 Okay, welcome back everyone, after an excellent panel. We've heard from the policy makers, Senator Flake. We've heard from some of the policy implementers. I would call this panel kind of the data panel, data and advocacy panel. And I think these are, we have three presenters today who have really focused a lot on kind of the data collection on getting the word out there and data has a lot to do, has a huge role to play in mobilization and getting people to take the issue seriously. And then this will be followed eventually by a panel kind of on the solutions panel looking at what people on the ground, what challenges they face and what models they are trying out. Just let me say this panel will end about 12.10. We're going to ask people to stay in their seats though because Chairman Royce will be coming in and we'll just, if he comes a little late, we'll keep going with the panel until he arrives. But just to warn you guys that we'll do that. And then after Chairman Royce, we'll break for a lunch. So let's start, we're going to, we have a terrific panel today with Richard Ujeral, who's Chief of the Africa Branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of International Conservation. He like, as was mentioned earlier, has a very long career on this. He's particularly focused in the Central Africa, in Republic, some of his study, or Central Africa, some of his studies have focused there. But really 30-some-plus years of experience looking at this and now playing a pivotal role in the implementation of U.S. strategy. Second, we have Jackson Miller, who leads the Environmental Crimes Fusion Cell at C4ADS. C4ADS, and he might say a bit about this. Am I getting that right? Has done a lot of great work collecting data, finding data, collecting data, and making it public. I think across regions in Africa and on a whole variety of issues. So Jackson will go second. And then finally we have Brian Christie, who's an author, journalist, filmmaker. He's Director of the Special Investigation Unit and National Geographic. His writing on this topic has been hugely influential in getting the message out there and then kind of following the trail on the ground. And I think he'll say that there's a big publication of National Geographic coming out in September, dealing precisely with this security conservation trafficking nexus. Because we're short on time and I'm not an expert on this, I'm going to turn quickly to Richard Ruggiero. We'll then turn to Jackson. And finally, Brian, I'm going to try to be ruthless on my timekeeping. I'm not very good at that, but oh, he's got a timer, perfect. So Richard, why don't you start us off? Thank you. I will certainly try to be disciplined with time, because I am known rightly so as a man of a few thousand words. And it's particularly tempting to, in avoiding repetition of what we've heard from other speakers and subsequent speakers, to indulge myself in what I think is relevant background materials and sometimes even guide stars for what we should be doing that sort of falls outside of the standard realm of data and strategies and conferences and all these sorts of very important tools. Strategies are like plans for your building. We need architects and put that together to know the pieces we need and what it's going to look like. Data are important. All sorts of things are important, but to me, the primacy starts with awareness and that's what we're doing here. That's what journalists do, very, very important. Perhaps the critical factor is will, either at an individual level or let's say political will. There is a direct correlation, in my opinion, with those institutions and governments who display good will, good governmental will to solve these problems just about anything is possible and in the absence of governmental will, everything is difficult. So I'm not going to give you a PowerPoint basically because it would mainly involve pictures of dead elephants and poor people and desolate places because that's where the problem really needs to be addressed. You can see those online. You don't need me to give you data on catastrophic elephant crash numbers and estimates of the disaster that we've been seeing. When I look around, Enrico reminded me of our longstanding in Central Africa, which I will broach shortly. I see Jean-Marc Frommant, whom I met in the streets of Bangui in late March 1981. So we've been working together for a long time and looking at him, I'm sure that we share a lot of the, not even concerned. The heartbreak that comes with 35 years of watching this sort of thing going on and really feeling very frustrated for many years. And the frustration not only comes out of witnessing this and realizing the lack of power we had and ability to move the mountains necessary, but because what's the phrase vox clamante in deserto. We felt as though we were seeing things and were convinced of things that were superficial and dismissed by most of the political observers of the time. In fact, I think many of the political observers until very recently dismissed us as, well, you know, there go the elephant huggers again or whatever. As a matter of fact, in this building, this very distinguished organization, I took part in a discussion about the Central African Republic five or six years ago in concert with the State Department. And I recall once again the frustration of seeing a summary document we were working on and seeing that elephants and elephant poaching in the country received about three lines, one sentence in a 12-page summary document. They rightly put a great deal of the emphasis on a lack of governance, but they missed one we missed, one particular thing, and that's what I want to talk about. So instead of giving you numbers and telling you all of the wonderful things that Fish and Wildlife does, it's on our website. I thought my boss was going to do it, but he escaped. I want to mention just a few other things, and it's more or less history. And I mentioned history as the saying goes, those who forget to heed the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. There are historical lessons that we should be drawing on, so I'd like to touch on those and maybe very glancing blows on the necessary comments about what elephants are and what it means. Elephants are sort of our bellwether. They're the great indicators of the health of environment and the health of natural systems in many ways. They are indeed the first victims of chaos and of greedy gathering and unsustainable gathering of natural resources. So that's why I want to talk to you about elephants and the Central African Republic. But certainly, you heard my director, Dan Ash, there is a lot more to conservation in the issue of poaching and trafficking and these issues than elephants. I will speak about them, but we often remind each other in our office, it's also about parrots and penguins and pangolins. It's also very, very important stuff, but once again, we'll talk about elephants. So my own experience and actually a shared experience, I dare say, focused on elephants because of their emblematic nature and very quickly we realized what was at stake and seeing Central Africa that frankly over most of its area had nothing other than wide open spaces and natural areas back 35 years ago. They were already impacted, but still more or less intact, biologically. Well, due to this enormous appetite that humanity has for ivory and certainly the ease by which organized criminal networks can operate, the very survival of this iconic species and others is greatly at stake. So matter of fact, if we do look at numbers a bit, if we think about current estimates of elephant populations, both extant animals and the killing rate that has been estimated in recent years, the rate of proportional slaughter of elephants is likely the highest in recorded history going on right now. That is how many are left versus how many are being removed way beyond, way beyond not only the statistical replacement rate, but we are seeing collapse of elephant societies that they depend on to live in marginal habitats, deal with climate change, deal with what people do to them. These things are breaking down in great parts of their range, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Central Africa. Well, it has come to the public attention through many media, national geographic certainly, many other presentations, their videos on the web, and people are now beginning to understand that elephants are not just numbers or data, that they are very sentient, intelligent, communicative, social, and very emotional animals. Those of us who've lived with them for years certainly have many tales and much evidence of that factor. So I would say to you that they're actually emotionally suffering because of what we're doing to them. And elephants are very smart critters. You know, I think they have what psychologists call a theory of mind. They put together all this information. They communicate it to each other, and they put together a picture in their minds of what people are trying to do and how they're doing it to kill them. Because they know they're being killed, they know they're being killed to the last animal by humanity, and they, many of them, if not most of them know, they're being killed for their tusks. And there is evidence, videographic, and certainly even scientific information to that. So I won't go on too much, but other than to say that there are obviously ecological catastrophe might be a too large a word, but certainly in co-evolved systems, elephants are so dominant in their environment that these habitats have co-evolved with them, and in their absence, they don't make ecological sense. I'll just leave it there at that. If I can briefly break a very complex system into three discrete but interrelated concepts, I would say that first, we've heard this earlier today, you'll hear it more, but demand by consumers is really what's driving this mess. Secondly, of course, there's poaching in the habitat, and that's pretty easy to get your mind on, and you've heard enough about that stuff. And thirdly is the transport to market. Now, that is complex, and we've heard a bit about it. We will hear more from our colleagues. I wish I had been asked the question about the one thing that we need to do more of and more quickly. I would say it's dealing with networks and using the tools that we have for following terrorist groups and money laundering groups. These groups are extremely sophisticated, and they're operating with virtual impunity now. Sure, demand is primordial. Keeping the patient alive is all about anti-poaching, but unless we squeeze in the middle as well, we're not working effectively. So nested in those three points are both immediate, middle-term, and long-term solutions. There is not one tool. There is not one cure-all. This really has to be applied across the board. Certainly we have specialist organizations, but working together, therefore, as these heterogeneous teams, is key to our success. And frankly, I am both very impressed by the kinds of work and the enthusiasm among other fellow government workers that, finally, with our executive order, there's a reason to go to your boss and say, hey, I'd like to help out this clown from Fish and Wildlife who keeps bugging me for data. And it helps. And we work with the private sector like C4ADS and Sato Project. Amazing things are coming from these relationships, but also really frightening and really scary ones. Frankly, it keeps me up at night thinking about what we're learning. These emails come in, and here's another heartbreaking story, or here's another stimulating and exciting way that we can address this. But the historical point I'd like to make rather quickly is basically asking the question is what we're seeing in Central Africa, is this something that is really new, or are there historic precedents and evidence that can help us to deal with this project? And I mean, that's sort of axiomatic in how I phrase it. But I think it's an interesting point to bring up, because without giving you a real history lesson, I can certainly mention that as Europe developed its economy in the 18th and 19th century, all sorts of things needed to come out of Africa, rubber and skins in the forest zone where we worked, and certainly ivory, mainly from Savannah, as it had easiest access. And it was being exploited by Muslim traders who had connections basically from the Mediterranean across the Sahel, across the Sahara, the Sahel, and into the Savannah zones where we worked many years ago and continued, well, we don't work there too much anymore because the elephants are all gone, but theoretically we work there. In any event, these traders took advantage of some very important concepts, and that is they had transport routes, they're called camels and horses, whereas going through the forest is much more difficult. There was no government or no authority out there, so in the Anarchy and in that vacuum of power and authority of order, they're able to operate with impunity. And they were dealing with a commodity that had a growing price and a growing value to quote-unquote society and civilization. Well eventually the French around 1900 to 1911 or 12 got far enough north. The Sinusi clan was basically their leaderships were assassinated by the French in 1911. And the French sort of kicked the, shall we say, ethnic Arabs out of the mix a bit, but then not much else followed. It sort of went back into this void-open space. Well that sort of sounds like the Central African Republic today, doesn't it? So lost in this, perhaps when we talk about elephants, ivory, economy and all of this things. I don't like to use the word terrorists or terrorism. It has certain implications as a technical term that perhaps our government or the State Department may use. We use genocide and terrorists, that word, very carefully. But when you speak to people in the field as I have, they say, nusom terrorize, we are terrorized by these people because they're not only killing them, not only taking everything from them, but they're attempting to affect their behavior by instilling fear and basically brutally killing them. Well, we call them Le Kavaye Soudanet in the old days. Then we started calling them in the mid, well actually early to mid 90s, Janjaweed. We saw their involvement in Darfur province and the genocide that led to the deaths of 300,000 or 400,000 people. And now we call them Darfur militias. Well, it all adds up to the same thing, folks. It adds up to these groups who can take things away, who can traffic these things. They have the essential elements still in play. Not much has changed. A few satellite phones, Kalashnikovs instead of just spears and swords. Literally, they were killing elephants with spears in the 80s while we were there. So the technology has arrived and the connections of the ivory trail we're talking about through Khartoum and other provinces. Well, some of it flies out now, some of it still goes over land to, say, Cairo. But there are certainly more commonalities in the historic record than there are differences because the basic problems, the enabling ambience of the problem has never been changed. It's never been dealt with effectively. Not by development, not by conservation, not by politics. So in summary, that's my point exactly. If we want to get to the roots of this problem, that is, perhaps 200 years old, maybe more, we don't know the record beyond 1850 or so. But if we want to get to these problems, sure, we can look at the numbers. We can understand how this affects magnificent species, nature's greatest monument, as I say. But we haven't dealt with the realities of these very distant and vulnerable places and these effects on the local people who are lost in shuffle. Nobody speaks to them. A few NGOs are out there, but we don't do a very good job of dealing with that at all. And so my suggestion would certainly be to look at that historic record, contemporize it, and deal with those basic problems that still have not been dealt with by society. And I think in that goes a long way to helping, perhaps not a panacea, but certainly a valuable solution. So that's what I wanted to introduce to you today, besides saying that the Fish and Wildlife Service, we've been doing this sort of stuff before it was cool since 1989. In fact, we've been working with elephant projects in Gabbo, and the first one with the World Wildlife Fund. We continue to do it on all things. We have a very exciting network-busting project going on in Africa as I speak, and certainly we're looking forward to more partners and certainly coordinating our efforts. So for that, I am very grateful for this opportunity to speak to you. Thirty-nine seconds late. That was perfect. Thank you so much, Richard. Jackson, I'll return to you, and I know you have a PowerPoint. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Thanks so much, Jennifer, for the kind introduction. And Richard, apologies. We never meant to frighten you with our late night emails on these networks in the wildlife crime space. But anyway, good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for your time today. My name is Jackson Miller. I'm the lead wildlife and environmental crimes analyst at C4ADS. So C4ADS, we are a nonprofit based right here in D.C., and we specialize in data-driven analysis and research on illicit networks worldwide, among which include those drivers of transnational environmental crime. And just like my colleagues would like to present today, our analysis in this space, which has included two past reports on the global ivory trade, and this year we've actually brought in a full team of about four wildlife crime analysts, simply providing analytical support to a growing network of organizations worldwide to simply improve the quality and the scope of analysis on these transnational criminal networks that are transporting illicit wildlife products. But what our work in this space has revealed, next slide, please. Dramatic pause. Wonderful. Oh, that's dark. So is that ivory poaching operations often do converge with other conflict and illicit activities all over the continent? You can go ahead and go through all the text bubbles on the slide. So as you can see, starting from the top, we've seen evidence of Sudanese, or at least Sudan-linked militias involved in the ambush of rangers. And where that dies pointing to is Chadzakuma National Park in the southern part of the country. We've actually received photographic evidence of military camo extracted from the ground with that Abu-Tirah insignia on the uniform itself. Now who is Abu-Tirah? They're essentially, just broadly speaking, a Sudan-linked paramilitary force. Moving to the left, we've seen Iranian-manufactured ammunition used in elephant-masker sites in northern Cameroon. Also to the right, there have been allegations of South Sudanese police forces implicated in ivory poaching in the DRC. And to the bottom, there's been allegations of reporting on Congolese Army commanders supplying illicit weapons to rebel groups within the DRC in exchange for products such as ivory and gold. Now apart from instances of overt conflict and violence, there is a strong nexus between ivory poaching operations and other illicit economies throughout the continent. So to the left, we have allegations of illicit timber trafficking, bushmeat and ivory poaching in the Tridome area, specifically in places like Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, there was a seizure of about 380 kilos of bushmeat seized on an Asian-owned walking concession in Congo, Brazzaville. And to the right, you also have a nexus between illicit copper and diamond smuggling operations, whose networks are also facilitating the transport of ivory products. Now, as you can see, as diverse as these poaching operations may be, it becomes near impossible to generalize this African elephant poaching crisis that we're facing today, simply because ivory poaching is not a uniform enterprise. Rather, the nature of these poaching operations on the ground directly responds to more local or regional political and economic drivers, specifically in contexts that have a much weaker rule of law and are marred by pervasive conflicts. This may give rise to ivory poachers either intersecting or closely resembling non-state or state militarized actors. So let's look briefly at a few case studies. Next slide, please. So, of course, you have the now infamous Bhubindija elephant massacre from January to mid-April 2012. This involved dozens of primarily Arabic-speaking poaching groups killing anywhere between 300 and 600 elephants in Bhubindija National Park in northern Cameroon. Now, items recovered from these poaching sites, and we actually received much of this evidence from organizations like African parks, who are doing fantastic anti-poaching work in some of the most unstable environments on the continent, is that we've seen IRGC, so specifically Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps manufactured ammunition extracted from this poaching site. Now, just broadly speaking, given that a key consumer of this kind of ammunition on the continent is the government of Sudan that has been listed as a state sponsor of terror, finding this evidence, although hundreds of miles outside of Sudan's borders, may strongly suggest the implication of Sudan-linked militias or at least syndicates being involved in carrying out these poaching operations. Also, we've received source testimonials that these syndicates operate in very similar ways to West Darfurie groups. Moving forward, other items that were seized, well, there have been elephant skeletons that have revealed hit plates being seized by 12.7 millimeter rounds and even RPGs, and of course, not only horse medicine, but also Sudanese manufactured goods and supplies. Now, pervasive conflicts can also give rise to the role of state actors actually carrying out poaching operations. Next slide, please. So this leads me to—oh, whoa, heads up. Sorry, I got a little jumpy there. Anyway, just moving forward, if we—if you mind moving back, please. Oh, don't worry then. Anyway, so my next case study highlights foreign security forces being implicated in poaching activities in Garamba National Park, which straddles the South Sudanese and Ugandan borders in the northeast quarter of the DRC. In October, 2014, Garamba Park Rangers actually raided a poaching camp. Oh, powerpoint's having a little fun. Very sensitive. Oh, not a problem at all. Anyway, so what was extracted from the ground were not only a G3-83 rifle, but also Sudanese manufactured ammunition, likely manufactured at a factory from the Military Industry Corporation, which is essentially Sudan's defense peristatal, but also what is most interesting, and I just like the visual to highlight this. Oh, I'll just keep going, is actually a South Sudanese police uniform with a South Sudanese banknote hidden in the breast pocket. Now, Garamba Park officials continue to elect this day that foreign state and non-state militarized actors are crossing the often porous borders in this region to procure ivory and wreaking havoc on elephant populations. Among these groups listed from the ground include Joseph Coney's Lord's Resistance Army, among others. Garamba, unfortunately, continues to lose resources to effectively counter these groups. Why? Because as of late April of this year to the present day, Garamba has lost at least two Park Rangers, along with two members of the Congolese Armed Forces, two armed poaching gangs. Now, unfortunately, these rather violent instances of ivory poaching represent an incredibly small segment of an even longer and more complex supply chain that spans thousands of miles from the heart of the African bush to burgeoning East, or primarily East and Southeast Asian consumer retail markets. And especially when one considers the final end retail value for said ivory products, these ivory poaching operations actually perhaps don't even constitute a miniscule segment of the supply chain. Today's ivory trade has become an increasingly professionalized criminal enterprise. And as we see looking into specifically large-scale seizure instances, about from 2009 to the present day, and when I say large scale to clarify what I mean, I mean seizure instances where there's over 500 kilos of illicit ivory contraband being seized, that we believe bear the hallmarks of organized crime, essentially because it takes a rather high degree of organization in terms of consolidation of this product and transport of this product. But looking at large-scale seizure instances, we've seen ivory being covered in shipments as diverse as anchovies in Tanzania, to my personal favorites this year out of Ntebe International Airport in Uganda, obviously in supposed Shia butter earlier this year, and of course more recently videography equipment, both bound for Singapore. So as complex as these operations may appear on the surface, what our analysis has actually found, next slide please, is that the vast majority of contraband actually flows along an incredibly narrow supply chain along already established shipping lanes, primarily through maritime container transport. Now, our analysis has actually identified approximately 15 to 25 choke point ports from Sub-Saharan Africa primarily to Southeast and East Asia along Indian Ocean shipping routes that either export, transship, or import the vast majority of contraband. And these shipping lanes, or these actual ports, are actually situated on shipping lanes that are managed by no more than 10 to 15 shipping companies. In our analysis, looking at these large-scale seizures, we estimate that the vast majority of contraband flows through perhaps fewer than 100 to 250 containers annually. And what's even more interesting for our analysis is that we believe that there may be even fewer criminal syndicates that are dominating the market share of this trade. So let's go to the next slide and take our time with this one. So let's begin with April 2015. There was a 3.1 ton ivory seizure in Lamchibang port in Thailand. It originated in Mombasa, destined for Lao, and it was obfuscated in tea leaves, which until recently many tea exporters based out of Mombasa actually faced special exemptions in that they could bypass very rigorous security screening at the port. So moving forward, next please, using a variety of official and unofficial sources, such as company registers from a variety of business registers and corporate databases, maritime shipping records, official customs and local media reporting. Turns out that the exporter or the consigner of this shipment that was seized in Thailand may actually match that, next please, of a 3.7 ton seizure that was seized in Singapore only four weeks later in May 19 of this year. So again, this is a 3.7 ton ivory seizure, originated in Mombasa, also obfuscated as tea leaves. Now this consigner, according to official documentation extracted from the ground, actually exported a total of six containers over the past year. So given that three containers that were seized all contained several tons worth of ivory, there is a possibility that containers worth or several tons of ivory contraband flowed through this international maritime transport system completely unseized. So next slide digging into C4ADS's internal ivory seizure database, we actually noticed that the land transport mechanisms that at one point in Kenya transported this ivory contraband or at least the containers carrying these products actually matched those involved in at least three large scale seizures, all of which were seized in 2013 at Mombasa, when in Singapore, and when in Hong Kong, three very distinct points in this rather long supply chain. And actually moving forward, next please, the alleged facilitator of that Hong Kong seizure from 2013 actually was acquitted for their role in seizing several tons worth of illicit copper products out of Zambia through Dar es Salaam. So what we see here is a network spanning several jurisdictions that may have transported over 14 tons of ivory products seized from a single global transport network. And if we want to assume that those three containers that were not seized actually contained ivory, this network could be at least indirectly responsible for transporting approximately 25 tons worth of ivory. And moving further, if we want to assume that this 10 percent seizure rate that's widely used by law enforcement agencies to estimate the total volume of this illicit trade, if we want to hold that 10 percent value, absolutely true, next please, then we could actually be looking at a network that's at least indirectly responsible for the killing of up to 35,000 elephants that were trafficked in a two-year time period. Now, to put this in another context, 35,000 elephants represents approximately 70 percent of Mozambique's entire remaining elephant population. And it's only a few thousand less than the entire elephant population in Tanzania's Salu Reserve, which is recently highlighted as a potential poaching hotspot. So, moving forward, what can Washington do? In fact, what stake does the U.S. or other Western jurisdictions have in the supply chain that largely flows outside of our borders from primarily Sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast and East Asian retail markets? So, moving out of Africa for a bit, what you're seeing on this slide is actually a sales contract available online detailing a transaction of over 100,000 animals, or at least animal products trafficked from Laos to Vietnam linked to a Vixay chaos of harm. Probably one of the world's most prolific wildlife traffickers based in Laos. He actually apparently has had or perhaps still has associates based in South Africa that have been implicated in rhino trafficking operations. What this slide, or I guess the most appealing aspect of this sales contract on screen, is not necessarily the sheer volume of animals that are being transported across borders in one transaction. Rather, what's most interesting for the purpose of our analysis is what's highlighted in that box in the center middle that details bank account information. So, you have an account number and you also have a bank listed as the Laos Development Bank of Paxon Branch. Now, on the surface level, this Paxon Branch is a rather small office for this government bank. But moving forward, next slide, looking at their foreign correspondent banking networks, about five of their correspondents are U.S. financial institutions. And given that, arguably the majority of international financial flows do denominate in U.S. dollars or euros, there is a likelihood that large-scale illicit wildlife transactions such as this did clear through U.S. financial institutions. So this gives U.S. stakeholders a very clear and a very strong mandate to consider pursuing action against the capacity of these wildlife criminal networks that are operating not only across borders, but could actually be controlling a larger market share of the illicit trade that any of us could imagine. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Jackson, a lot to unpack there. Brian. That is a very hard act to follow, I will say. Jackson's presentation is an example of where wildlife crime fighting can be. That sort of presentation is what's been needed in this space for a long time. So congratulations on that. It's outstanding. I'm in an uncomfortable position. We have a cover story for National Geographic. September issue is the issue of terrorism and ivory. And so there are some things I cannot talk about yet, but this gathering is really extraordinary. I mean, we have policymakers, legislators, NGO leadership here in this room. And so I want to share with you some of the important findings of this work. To begin, I started as a lawyer just at the block here. And at post 9-11, law enforcement funding shifted dramatically towards terrorism-based funding. And so if you were even remotely connected to law enforcement and you wanted money in Washington, you linked to terrorism. And so as somebody who was following wildlife trafficking, I was hearing lots of reports unsubstantiated linking terrorism and wildlife trafficking. And so one of the original ideas for this latest project was, let's look into that. Is this true? And to be honest, I was skeptical. I didn't see a lot of support for some pretty extreme statements. What we found was the opposite in this story. Five of the least stable countries on earth, Chad, DRC Congo, Sudan, South Sudan. Who am I missing? C.A.R., sorry. Those five states represent a new model or a different model than we've seen for ivory trafficking lately. Those states are poaching, exporting states. Those states are home or host to poachers moving across borders out of those countries to poach in other territories. What we've been focused on for the last 10 years or so has been the Kenya Tanzania model, where it's local poachers organized in increasingly significant criminal networks, but nevertheless sort of business model. This is a violence model we're talking about in Central Africa. There is no park that has experienced this more poignantly, I think, than Garamba National Park. Garamba National Park is on the border with South Sudan in Northern DRC, and it is under siege from all directions, from Sudan, South Sudan, their own military, and the LRA, the Lloyd's Resistance Army. This is the important sort of stepping off point for what I'd like to say today. As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan is to poaching today. Sudan is home or host to the Janjaweed who have swept down across Africa to commit some of the worst poaching atrocities that we know about in recent years. The Bubanjida case, the Tikum Chad chase where 90 elephants, you know, it's brutal, you know, the mothers and calves, they're implicated in the Saleka fronted attack on Zangabai. Sudan is also host to the Lloyd's Resistance Army at the moment. This is a widely understood in security circles that Joseph Coney is operating out of a corner of Sudan, known as the Khafia Kingi Enclave, referred to as K2, and Coney's men have been attacking Goramba, and they have been looting and displacing hundreds of thousands of people since the late 1980s. We know the atrocities that these people commit, and it's extraordinary and gruesome. This is the child soldiers organization. This is the rape of women. This is the, you know, disrupting entire villages, and what happens in places with very simple, not simple, but small villages is one LRA, two LRA walking into a village displaces that village, which then creates a domino effect as people flee. The LRA is coming, Tongo Tongo, which is the cut, cut reference to LRA, and I had my doubts about whether Coney was connected to ivory. And in fact, as you'll see in this report, and you can judge for yourself, but we make a very direct connection between Joseph Coney and the illegal ivory trade. It's going to be accompanied by a film for National Geographic Explorer that will give you visual insight into just what we're talking about. We have here with us Jean-Marc Framon, who on my visits to Goramba was in charge of the park, and it's a great honor to be in the room. This is the second point that I want to make, and really probably I'll make one more, but the key, two key points is the role of Sudan as home and host, whose president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity is home and host. The second point I want to make is that Rangers are our frontline in the fight against these terrorist organizations, rebel groups, militias. To be on the ground in Goramba, as we did for this project multiple times, and see in several cases the handful of bullets that are given to Rangers before they go out in the field to protect this space against terrorist groups is humbling, is one word. There is money for these guys, but there are difficulties getting the proper ammunition through government controls. These guys are our frontline, and everyone wants to know, is there a link between ivory and terrorism? Well, it's bigger than that because Rangers in the field represent order, and terrorist groups in place after place, whether they're in the ivory game or not, are in the disorder game. They are pillaging villages. The Rangers on the ground are the only law enforcement between them and pillaging villages in place after place. Whether we're talking about Varunga National Park with the FDLR perpetrators of hundreds of thousands of murders since the Rwandan genocide, it's the most dangerous place in the world to be a wildlife ranger. They lost a ranger this year to the FDLR. There's an ivory poaching issue, there's an ivory trafficking issue historically out of Varunga, but Rangers represent order, and they're being killed for it. Whether we can go to Boko Haram. They hide out in Sabisa National Forest in Nigeria. Again, it is forests. Goramba is a place where Joseph Coney lived without harm, without fear of interdiction during the Juba peace talks in 2005. We have place after place Rangers on the ground are our front line, and the terrorists are hiding out in jungles. The biggest jungle in Africa are lawless states. Coney is a perfect case study for what these terrorists do with a lawless state. Coney, as you know, began in northern Uganda in Gulu, sort of in a trolley-based terrorist activity. He was routed and chased up to what was then just Sudan. Hidden Sudan with cartoon support in terms of arms and medical support and food to destabilize the south. In 2005, when South Sudan and Sudan reached a peace accord, Coney jumped south to Goramba, hidden Goramba openly protected by the UN because he was in peace talks for a couple of years, when eventually it was made clear that, well, in fact, Coney shot his peace negotiator, Vincent O.T., which ended the peace talks. O.T. was, as you'll see in this story, was one of the few bulwarks against elephant poaching. O.T. was an individual who liked elephants and was a buffer for the LRA. Post that, Coney jumps to Central African Republic and now up to K-2. And his men have been poaching steadily throughout. But again, it is not just ivory. It is lawlessness, the exploitation of lawlessness and the fact that our ranges are the only guys there. Those are the two points I'd like to bring to this conversation. And then the last takes us out of Africa to China. And the answer to me if I were asked, what's the one thing that can be done? I would say that China can continue the very positive message it put out just a few weeks ago that they're going to do away with their domestic ivory market. Whether that's true remains to be seen. They gave no timetable for when they would do away with their market. And there's a built-in, China got, as you know, 60 tons of ivory in 2008. It's been releasing at five tons a year into the market, which would have its market terminate roughly about 2020. So there should be a built-in scale down already. It remains to be seen. The important thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about China is China is unlike any other country when it comes to ivory. The Chinese government is the major driver in the ivory market. They own the largest ivory carving factory. They own retail outlets. They were the big buyer at the ivory auction. So within their power is also an extraordinary opportunity to change. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for three really very complimentary and rich discussions. I think we'll open up for questions. One question that goes a little bit to the last point of the China demand. I mean, is there, do you see any momentum within Africa for African leaders who have a, you know, where China is kind of making diplomatic inroads and so forth? Do you see any kind of collection of African governments to push back on China on this issue? So that rather than having the US and kind of Western countries trying to put this pressure on China, African governments where China does a whole lot of business kind of step up. Well, that's the last point. So it's a very difficult position if you're in need of infrastructure development. And it's hard to negotiate from that position. So in my opinion, it really is a Western, you want to be careful, but it's a Western, it's an issue of Western diplomacy to some degree. Although just, just to maybe rebut China makes a whole lot of money from a lot of those investments too. So it's kind of a. Yeah, but no one's going to say, okay, I stop or I'll shoot. Yeah. Let's take some questions. I know I'm going to take the one in the far, far back because you're almost impossible to see. Wait for the mic and please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Catherine Tully McManus. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about the mechanisms that are used between wildlife poaching and trafficking and terrorist groups. I think you outlined like how they are affecting the environment and the people that are in these regions. But I'm, I would love more clarity on how that financing mechanism works. Are they directly involved in the poaching or are they being funded by other groups that are poaching? Thank you. I wonder if we take three, three at a time. So we collect a few. I think we'll get more questions in that way and, and whoever feels most kind of competent to answer a particular question can do that. So why don't we move here to the lady here and then the gentleman. Sorry, this was tied together. The two if you could introduce yourself. I'm Monica Medina and I'm with National Geographic too. But I am wondering whether there has been any effort to tie together the follow the money and the terrorism link because until the terrorism link was proved, the Treasury Department and their terrorism finance experts were, would have a difficult time following the money. Is it possible now, and I guess I would ask these two panelists to tie those things together in such a way that the U.S. authorities that already exist could be utilized. That's a big point for Juan Zarate and some of this advocacy work. Gentleman in the far back. Thank you. Marshall Jones from the Smithsonian. This was primarily a question for Richard, but it certainly touches on what both Jackson and Brian have talked about and that Richard you pointed to the history and the need for us to understand and remember that history. If you could talk a little more about what some of the lessons are that we could draw from that that will help us understand what's going on today. Okay, I'll start there. Thank you, Marshall. I'm not a historian, but certainly over the past decades, if you don't reflect on what you're seeing and try to establish its relevance to the past, to history, then you can't determine a trend and without trend analysis, you can't predict the future effectively enough to be in a position to do something about it. You're always behind the curve. So it's just a basic way of trying to put these thoughts in line. Understanding in this case that the mentality of insurgent groups, call them what you want, has not changed. And basically there, I'm talking about, in this case, Sudanese based and I'm very glad to hear that National Geographic will bring more information to this stuff we've known for how long now. We've been dealing with this. Can you imagine feeling frustrated 30 years worth of saying this stuff and that's how long it's taken the international community to call a spade a spade on this issue, but at least we're getting there now. But I think one of the points which may reflect to part of another question is these operating groups need the same things to operate. What they need is a lack of detectability. They need to not be known in terms of their movements. They become vulnerable and they can become vulnerable by a variety of now technological ways that certainly the U.S. military has at their hand and they may or may not be used effectively. Second thing they need is wherewithal. And that is, you know, you need food. You need money to buy food or they steal it. You need something. You need income. And frankly, the groups that we see are not autonomous tourists who run around on horseback with camels because killing elephants is fun. They're sent out by their bosses. And I think Jackson did a good job of putting a name on that as well. So they get leadership from the outside. They have the means to get around. There is something, okay, this is what I should have said in my own presentation. It's actually in my notes, it's the availability, it's the anarchy that leads to the availability of natural resources that fuels this and has been fueling it since this historic record. That's what it's about. And that to me is a very important point. Certainly governance is critical because without governance you have disorder. You don't have natural resource management where there's no governance. So they're interrelated. But what I think is a salient point is because the main sustenance, the main wherewithal that these groups use are natural resources. And yet we're not managing natural resources. It's an afterthought. And that to me is very far off the mark. That's what they've been going there for. That's what keeps them there. And yet wildlife agencies, conservationists, we're tangential to the general strategic underpinnings of government assistance to these areas. It doesn't make sense. We're not taking away, we're not cutting off their supplies. So I think that's a very important point. The last point, I swear if we did a survey, I'd like to put a little money on it. We did a survey and we asked experienced people, multiple choice question, if you could change one thing, if there's one critical thing, don't give me a list of three and prioritize them. We've heard about China and we hear about poverty and we hear about arms. We hear about disorder, all of these things. If you could pick one thing that is the greatest obstacle to us achieving our goals, what would it be? I think they would say it's in one word, corruption. Thanks, Richard. I guess I'll try, I'll attempt addressing the first two questions that address, I guess, the mechanisms that link allegedly terrorist groups with the broader ivory trade. I mean, as you might realize, it obviously depends region to region and depends on the local context of what these linkages may look like. However, there are reports and there are accounts and testimonies from the ground that have witnessed first-hand actors from these groups being involved in ivory poaching operations. I do agree though with Brian Christie's point saying that this conversation should motivate all of us to further substantiate those linkages, but of course, how can you go up to the LRA and knock on their doors and request a balanced sheet, right? Visibility in this space is obviously going to be an issue. However, once some key points of vulnerability in terms of addressing these linkages is not necessarily imagining the ivory trade as dominated by finite syndicates. Rather, we believe it's better to imagine this trade as simply a series of functional steps. One key point of vulnerability is addressing where these poaching operations come into contact with either key transport routes and other mechanisms that deal with sort of land or sea transport that may come in contact with where these alleged terrorist groups come into contact with potentially more established transnational criminal syndicates. In terms of your question, in terms of implementation, well, I think it's the duty of all of us in this room, stakeholders from the public and private sector to actually execute on that implementation plan that was released earlier this year. It's an incredibly lucid document and I think it's up to all of us to actually act on it. Another round. Yes, Johann? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, actually, okay. The lady there first. Thank you. This question is for Jackson Miller, Channing May, Global Financial Integrity. What role, if any, do you see trade-based money laundering playing in the movement of the illicit funds earned from the wildlife trade? Thank you. Johann Uster, again, question to Jackson. The basic information and intelligence you utilized were those all from open sources and just how cumbersome and difficult was it to get it? Or it's a loaded question or will it be for anybody trying to go there? Is it something that you've got to have the law enforcement and intelligence agencies on board? Or can you do at least some of it just on open sources? Yes, gentlemen here. Thank you. Johann Bergenhaus with the Stimson Center. Thank you for a great panel. There has been a long and tough debate about the nexus between tasks and terrorism over the last couple of years. There's been some animosity in the community, what's right and wrong. Sometimes we've seemed to tear ourselves apart as an environmental group over there. So I'm glad that the three of you have seemed to end that debate today. Having arrived at that conclusion, how do we get all of the great United Government agencies who are experts at network analysis, counter-terrorism, illicit finance on board, DOD, Intel, Department of Homeland Security, and a wide range of other organizations that are really good to have as a partner. Thank you very much. So I can address the first two questions. First, I'm sorry, what was your name from? Or anyway, I'm sorry, from Global Financial Integrity. Thank you for coming. We highly respect your work, first of all. But in terms of I guess the linkage in terms of the role that trade-based money laundering can play in the trade, we feel that it plays an incredible role. Again, just speaking to Brian Christie's point, I think we should all further scrutinize and further actually seek out the data to determine to what extent it does play. And to your question, Johan, in terms of I guess how we do actually consolidate and extract this information, the majority, in fact the vast majority of the information we use is publicly available in some way, shape, or form. We believe that in this day and age with the proliferation of information that's available online, you can actually do a lot more with it than one can ever realize. But we do leverage contacts on the ground in a variety of jurisdictions. I think I'd like to respond to Johan's question. Much to the chagrin of some of my U.S. government colleagues, I think about several days ago I made a comment in a sort of a briefing session to three congressmen that I thought while the executive order has helped very much in terms of giving permission, if not a mandate, to government agencies to work together more, that still there's much that remains to be done, that information are in very deep pockets and understandably so. Confidential information ceases to be valuable and confidential when it's shared too widely. I certainly understand very, very closely the need to inform other agencies on a need-to-know basis and to be very careful and a slightly more cynical response is knowledge is power. People work very hard to gain that knowledge and one doesn't just toss it out at the slightest whim or request. So there are those issues. However, I think a lot more needs to be done. I think one of the interesting manifestations or justifications of that, Dr. Louise Shelley, who is here in the audience, can respond to at George Mason Track, there is obvious evidence of the convergence of various trades in the same systems and that is if you have an illicit network and all the corrupt individuals paid off and all of the banks ready to roll and all the money laundering and all of the business practices that these people develop, you're not going to turn your nose up at an easy buck. So if you're doing drugs or arms or people or nuclear material or cigarettes, somebody says how'd you like to make an honest buck and they say sure, but does it have to be honest? Come on board. So I mentioned that. It's fairly obvious to those of us who've been looking at these networks, but what that means is if the DEA is following drug traffickers, they have a lot of information and they analyze it very well. They're extremely talented people. And if DoD is looking at them for strategic or arms movement or whatever, the same is true. And if it's human trafficking, there's somebody else. And if there's wildlife trafficking, there's somebody else. Well, examples of when you provide information from say a sat phone captured by the African Parks Networks agents in Zakoma National Park and you plug those numbers in and you see who they've been calling on their phone. You put this information into one of these analytical systems that develops, that works on algorithms for probability of association. They light up like a Christmas tree. And that's part of the stuff that keeps us up at night because it's not just about ivory going to Khartoum and getting on a plane and going to Singapore whatever. It leads into some really scary global stuff. And I'm not going to get any deeper into it. Use your imagination and you probably won't even get there. It's bad stuff. So that's the point. By sharing key points of information with other agencies, organizations, NGOs, foreign countries, Interpol, I think we can make tremendous progress on looking at, you know, I really think Jackson is right. There's probably five to 10 major players working stuff out of southern Africa to points east. And, you know, that's the choke point we should be looking at and you do it best by sharing intelligence in smart ways. I would just add on that last. I'm not a government official, so I can't answer how do we better coordinate, but I, from National Geographic's perspective or my perspective as a storyteller, it's an effort to tell the stories, look at the story in a relevant way and see what answers you come up with. If you examine these stories from oblique perspectives, come up with new angles that are relevant and accurate. It empowers those multiple stakeholders who are fragmented to say, oh, this is a terrorism issue, for example, in this case. I would like to add something to Richard. I think it's important that all this analysis has done, but it was important is that we have the feedback on the ground because we are dealing with operation. And that's often done up. And it's for us to get information and result is very important. Jean-Marc, you're absolutely right. You know, we do bug people who have information for it and we try to coerce, cajole, seduce, whatever to get this information from people who've literally exposed themselves to very serious situations to obtain it. And it's a criticism of us, meaning the government and the organizations that compile this information as it's usually a one-way flow. And that frustrates people on the ground and rightfully so we have to understand that. And point number two is there's a great deal of sort of background, theoretical, philosophical information that can be shared or not, but nothing is more important than what we call operational or operations ready intel. And that is certainly seeing elephant carcasses great and you report it to CITES and it's fantastic. We have all of these numbers. But unless you're telling the guys on the ground that you've seen it yesterday and it's still fresh because there's vultures on it to get guys out there to do it, that information merely documents our failure. And if you could identify yourself. Ian Saunders from Salvo Trust. Jackson, what I'd like to ask is throughout your research, at what level or what levels do you think that the unconventional banking systems such as the Huala are being used in the illegal wildlife trade? Well, that is a great question. You were on a question. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, I mean, we can talk afterwards. But I think probably unconventional banking mechanisms perhaps play an incredibly strong role in transferring resources from source markets to market consumers. We've been digging into this issue for a while. And so we can, I guess, go over more specifics later on. Thank you. Eric Dinterstein, Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions Resolve. Jackson, to what extent, just as if you extinguished some poaching groups that are active and operative, if you found the exposed banking system that they were doing these transactions following on Ian's question, do you just drive it underground and make it even more difficult to unearth those? Are you working with the next set of techniques to find, are you thinking that far ahead of how do you get to those other ways of once the pressure is put on the obvious points to circumvent the system and keep the finances going? Hi, my name's Aliyah Pendolfi with the Cashmere World Foundation. I don't know who this question is for, but I think each one of you could probably answer bits and pieces of it. One of the things I've noticed, we have a lot of intelligent people in this room, a lot of powerful people in this room. We have the executive order which brought together many different ministries together as well as in the U.S. as well as in foreign countries as well. One of the things that I've noticed with all this power we have, all this money that's flowed into counter poaching as well as counter trafficking, why is it that the number of rhinos and elephants have been increasing? Why is it that the illicit wildlife trafficking budget net worth has increased as well in the last two years? That's kind of one of those things that I can't understand how we can be so powerful and so smart in this room yet let poachers or any of these criminals come in and rip the resources of these many different countries as well as the financial resources of the United States as well as other European unions that have invested a lot of money in helping protect these animals. I promise to keep this short because I have a one word answer based on the C word that I mentioned before. This would not be going on to the scale and degree it is without corruption. That's what allows it to work. It's the enabling ambience and until that, until there is governmental will in these key exporting countries to tame corruption, we're shoveling sand against the tide. I came to address your first question. I mean that's an excellent point. Yes, we're doing as much as we can to sort of take that predictive analytical approach simply because trafficking syndicates are incredibly dynamic but logistics are logistics are pretty scarce and this is a vulnerability that needs to be squeezed so we're actually talking with a bunch of I guess academic experts if you will to build some predictive analytical tools as well. I mean that's just an ongoing conversation. I would just add you can you can everyone here has a nice litmus test they can use and that's can I given the numbers we're talking about given the stakes we're talking about can I identify an international ivory trafficker by name. You can do it for drugs you know Pablo Escobar you can do it for organized crime but can you name in this room an individual now a couple people can it's not fair but you get my point until we have organized our transnational investigative efforts around that principle as well it's a corruption issue into which everything will just disappear. Ask these guys. The other thing is kind of local media, local civil society working on the corruption angle. I mean it's a dangerous job to be investigative journalist in Africa but there have been some pretty bold reporters working in Namibia Mozambique who kind of looking into the corruption among local authorities as well. I'm going to turn actually to Governor Dado I think you had your hand up who who is governor of the Tana River State and kind of faces it from a local government perspective. Thank you. Well although you have not named names but you have said China plays a greater role as an end consumer of these products. First of all I don't understand whatever is used for if it's on a mental or good luck find an alternative. We are told rhino is used for as an aphrodisiac medicine come on there are better products that have been made. Why don't we have Chinese represented in such conferences for them to be told right on their face because now it's linked to terrorism it's linked to insecurity we will even link it but we are only addressing the middle we are not starting I will come and tell you how we feel we should do the source and then the end user take the bull by the horns why can't we do that the elephant is in the room is the end user thank you. Well I don't know if you're here at the beginning I mean within within this conference we we said look we first we want to focus kind of where the rubber hits the road on on the ground and what some of the models on the ground are there is absolutely this much greater global aspect and we were saying you know this is something CSIS says Southeast Asia China program a transnational threats program this is something I think that we could we could try to build kind of in a follow on that so not to diminish that aspect of this by any by any means. Yes we have one there we congressman Royce is running a tiny bit late so we can take a few. My name is Bas Haibrex World Wildlife Fund I've heard indeed you saying terrorist group attacking these these vulnerable populations in failed states and creating havoc amongst local populations it's also true the other the other way around is they have access to those resources because in many cases they have very good relations with local communities who tell them where those resources are so it's questioned to the group how do you see let's say park management in those areas basically prevent them from getting access to these type of information and creating better relations with communities so that they don't provide that assistance to those groups thank you. Good point Bas and it's an astute question I think that all of us who've done this for a long time have seen that that if you're the only gang in town then the people in desperate villages join your gang but if there's an alternative if the gang that shows up there are the good guys with or without white hats then there's a chance that people will act upon enlightened self-interest and join the right side and come to the light rather than toward the forces of unsustainability and all of the stuff you see so out of an active tempered desperation people will cooperate because they rightly see immediate gain in sending out somebody the best hunter from the village with the gun that was brought in you bring back the tusks maybe they get the maybe they get a little cash you're absolutely right it happens all the time so sometimes villages are complicit very deeply so and sometimes they're victim so once again that's the point to offer an alternative that criminality is not the only way to make a living. I will give a dimension of the problem I've been involved in fighting ivory trafficking in some country in in Africa and at the end of the day the major people who are supporting this trafficking have very high authorities and they are supporting the the the villages because they are all part of the politics and they are profiting on about that and diplomacy is a key element we need to have support of diplomat of diplomat to address this problem there is a minimum of transparency to have and to have a support of diplomat to to really starting fighting that. I jewelry Trimbley from provolence capital in the private sector I've spent some time in the DRC and I've spent some time in Kenya and Rwanda and spent some time in Gabon and Richard I agree with you on the corruption side but corruption knows no borders and my question is you know the DRC's problem isn't the is in all within the DRC it's South Sudan CAR and who comes across the border in Gabon it's the Cameroonians coming across into Maccabay and the and the military funding you know the poachers coming across the border and the and so there are these cross-border issues and so how do we as an international mission based on your experience build these cross-border solutions as opposed to doing it country by country and I'd like to get your take on on what that that is thanks thank you jury once again a good question that that in in my attempt to avoid glibness but still be to the point I mentioned enlightened self-interest wear it in the enlightened self-interest of the US government to put more emphasis on the diplomatic solutions to these problems certainly that would be a motivation to do it and and that's pretty clear so I once again bother my colleagues at the State Department very often hoping it will be in the briefings if it doesn't get left on the cutting room floor so to speak and in various speeches and and sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't but and and as Brian mentioned certainly you know journalist job is is to separate truth from fancy or fiction and and certainly that circumspect approach of journalists to separate what we were all jumping up and down about about linkages to the north and to terrorist groups oops I said the t-word great you know it's great that we caught up it's 30 years late but at least we got there we're getting there now is it in the enlightened self-interest of the world community to deal with this problem instead of just letting it grow into the cancer it's become that's pretty obvious but we're not quite there yet there are some there's still some deniers out there I've heard testimony in congress within the last two years of people saying we see no evidence of this and you know that's that's inscrutable it's it's very difficult to to understand why that would be the case but I think we are over crossing that Rubicon so to speak and so maybe that's too much of an answer it needs to be in the interest of the world for political economic reasons and the one that's most important to me frankly so I'm glad you asked the question how hard is it to understand the value of doing the right thing how complicated do we have to be in our analysis how Machiavellian and pragmatic about economics and this and that secure all valid points but but how difficult is it for us as a world community to realize it's the right thing to do and just get about it and I'll give you a quick quick word I see that chairman Royce has come in so I maybe you're on the next panel so maybe you can okay well look we are at time one thing that struck me on that last question is just how difficult it is for the U.S. to do cross regional transnational programming it comes up in all kinds of governance programming in health programming in environment and infrastructure in MCC and so forth you know you look at the efforts of AFRICOM which is and the U.S. Congress with the U.S. Congress and the administration behind it to track down the LRA and Joseph Coney who has alluded us for decades now and how difficult that is for one group that is not liked does not produce a lot of money for communities and how it's the difficulties of working with the Ugandan security forces the CAR security forces such as the our DRC South Sudan and so forth let's wrap this up thank you very much to our guests and I want to welcome the chairman. Good afternoon good to see you all again I love that last panel that was fantastic and again Jennifer Cook the AFRICOM program folks at CSIS thank you again for putting this conference on at a bare minimum we're building awareness and networks with what you're doing and hopefully we're going to move the ball forward more aggressively. One thing I wanted to mention we've talked a lot about awareness building again this conference and the collection of experts and activists in the room today are part of it there is a lot in popular culture happening you've had things like the last days of ivory that I mentioned you have the national geographic focus coming which we heard about in the last panel you have America abroad media having just produced a piece this month on poaching and terrorism which will air across the country on a national public radio and so there's more and more attention publicly and there's legislative momentum that is underway we have the hearings that some of you will be testifying at tomorrow and legislation that's pending and that legislative momentum comes from real leadership and real political will and with chairman Royce we have exactly that chairman Ed Royce is the chairman of the house foreign affairs committee is someone that has been committed to issues of security long term globally but also with respect to Africa and with respect to Asia for a number of years I have a personal connection to chairman Royce in part because he represents some of my family in Southern California and Ed has served California and the constituents there for a number of years ably but he's also been a shining example for me of what's good about Congress Congress is often disparaged and our representatives are often thought of as not being very substantive or courageous but that's exactly what Ed Royce is he is substantive he is focused on issues of security in Africa for a number of years and my exposure to Ed especially on these issues came mostly when I was at the Treasury Department and at the White House when Ed was taking leadership roles on things that weren't sexy at the time but were incredibly important and so in 2003 2004 when we began to look at the networks of arms traffickers and proliferators in Africa began to focus very heavily on Victor Boot for example and his role in West Africa Ed was a major supporter of those efforts as we began to use treasury tools network analysis and a lot of the things that we're talking about here that can be applied in the poaching and wildlife trafficking context those efforts and Ed I'm not sure if you remember this we had a press conference at the Treasury Department when we started the first round of designations to isolate Victor Boot and his network began the long trail to his eventual capture by the DEA using DEA work in in not just Europe but in Asia to arrest and eventually extradite Victor Boot and so Ed Royce is not new to the issues of transnational threats he's not new to the issues of Africa he's not new to the problems of proliferation and networks to take advantage of the scenes in the system and the conflict zones around the world and not only is he not new to these issues he's been a leader in the space and so it's a great honor to have him here speaking with us to be present we've invited him to speak to give the keynote address but then to answer a couple of questions for us so I hope you will join me in welcoming somebody who's a leader in Congress a friend of mine and a key figure up on the hill Ed Royce let me let me begin just by talking about Juan Zirotti for a moment because at that point in time when we're talking about tracking Victor Boot it was one thing to get all of the US government on theme that what we were going to do is take a guy who in Africa helped put the weapons in on both sides of the civil war in Congo who helped fund the effort and supply the weapons and move the diamonds in blood diamonds in exchange for weapons that helped produce what you saw with the catastrophic attacks that Charles Taylor organized in three countries and as as Juan Zirotti was building the initiative behind this and focusing our institutions and telling them look how do you think the weapons get into Africa and what are we going to do what message are we sending if we don't take out the the arms merchant the merchant of death as he was called and I want to thank Juan because he didn't just stop once Juan Zirotti was apprehended overseas because frankly our agents did the good job necessary but a foreign government was going to turn them over to Russia and working together we were able to put enough pressure on that government to turn Juan Zirotti over that morning the newspaper said Victor Boot said the newspaper said yeah the newspaper said in Moscow said Victor Boot to fly back today to Moscow turned out they had it almost right because that was was supposed to be what happened but at the last minute we were able to bring sufficient pressure to instead fly Victor Boot back to New York City to the southern district of New York to face justice and also to turn over a lot of information about the networks that brought arms and traded blood diamonds for weapons and I want to thank him for that because his efforts were relentless and frankly it wouldn't have happened without that kind of focus and without his expertise on this I think it's important he's here now because this is the other point I wanted to remind or to discuss briefly in 1997 I became chairman of the Africa subcommittee and my wife Marie who's with me here today and I just like to recognize her for a minute honey if you'd like to stand she encouraged she encouraged a bunch of us on the committee in a bipartisan way to set up a conservation caucus with a thought that when we left Congress I think she always assumed I was going to move on that there would be some kind of a institution there in place to continue our work that would be bipartisan and one of the reasons I I want to thank CSIS and all of the NGO groups that are here today is because I think this builds on that theme that Marie and I talked about if we can build networks if we can build institutions that aren't just going to pass legislation but you know then after a park system is set up in Africa are going to make certain that the U.S. government and the governments in Africa are keeping their commitments to sustainable development unless we unless we all work together on those networks and have a vision long term then this will fall apart so in driving this there have been successes but in the meantime there has been one big failure that brings us all together today the successes are some of the legislation that we've passed and I'll mention those in a minute but the failure is what has happened on the ground as a result of these poachers and these organized criminal gangs to take the products out of Africa and to sell those all over the world so from Europe to the Americas to Asia we're the demand for the ivory and we're we're what put that heavy price you know the purchase of these products that put the profits into the hands of who into groups like the Lord's Resistance Army into terrorist networks that are now stretching across Africa like Al Shabaab and so we need new tools how urgent is this I saw a tally from about a 15 year period back when we thought things were going well 1990 to 20 to 2005 that looked at the estimate of the net number of rhinos killed specifically for poaching and you know it was like 15 I can tell you that last year it was 1200 all right that number is now 1200 rhinos that that means not just the extinction of the white rhino eventually but the black rhino as well those poaching rates that that rate of killing is so high today that the reproduction rate has been overtaken if you look at the slaughter of elephants and I want to talk about that in a minute but back when I started Congress there were probably 1.3 million now I believe there's probably a half a million but it's the acceleration over the last three years that is really so daunting what drives that acceleration it's the fact that from this you know the Central African Republic to South Sudan to new groups like ISIS you have an organized structure where the reality is that taking out ivory or taking out rhino horn and getting that on the world market is the best way to make the fastest profit what are the problems that we're creating for society in across Africa as a consequence of this one problem is the endemic corruption of what we're trying to set up you know with the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act and Charlie Wrangel and I traveled to Africa and worked for support of that bill Bill Clinton famously made his trip to Africa in the middle of the trip announced his support for our bill at Goa we got that signed we were we were proud of ago and what was what that was going to mean in terms of the customs operations and as we helped with capacity building to send products in and out of the ports in Africa well what happens when you realize that one of those products now is ivory and that what's happening in the ports is you're undermining you're undermining the degree of corruption is creating endemic endemic corruption in the society and causing people to lose faith in their government this has to be addressed from the west and it has to be addressed from Asia because the the criminal syndicates that profit from this are back home driving this level of corruption what does it mean for the foreign for the Forest Service officers that we recruit in Africa that we we passed the Congo Basin Foreign Partnership which I and Clay Shaw wrote setting up that park systems across Africa and we induce we encourage recruit into the park service these park rangers and and they're out there putting their lives on the outgunned from the heavy weapons from the automatic weapons that are now coming through and what message does that send to the local communities and the sons and daughters about the rule of law in those communities when they see those park rangers slaughtered trying to stand up to protect the the natural parks the national park systems in Africa my concern here is that we're trying to build up across Africa capable government institutions and in the face of that these efforts now are being undercut by poaching because it not only perpetuates corruption but it basically tells people the rule of law doesn't matter people expect their government in Africa to provide security and services and once that corruption takes hold it erodes that confidence and we see frankly what happens you know from Burkina Faso to Burundi you see what happens when that when that lack of confidence takes hold and that downward spiral begins so the breakdown of governance is one impact of poaching but another is the economic consequences and i'll just talk about that for a minute ecotourism is the fastest growing share of the GDP in Africa if you look at at how fast that's grown over the last few years Africa has a population over a billion people helping the continent strive with sound economic growth benefits Africa frankly it benefits America so you're looking at about a 70 billion dollar a year phenomenon of ecotourism as people come from all over the world to see the wonder that is Africa and it's a very sustainable type of development and it's five percent of the entire GDP of all of Africa so you'll think about the employment there it's at least eight million people that are directly employed in this tourism and what drives it well the desire to come and see these magnificent animals what happens if we if this if our generation sets by by and allows that population to be eliminated that population of animals to be eliminated from the planet and what happens to those local communities that rely on ecotourism i mean they're not they're far removed from sources of energy they're often rural what happens to the jobs for those people in those communities when they're no longer when poaching wipes out these populations of animals i i just have to tell you him there's another troubling aspect of this beyond the economic impact that would have across Africa and that it's already beginning to have and that's security these armed groups like the Lord's resistance army that primarily sustain itself off of taking ivory what is its conduct in Africa it's modus operandi it is to go into villages and abduct children it is to make child soldiers out of the boys and concubines out of the girls what is wrong with the world that has not put a stop over all of these decades to Joseph coney's predatory behavior here when it has meant tens of thousands of children who have had their lives warped and ruined by what he has done but how does he do it what fuels it again it's the poaching because that's the one thing he has to sell but when i talk about security it goes beyond the security implications to central africa because when we began to talk about the janja wheat and my wife reminded me about one of our trips we were in we were in sudan outside of a village called tin a actually we were on the chad side at that point we had seen the destruction in tin a and we came upon some of the survivors of an earlier attack and one young boy held out his hand well to my wife but he didn't he didn't have a hand he just had an arm she asked him what had happened to it he said the janja weed cut it off with his other with his other hand he had drew drew a little picture that of what had happened and you can see the antinoff bomber or his crude rendition of it dropping bombs on his village and then you see the janja weed on horseback you know slaughtering his population you look at how the janja weed today behaves how it obtains its sustenance as it on the march now is not just a calamity for chad and sudan but throughout the region and you notice that again it is poaching that now sustains the janja weed as it systematically wipes out whole species or subspecies as it as it's on the move and again this is not just a source for them of additional money for more automatic weapons which they will use to kill additional animals but it is also such for the for the for the al shabbat a similarly aligned ideological movement that is also morphed into a criminal enterprise so you'll notice two things simultaneously happened recently in garisa one they go to the university and they slaughter 147 students right but at the same time they also go to the local park land and there they slaughter the the kenyan elephant herd why to take the ivory and take it to the port and to sell it for the hard currency to support the ever expanding el shabbat movement and tons and tons of ivory passed through those somali ports and by the way also leads to the corruption of some of the port officials and today the black market rate comes in the you know to such a high amount of wealth that it allows these criminal enterprises to buy bigger and bigger weapon systems the silica rebels the same situation in the national park at central african republic they're wiping out the species there again the same ideology the same jihadist cause but they bring the poachers in and they clear out the local populations of animals by the way the shell casings there show that originally they got the the weapons from cartoon the government in sudan and in analyzing the shell casings the iranian regime originally provided the weapons sold the weapons to sudan so we also when we talk about arms embargoes you know we talk about these weapons systems i think that's another part of your work is on automatic weapons to try to keep them out of the hands of poachers so on the legislative front we've been working to promote conservation protect these species for the number of years and we've moved a number of bills i shared with you the the congo base and forest partnership that i think calls into question our ability to keep the pressure on these governments in africa to keep those commitments to protect those park lands but so far we've we've on a regular basis pressed those heads of state to try to emulate teddy roosevelt and they'll tell us well you've got nothing i've been to your national parks yes we've encouraged them to come you've got nothing compared to what we have here exactly teddy roosevelt had set aside nothing compared to what you helped set aside but you have to protect it we want to help you protect it but that has to be your calling for posterity in terms of expansion of the rewards for justice program which i appreciate one's irate's insights on this too this is another bill that i passed to um to target transnational transnational organized crime and to include wildlife um um trafficking so that we've got the ability now to bring the full force of our institutions lastly the global anti poaching act and i'll be brief here and summarizing my legislation because a lot of you are familiar with it but it designates the worst wildlife trafficking countries countries determined to be a major that we determined to be a major source and or a transit point uh for illegal wildlife products coming in out of those countries it puts wildlife trafficking offenses on par with other serious criminal acts it it gets park rangers the tools they need because today the poachers are armed to the teeth with those night uh goggles and with uh rpgs helicopters by the way you've seen some of the footage probably decimating elephant herds from a helicopter so you can imagine what a disadvantage rangers in africa are on so to even out this fight this grants the president the authority to provide vital security assistance including vehicles and intelligence we use our spy satellites under this our you know our surveillance tools and lastly expanding regional cooperation on wildlife trafficking cases i am proud of some of the uh efforts by the way that uh our authorities are putting into tracking down these poachers worldwide including in laos but let's open it up to your questions now i very much appreciate you inviting me and wanzirati to be with you today so let's open it to the floor let's go with two questions and marie let me let me thank you again for your service and independent work support to the chairman and and leadership in general thank you yes sir back here hi i'm i'm gary sergeant i run a small company called ts light i'm a retired army s special forces officer by trade and i spent some time in uganda back in 95 dealing with the ugandan army at a pretty good extent my question really is african and how is it shifting and trying to provide something that's going to help our insecurity in africa something more substantial because we've got ourselves out of afghanistan iraq you know why aren't we more involved in africa well let me suggest that one of the things we're trying to do this is do it in a way that's cooperative with local governments across africa and i thank you very much for your dedication and service in the special forces you know how how dangerous that work is but you also know how effective that work can be in terms of tracking and one of the things that i hope to encourage and we've spent a lot of time working with the nigerian government from the outset of the crisis in northern nigeria we've had a couple of hearings on this is to use u.s special operations not to conduct an attack but with spy satellite with ability to track to be embedded with nigerian units to be able to go after boko haram in order to be able to help plan the rescue of the girls and then get them out safely in conducting an operation it's not necessary for the u.s to do the fighting here but it is quite possible when done done in tandem with a local government that wishes to use that kind of support i i ran special legislation through that would allow us to do this also by the way with the lord's resistance army and so for some time they've been trying to track the lord's resistance army there was real resistance obviously from the pentagon in this but the reality is our partners in this need the assistance on the ground on the ground and when we have this satellite technology you know when we have the capabilities that we have at our disposal to go after what is after all organizations that are allied with ices my argument to my colleagues has been this is a no-brainer but i would urge you because of your past experience and dedication please lend us a hand in this as you talk to african ambassadors but especially as you talk to us officials let's encourage more of this type of cooperation and i will also want to thank and ask him to stand work who gashu on my my staff and everybody knows him but stand up anyway work who thank you very much i've been in most the countries in africa but i think work who's been in all the rest and he continues he continues to push this agenda and i thank him for his dedication good afternoon congressman it was always happy to see you at congress and everywhere and for supporting african especially supporting our core passage on africa i just wanted to thank you actually for all that you are doing my question is we want to encourage the government the usa government the african government working together with the civil society on the ground public private sectors to make this happen without civil society working with us and the local people i think this collaboration coordination and is what is not working but with your leadership at congress and everywhere in africa i think we can make it happen and thank you so much well thank you for working together we passed far and a number of other key bills one that we fell short on last year was electrify africa which was legislation i passed through the house but i got stymied in the senate and i hope we can work together to provide you know electric power connecting up to the grid homes across africa because frankly if we can do this if we can do this it creates more sustainable development people don't burn wood and don't burn you know i i mean i think it without getting into the issue it's very important we continue to to push for that legislation thank you chairman i think you have to go i want to thank you for your time your leadership your focus and the urgency you're bringing to this issue join me in thank you one very much appreciate it