Stop Wildlife Trafficking in its Tracks

Floor Speech

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Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, The Wildlife Conservation Society is doing great work to save wildlife and wild places.

The public knows more about wildlife today than they have at any other point in history.

New technology like Go-Pro cameras can be put on top of birds to track their migration patterns and see how they deal with their young in the nest.

Scientists can dive deeper into the oceans than ever before and are discovering new species that have not been identified.

But with all this knowledge and fancy technology, in 2015 animals are still becoming extinct.

The situation for elephants and rhinos is bad.

The elephant population in Tanzania has dropped by 60 percent in just the last 5 years.

A total of only five northern white rhinos are left in the world today.

A big reason why is money. The black-market price of ivory in Africa is over $1,000 per pound.

Rhino horn is now worth about $27,000 per pound. That's twice the value of gold and platinum and more than cocaine or diamonds.

When a person lives on less than $2 a day like many of the poachers do, that's a lot of money.

Poachers are willing to risk getting caught or even shot because the payday is just too big.

One rhino horn is enough for them to support their whole family for a year.

That might be why some locals in the community refer to ``rhinos'' simply as ``billions''.

In all, the illegal wildlife trade is estimated as a $10-20 billion per year business.

It is not just low level poachers getting most of the profits.

Transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups are getting billions of dollars a year from this business. Al-Shabab [al-Shah-Bob] and Joseph Kony's the LRA are two examples.

The same groups that traffick elephant ivory and rhino horn also traffick drugs and weapons. So this isn't just a wildlife problem. It is a national security problem.

Currently, I have been working with my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs committee to make sure the U.S. government is doing everything we can to stop wildlife trafficking.

Part of the solution is understanding the problem.

Ranking Member on my Terrorism Subcommittee, Mr. KEATING and I have amended the Intelligence Authorization bill to require the Director of National Intelligence to produce a report on wildlife trafficking, how terrorist organizations are involved, and its impact on U.S. national security.

In addition to this a GAO study is being conducted to evaluate the job being done so far at trying to stop wildlife trafficking. Both of these should help us understand the problem better.

I'm happy to be an original cosponsor of Chairman ROYCE's bill to encourage countries to work together on this problem and elevate wildlife trafficking as a predicate offense under racketeering and money laundering statutes.

It is a strong bipartisan bill that I hope is passed into law soon.

Working together will stop wildlife trafficking in its tracks.

In the 1950s there were only a few hundred white rhino left in the world. Thanks to the work of people like Ian Player, today there are over 15,000.

The threat has been beaten back before and it can be done again.

And that's just the way it is.

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