sarah Zielinski, Ten Threatened and Endangered Species Used In Traditional Medicine, Smithsonian (Oct. 19, 2011), http:// www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-threatened-and-endangered-species-used-in-traditional-medicine-112814487/?no-ist.

372

Guilford, supra note 358.

373

Fiona Gordon, Breaking the Brand: Rhino Horn, The Dodo (Apr. 27, 2014), https://www.thedodo.com/community/FGordon/breaking-the-brand-rhino-horn-52912967.html.

374

Guilford, supra note 358.

375

Wildlife in Traditional Medicines, supra note 339.

376

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

377

Id.

378

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Endangered Animals, supra note 329.

379

Ellis, supra note 97, at xi.

380

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

381

Id.

382

Mike Ives, A Public Relations Drive to Stop Illegal Rhino Horn Trade, Yale Env't (Apr. 15, 2014), http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_public_ relations_drive_to_stop_illegal_rhino_horn_trade/2756/.

383

Id.

384

See Panjabi, supra note 12, at 1-28.

385

See id. at 421-64.

386

Jacqueline L. Schneider, Reducing the Illicit Trade In Endangered Wildlife: The Market Reduction Approach, 24 J. Contemp. Crim. Just. 274-95 (2008); Environmental Crime: A Reader, supra note 3, at 590-91.

387

Carl Safina, Blood Ivory (Kenya), N.Y. Times (Feb. 11, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/ 2013/02/12/opinion/global/blood-ivory.html?_r=0.

388

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

389

Id. at 23.

390

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

391

Michael Marshall, Elephant Ivory Could Be Bankrolling Terrorist Groups, NewScientist (Oct. 2, 2013), http:// www.newscientist.com/article/dn24319-elephant-ivory-could-be-bankrolling-terri.

392

Agence France-Presse, UN: Poaching Financing African Terror Groups, Africa Rev., June 14, 2014, http://www.africareview.com/News/UN-says-wildlife-crime-bankrolling-Afric an-terror-groups/-/979180/2360958/-/rj8ixu/-/ index.html.

393

Stimson Report Calls for Global Effort to Cut Poaching & Other Wildlife Crimes that Fund Terrorists, Stimson (Jan. 7, 2014), http:// www.stimson.org/spotlight/stimson-report-calls-for-global-effort-to-cut-poaching-other-wildlife-crimes-that-fund-terrorists/.

394

Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, supra note 13 (statement of Tom Cardamone, Managing Director, Global Financial Integrity).

395

Counting the Cost, supra note 18; Price of a Kilogram of Ivory for Sale in Asia, Havocscope (Mar. 24, 2014), http://www.havocscope.com/price-of-a-kilogram-of-ivory-for-sale-in-asia/?relatedposts_e.

396

Hawthorne, supra note 1, at 220.

397

Russo, supra note 145.

398

Elephant Poaching in Zimbabwe, Havocscope (Oct. 21, 2013), http:// www.havocscope.com/tag/elephant-poaching.

399

Gettleman, supra note 41.

400

Hawthorne, supra note 1, at 221.

401

Id.

402

Id.

403

Andy Coulan, Record Ivory Seizures Point to Trafficking Rise, NewScientist (Dec. 3, 2013), http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24692-record-ivory-seizures-point-to-trafficking-r.

404

Walker, supra note 219.

405

Joe DeCapua, Report: Militarization of Poaching, Voice of America (Apr. 21, 2014), http://www.voanews.com/content/ivorys-curse-21apr14/1897891.html.

406

World Bank, supra note 49, at 2.

407

Scanlon, supra note 44, at 27.

408

Plumer, supra note 197.

409

Pro-Ivory Trade Report Shows “Shocking” Bias, supra note 253.

410

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 103.

411

Id. at 255.

412

Id. at 104-05.

413

Rademeyer, supra note 84, at 100.

414

Id. at 102-03.

415

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 105-07.

416

Adam Welz, The Dirty War Against Africa's Rhinos, The Guardian, Nov. 27, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/nov/27/dirty-war-africas-rhinos.

417

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 105-08.

418

South Africa Gives Rhino Poacher 40-Year Jail Term, BBC News (Nov. 9, 2012), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20267967.

419

Orenstein, supra note 14, at 105-08.

420

Rademeyer, supra note 84, at 285.

421

Loretta Napoleoni, Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks 203 (2005).

422

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

423

Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General, U.N., Remarks at a High Level Event on Illicit Wildlife Trafficking (Sept. 26, 2013), in United Nations Env't Program News Ctr., http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx? DocumentID=2746&ArticleID=9631.

424

Press Release, CITES, The World's Police are 100% against Environmental Crime: CITES Welcomes Historic Resolution Adopted by INTERPOL's General Assembly (Nov. 8, 2010), http:// www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2010/20101108_Interpol.php.

425

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

426

Statement of John Scanlon, Secretary General, CITES, Ivory Dealers As Bad As Drug Runners: UN, Australian (Feb. 22, 2013), http:// www.savetheelephants.org/news-reader/items/ivory-dealers-as-bad-as-drug-runners.

427

Gaurav Raghuvanshi, China, Thailand Criticized Over Ivory, Wall St. J. (Feb. 21, 2013), http:// www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324503204578318121321626.

428

Douglas-Hamilton, supra note 13.

429

Record Poaching Drives Rhinos Toward Tipping Point, World Wildlife Fund (Oct. 2012), http://wwf.panda.org/?206467/Record-poaching-drives-rhinos-toward-tipping-point.

430

Beech & Perry, supra note 282.

431

Press Release, supra note 424, at 11-16.

432

Johan Bergenas & Monica Medina, Break The Link Between Terrorism Funding And Poaching, Wash. Post (Jan. 31, 2014), http:// www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/break-the-link-between-terrorism-funding-and-poaching/2014/01/31/6c03780e-83b5-11e3-bbe56a2a3141e3a9_story.html.

433

Counting the Cost, supra note 18.

434

Russo, supra note 145.

435

Catrina Stewart, Illegal Ivory Trade Funds Al-Shabaab's Terrorist Attacks, Independent (Oct. 6, 2013), http:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/illegal-ivory-trade-funds-alshabaabs-terrorist-attacks-8861315.html.

436

Ramy Srour, Wildlife Poaching Thought to Bankroll International Terrorism, Inter Press Service (Jan. 2014), http:// www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/wildlife-poaching-thought-bankroll-international-terrorism.

437

William Eagle, Somalia's Insurgents Turn Ivory into Big Export Business, Voice of Am. (June 12, 2014), http:// www.voanews.com/content/somalias-insurgents-turn-ivory-into-big-business/1935423.html.

438

Gettleman, supra note 41.

439

Id.

440

Id.

441

Kristof Titeca, Central Africa: Ivory Beyond the LRA - Why a Broader Focus is Needed in Studying Poaching, Allafrica (Sept. 17, 2013), http://allafrica.com/stories/201309170982.html.

442

Taylor Toeka Kakala, Soldiers Trade in Illegal Ivory, Inter Press Service (July 25, 2013), http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/07/soldiers-trade-in-illegal-ivory/.

443

Sudan Army Accused of Ivory Trade, AlJazeera (Mar. 14, 2005), http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2005/03/20084109264549769.html.

444

Id.

445

Gettleman, supra note 41.

446

Id.

447

William Eagle, Global Governments Identify Africa's Criminal Poachers, Voice of Am. (June 11, 2014), http:// www.voanews.com/content/conservationists-and-governments-idenify-africas-criminal-poachers/1934817.html.

448

Stewart, supra note 435.

449

Paula Kahumbu, US Wakes Up to Illegal Ivory Trade, The Guardian (Oct. 2, 2013), http://www.theguardian.com/environment/africa-wild/2013/oct/02/us-illegal-ivory-trade-elephants.

450

China Ivory Smuggler Fined $1 a Piece, News24 (Mar. 26, 2013), http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/China-ivory-smuggler-fined-1-a-piece-20130326.

451

Russo, supra note 145.

452

Id.

453

Adira Levine, Ivory: Africa's New Blood Diamond, The Politic (Aug. 25, 2013), http://thepolitic.org/ivory-africas-new-blood-diamond/.

454

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 86.

455

Suspected Vietnamese Ivory Smuggler Arrested in Kenya, Global Post (Apr. 10, 2013), http:// www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/asianet/130410/suspected-vietnamese-ivory-smuggler-arrested-kenya.

456

Verena Dobnik, Officials: Wildlife Products May Finance Terrorism, Yahoo! News (June 16, 2014), http://news.yahoo.com/officials-wildlife-products-may-finance-terrorism-204639710.html.

457

Gettleman, supra note 41.

458

Nir Kalron & Andrea Crosta, Africa's White Gold of Jihad: Al-Shabaab and Conflict Ivory, Elephant Action League (2011-2012), http:// elephantleague.org/project/africas-white-gold-of-jihad-al-shabaab-and-conflict-ivory/.

459

Gettleman, supra note 41.

460

Elizabeth John, New Report Confirms ‘Major Surge’ in Ivory Smuggling In 2011, TRAFFIC (Dec. 20, 2012), available at http:// www.traffic.org/home/2012/12/20/new-report-confirms-major-surge-in-ivory-smuggling-in-2011.html.

461

Gettleman, supra note 41.

462

Status of African Elephant Populations, supra note 109, at 14.

463

Stewart, supra note 435.

464

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 58.

465

Status of African Elephant Populations, supra note 109, at 18.

466

Urgent Measures, IUCN African Elephant Summit (Dec. 3, 2013), available at https://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/african_elephant_summit_final_ urgent_measures_3_dec_2013_2.pdf.

467

Coulan, supra note 403.

468

Id.

469

Id.

470

Id.

471

See Panjabi, supra note 12, at 1-28.

472

See Ranee K.L. Panjabi, Sacrificial Lambs of Globalization: Child Labor in the Twenty-First Century, 37 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 421-64 (2009).

473

John E. Scanlon, CITES CoP16, Bangkok 2013: A ‘Watershed Moment’ for Combating Wildlife Crime, Biodiversity Policy & Practice (Apr. 15, 2013), http://biodiversity-1.iisd.org/guest-articles/cites-cop16-bangkok-2013-a-%E2%80%qwatershed-moment%E2 %80%99-for-combating-wildlife-crime/.

474

Id.

475

Raghuvanshi, supra note 427.

476

Gettleman, supra note 41.

477

Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 54.

478

Id. at 54-55.

479

Id. at 49-53.

480

DeCapua, supra note 405.

481

Id.

482

Wyler & Sheikh, supra note 4.

483

See generally International Convention For The Suppression Of the Financing Of Terrorism, G.A. Res. 54/109, U.N. Doc. A/RES/54/109 (Feb. 25 2000).

484

Stewart, supra note 435.

485

James A. Foley, Elephant And Rhino Poaching Increasingly Linked To Terrorist Groups, Nature World News (Sept. 28, 2013), http:// www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4212/20130928/elephant-rhino-poaching-increasingly-linked-terrorist-groups.htm.

486

Marshall, supra note 391.

487

Africa: U.S. Official Flags Poaching As Security Threat, AllAfrica (Feb. 21, 2013), http://allafrica.com/stories/201302211116.html.

488

Eagle, supra note 447.

489

Stewart, supra note 435.

490

Eagle, supra note 447.

491

Sonenshine, supra note 154.

492

Africa: U.S. Official Flags Poaching As Security Threat, supra note 487.

493

Kolbert, supra note 34.

494

Marshall, supra note 391.

495

Kahumbu, supra note 449.

496

US Using Trade Pacts to Fight Wildlife Poaching, Voice of Am. (June 17, 2014, 7:12 AM), http://www.voanews.com/content/us-using-trade-pacts-to-fight-wildlife-poaching/1938526.html.

497

Nairobi terrorist strike alerts the world to new threat to elephants, Animal People (Sept. 2013), http:// www.animalpeoplenews.org/anp/2013/10/24/nairobi-terrorist-strike-alerts-the-world-to-new-threat-to-elephants/.

498

Eagle, supra note 447.

499

Joe Murphy, Ivory poaching funds terrorism across Africa, warns Hague, London Evening Standard (Feb. 3, 2014, 2:48 PM), http:// www.standard.co.uk/news/world/exclusive-ivory-poaching-funds-terrorism-across-africa-warns-hague-9104694.html.

500

Ishaan Tharoor, Terror in Nairobi: Behind al-Shabab's War With Kenya, TIME (Sept. 23, 2013), http://world.time.com/2013/09/21/terror-in-nairobi-behind-al-shabaabs-war-with-kenya/.

501

Stewart, supra note 435.

502

The African Poaching Crisis, Int'l Conservation Caucus Found., http://iccfoundation.us/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=445&Itemid=37 (last visited Oct. 26, 2014).

503

Marshall, supra note 391.

504

Stewart, supra note 435.

505

Kalron & Crosta, supra note 458.

506

Foley, supra note 485 (quoting Bill Corcoran, Claim Rhino Poaching Funds al-Shabaab, Irish Times (last updated Sept. 26, 2013)).

507

Ian J. Saunders, Applying the Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Poaching Crisis, ICCF (Apr. 8, 3013), http://iccfoundation.us/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=476:lessons-from-iraq-and-afghanistan-poaching-crisis&catid=70:briefings-2012&Itemid=81.

508

Kalron & Crosta, supra note 458.

509

Sheree Bega & Kashiefa Ajam, Terror Link to Poaching in Africa, IOL News (Sept. 28, 2013, 11:15 AM), http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/terror-link-to-poaching-in-africa-1.1583962#.VExilvnF_fn.

510

Id.

511

Marshall, supra note 391.

512

Eagle, supra note 437.

513

Marshall, supra note 391.

514

Eagle, supra note 437.

515

Melissa Barrett, Terrorist Groups Profiting from the Poaching Trade in Africa, DefenceWeb (Nov. 29, 2013), http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=32877:terrorist-groups-profiting-from-the-poaching-trade-in-africa&catid=87:border-security.

516

Carol J. Williams, Savagery, Witchcraft Hold Africans in Sway of Warlord Kony, L.A. Times (Nov. 14, 2012), available at http:// articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/14/world/la-fg-wn-lords-resistance-army-20121113; Rodney Muhumuza, African Warlord Kony Poaching Elephants to Survive, Associated Press (June 3, 2013, 9:44 AM), http://bigstory.ap.org/article/african-warlord-kony-poaching-elephants-survive; Associated Press, Report: Fugitive African Warlord Joseph Kony Poaching Congo's Elephants to Support His Group, Fox News (June 3, 2013), http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/03/report-fugitive-african-warlord-joseph-kony-poaching-congo-elephants-to-support/.

517

Michelle Nichols, Libya War Weapons May be Killing Central Africa Elephants: UN, Reuters (May 20, 2013, 6:10 PM), http:// www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/20/us-un-elephants-africa-idUSBRE94J0VQ20130520.

518

Muhumuza, supra note 516.

519

Gettleman, supra note 41.

520

UN Secretary-General's Report On Central Africa Links Illegal Ivory Trade To The Lord's Resistance Army, CITES (May 23, 2013), http:// www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2013/20130523_un_lra.php.

521 Eliasson, supra note 423.

522 Sasha Lezhnev & Kasper Agger, Kony's Army Now Also Killing Elephants, The Hill (Dec. 20, 2013), http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/193660-konys-army-now-also-killing-elephants.

523 Williams, supra note 516.

524 Id.

525 Nairobi terrorist strike alerts the world to new threat to elephants, supra note 497.

526 Gettleman, supra note 41.

527 Kara Moses, Lord's Resistance Army Funded by Elephant Poaching, Report Finds, The Guardian (June 4, 2013), http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/04/lords-resistance-army-funded-elephant-poaching.

528 Lezhnev & Agger, supra note 522.

529 Kony's LRA Engaged in Poaching and Ivory Trade, World Wildlife Fund (Feb. 4, 2013), http://www.panda.org/wwf_news/press_releases/? 207484/Konys-LRA-engaged-in-poachi.

530 Kasper Agger & Jonathan Hutson, Kony's Ivory: How Elephant Poaching in Congo Helps Support the Lord's Resistance Army 1 (2013), available at http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/kons-ivory-how-elephant-poaching-congo-helps-support-lords-resistance-army.

531 Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 27, 42.

532 Agence France-Presse, supra note 392.

533 UN Security Council, supra note 82.

534 U.N. General Secretary, Report of the Secretary General on the Activities of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa and on the Lord's Resistance Army-Affected Areas, 15, U.N. Doc. S/2013/297 (May 2, 2013).

535 Orenstein, supra note 14, at 17.

536 Peter Lokale Nakimangole, Over 125,000 Elephants Killed in South Sudan During Civil War, Gurtong (Apr. 29, 2013), http:// www.gurtong.net/ECM/Editorial/Tabid/124/ctl/ArticleView/mid/5110928/Over-125000-Elephants-Killed-In-S-Sudan-During-Civil-War.aspx.

537 Marshall, supra note 391.

538 Agence France-Presse, supra note 392.

539 Ashish Kumar Sen, Terrorists Slaughter African Elephants, Use Ivory to Finance Operations, Wash. Post (Nov. 13, 2013), http:// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/13/terrorists-slaughter-african-elephants-use-ivory-t/?page=all.

540 Peter Lilley, Dirty Dealing: The Untold Truth About Global Money Laundering, International Crime and Terrorism 131 (2012).

541 Welz, supra note 270.

542 How to Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade from Funding Terrorist Groups, supra note 51.

543 Plumer, supra note 197.

544 Id.

545 US Using Trade Pacts to Fight Wildlife Poaching, supra note 496.

546 Press Release, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, CITES Secretariat Welcomes London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade (Feb. 14, 2014), http:// www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2014/London-conference-20140214.php.

547 Eagle, supra note 447.

548 Press Release, supra note 546.

549 Press Release, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Decisive Action Agreed on Illegal Wildlife Trade (Feb. 15, 2014), https:// www.gov.uk/government/news/decisive-action-agreed-on-illegal-wildlife-trade.

550 Press Release, supra note 546.

551 Hemley & Milliken, supra note 119.

552 Analytic Toolkit, supra note 87, at 1.

553 Id. at 28.

554 Id.

555 Id. at 31-36.

556 Id. at 45.

557 Ranee Khooshie Lal Panjabi, The Pirates of Somalia: Opportunistic Predators or Environmental Prey?, 34 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol'y Rev. 377 (2010).

558 Panjabi, supra note 12, at 1-28.

559 Suzanne Goldenberg, Illegal Wildlife Trade ‘Threatening National Security,’ The Guardian (Dec. 12, 2012, 2:00 AM), http:// www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/dec/12/wildlife-trafficking-national-security-wwf (quoting Scanlon, supra note 44).

560 Agger & Hutson, supra note 530.

561 Bureau of Int'l Info. Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, Global Wildlife Protection Effort Nets Traffickers in Africa, Asia (Feb. 12, 2014), http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/English/article/2014/02/20140212292837.html.

562 Id.

563 Id.

564 Id.

565 Johan Bergenas & Monica Medina, Editorial, Breaking the Link Between Elephants and Terrorists, Wash. Post, Feb. 2, 2014, at A17.

566 Id.

567 See generally Analytic Toolkit, supra note 87.

568 Nairobi terrorist strike alerts the world to new threat to elephants, supra note 497.

569 Id.

570 The African Poaching Crisis, International Conservation Caucus Foundation, http://iccfoundation.us/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=445&Itemid=3 (last visited Oct. 20, 2014).

571 Mark Quarterman, Elephant Killings Surge as Tusks Fund Terror, CNN (June 20, 2013, 6:53 AM), http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/opinion/quarterman-elephant-slaughter/.

572 Saunders, supra note 507.

573 Bergenas & Medina, supra note 432.

574 Agger & Hutson, supra note 530.

575 Treasury Fact Sheet On Combating Terrorist Financing, Embassy of the United States, U.S. Department of the Treasury (Sept. 8, 2011), http:// london.usembassy.gov/te rror056.html.

576 Bergenas & Medina, supra note 432.

577 Id.

578 Emslie et al., supra note 283.

579 Scardina & Flocken, supra note 277.

580 John Wagley, Report: Cutting Poaching And Other Wildlife Crimes Will Squeeze Terrorist Funds, Gov. Sec. News, http:// www.gsnmagazine.com/article/39874/report_cutting_poaching_and_other_wildlife_ crimes_ (last visited Oct. 20, 2014) (citing Johan Bergenas, Killing Animals, Buying Arms, Setting The Stage For Collaborative Solutions To Poaching Wildlife Crime, Stimson Ctr. (Jan. 2014), http:// www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/killing_animals_buying_arms_ WEB.pdf).

581 Elephants Face Extinction, supra note 8.

582 Safina, supra note 387.

583 Environmental Crime: A Reader, supra note 3.

584 Kolbert, supra note 34.

585 Id.

586 Id.

587 How to Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade From Funding Terrorist Groups, Sci. Am. (Nov. 19, 2013), http:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-stop-the-illegal-wildlife-trade-from-funding-terrorist-groups/.

588 Saunders, supra note 507.

589 Jacqueline L. Schneider, Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife: The Market Reduction Approach, 24 J. Contemp. Crim. Just., no. 3, 2008 at 200, 274-95.

590 Id.

591 Schneider, supra note 386.

592 Analytic Toolkit, supra note 87.

593 Id.

594 Scardina & Flocken, supra note 277.

595 Analytic Toolkit, supra note 87.

596 Kakala, supra note 442.

597 Vira & Ewing, supra note 7.

598 Id.

599 Gettleman, supra note 41.

600 Srour, supra note 436.

601 Levine, supra note 453.

602 Gettleman, supra note 41.

603 Marshall, supra note 391.

604 Hawthorne, supra note 1 (quoting Scnoperhauer).

605 Jonathan Kaiman, Chinese Dog-Eating Festival Backlash Grows, The Guardian (June 23, 2014, 8:50 AM), http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/chinese-dog-eating-festival-ba cklash-yul.

606 Id.; Cary Huang, More Chinese than Westerners Howl Against Annual Dog Meat Festival, S. China Morning Post (June 29, 2014), http:// www.scmp.com/print/comment/insight-opinion/article/1542532/more-chinese-west.

607 Huang, supra note 606.

608 Hawthorne, supra note 1.

609 Laurel Neme, Andrea Crosta & Nir Kalron, Terrorism and the Ivory Trade, L.A. Times (Oct. 14, 2013), http:// www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-neme-ivory-poaching-terrorism-2013.

610 Chris Tackett, How Elephant Poaching Helped Fund Kenya Terrorist Attack, Tree Hugger (Sept. 24, 2013), http://www.treehugger.com/endangered-species/how-elephant-poaching-helped-fund-kenyan-terrorist-attack.html.

611 One-Off Sale of Rhino Horn Stockpiles, supra note 300.

612 Dark Dealings in Blood Ivory (Thailand), Bangkok Post (Mar. 1, 2003), http://www.svetheelephants.org/news-reader/items/dark-dealings-in-blood-ivory-40thail.

613 Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, supra note 13 (statement of Tom Cardamone, Managing Director, Global Financial Integrity).

614 Wyler & Sheikh, supra note 4.

615 Eagle, supra note 437.

616 Vira & Ewing, supra note 7, at 3.

617 Eliasson, supra note 423.

618 Lilley, supra note 540, at 93.

619 CITES, supra note 126.

620 Id.

621 Kerry, supra note 15.