By Philip Rucker, Published: September 26
NEW YORK Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new global effort Thursday to protect Africas wild elephants from poaching, part of a long-running personal crusade for the former secretary of state.
Clinton joined the presidents of several African nations and wildlife preservation advocates to unveil an $80 million, three-year program aimed at ending ivory trafficking, including new park guards at major elephant ranges and sniffer-dog teams at global transit points.
The announcement was a centerpiece of the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton familys annual charitable gathering in New York. In remarks at a Thursday luncheon, Clinton said the slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks had reached crisis proportions.
Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years, Clinton said. I cant even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values.
Clinton drew a direct link between terrorism and elephant poaching, citing growing evidence that terrorist groups in Africa are funding their activities in part by trafficking ivory. She said that includes al-Shabab, the group responsible for the recent attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi.
This is not just about elephants, Clinton said. It is about human beings, governments, trying to control their own territory, trying to keep their people safe, as well as protect their cultural and environmental heritage.
The new program will enable an expanded law enforcement presence at 50 major elephant sites that together harbor 285,000 elephants, or roughly two-thirds of the African population. It also will include the hiring of an additional 3,100 park guards, adding sniffer-dog teams at 10 key international transit points and beefing up intelligence networks.
President Ali Bongo of Gabon was among the leaders who joined Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, onstage for Thursdays announcement. Elephant poaching, he said, threatens the very stability of our countries and blocks our economic development. It is time for the global community to act decisively against this plague.
Gabon and other African nations pledged to increase penalties for killing elephants. Meanwhile, 10 countries including China, Japan, Vietnam and other Asian nations that are among the biggest consumer markets for ivory committed to helping reduce the demand among their citizens for the product, including through public education campaigns.
Many people in Asia dont understand that its not like losing a tooth, Clinton said. You have to kill the elephant to get the tusk.
Ivory trafficking has become one of the worlds most lucrative criminal industries, with an estimated value of $7 billion to $10 billion annually, according to several nonprofit advocacy groups.
Since 1980, the estimated population of African elephants has fallen from 1.2 million to less than 420,000. In 2012 alone, 35,000 elephants were slaughtered, according to the groups data.
