 Hello, my name is Susan Cleary, and I'm the Director of Policy and Public Outreach at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Oceans Environmental Science Affairs. And it's my pleasure to welcome you today to this live interactive event. It's for World Wildlife Day, and we're calling it Celebrating Wildlife Guardians. Wildlife trafficking is the illegal sale of animal or plant products alive or dead. It's a multi-billion dollar criminal activity that's decimating populations of iconic wildlife species, such as elephants, rhinos, tigers, and pangolins. It's destroying the economic livelihood of communities, threatening security, damaging fragile ecosystems, and contributing to the spread of disease. Frontline defenders and other wildlife guardians are putting their lives on the line each day to help curb wildlife trafficking. They're often invisible to much of the world, even as they stand between enormous criminal apparatus and the wildlife they've sworn to protect. So to help shed light on this important issue, I have two distinguished guests with me today, Juliana Machado-Farrera, who is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, Senior Ted Fellow, and the founder of Freeland Brazil, and Mike Veal, who's a senior mammal zookeeper at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, part-time ranger, and the founder of Global Conservation Force. Mike has worked extensively with animals for the majority of his career, and is a senior mammal keeper at San Diego Safari Park. His unparalleled access to some of the world's most endangered species, including two of the last northern white rhinos. Moved to action by what he saw every day, Mike completed a boot camp training course and became an anti-poaching ranger in Kruger National Park and founded Global Conservation Force. And Juliana is a conservation biologist who focused her career on working to fight illegal wildlife trafficking first in Brazil and now throughout South America. Through science, political engagement, professional training, and educational outreach, she aims to curb demand, strengthen law, empower police, and build international partnerships. She founded Freeland Brazil in 2012, and in 2014, National Geographic named her an Emerging Explorer. In 2016, she was awarded with the Wings WorldQuest Courage Award. She's also helping to pioneer the field of conservation genetics as a tool in combating trafficking, and I look forward to talking to her more about that. We're delighted to have you both here. Before we start our discussion, I wanted to say hello to everyone joining us online, as well as our viewing groups that are watching around the world. We're ready to take your questions, so please ask your question. You can use the chat space next to the video player or by using the hashtag WorldWildLifeDay. And with that, I wanted to start the conversation with a question to both of you, Juliana first. So how big is the wildlife trafficking problem? And what parts of the world are most effective? And do you see this as a problem that's growing? It's very difficult to have a good real estimate on something which is illegal, but those estimates which were made, they range from $10 billion to $40 billion per year depending if fisheries and timber are included. And according to the 2016 UN World Wildlife Crime Report, every region plays a role. So wildlife trafficking serves to supply different consumer markets, from religious artefacts to traditional medicine to wild pets, zoos and collectors, bioparasites for cosmetic and drug companies. So it exploits a very wide array of species from every single region in the world. So what we see is that although some kinds of trafficking and the demand may be decreasing, new fashion trends create others. So my feeling is that the demand is stable or even growing, especially when some items like ivory or rhino horn become commodities and get higher prices. So of course, Asian and Africa are the key actors in the wildlife trafficking scene, but now more and more we are looking at regions as South America as being very relevant as well. How fascinating. Mike, do you find that the same trends that Juliana outlined? Yeah, I do. I just want to make note too, it's categorized as the world's fourth largest illegal market and that's just behind weapons, drugs and human trafficking. So just to give the understanding of the scale of the problem, other factors include two superstitions all across the board to tie in with what Juliana was saying. We see on the ground that the superstitious markets and religious demands or cultural demands from Asia coincide with those that are on the ground in Africa as well. So rhino horn in particular, if you're talking about that, there is a traditional market for the African users as well, that they need to have their magic concoction or mootie so that they can be the best poacher, be invisible to the rangers, and that is also pulling demand for endangered or local wildlife, endangered species or wildlife. Well, one of the facts about wildlife trafficking that many people don't realize is the human toll. Today at the Department of State in Washington for World Wildlife Day, we're talking about frontline defenders in their communities. Mike, you've been on the frontline yourself. Can you share your experience and help us understand how this works in the field? Yes, so there's a drive for money in a lot of these rural communities which is changing the dynamics of culture. It's eroding the moral fabric and a lot of traditions are changing because now the village elders or the community members don't have the same aspirations. They want to get rich. They want to get rich fast. It has handed over power and money to gangs and more gang control. So in these local communities, there's a lot more violence. With violence and money comes the other side of the game which is the weapons, the drugs, and the human trafficking is tied into this. So we see the complete erosion that is all focal around wildlife trafficking and how much money they can make from doing this. And since it is not, they don't serve hard time for these sentences if they get caught. So it's a low risk high payoff for them if they get in trouble, if they get caught, if they have to sit and do time. It may be six months, two years, but it's going to be comfortable. It's a total backward system right now when it comes to the crisis zones. Well before we move on to some of the online questions, I want to remind everyone to ask their questions in the chat space next to the video player or via Twitter using the hashtag World Wildlife Day. We've got an online question and this one's for you, Juliana. In your current work, which includes combating wildlife trafficking in one of the world's most precious ecosystems, the Amazon, I mean, can you tell us why does it make a difference that there's wildlife trafficking in the Amazon? Why should the rest of the world be concerned about this? Actually, I think that the rest of the world should be concerned about all biomes, the Amazon's precious, and it's suffering pressure from all sorts of sites. So there is the illegal timber, there is the cattle, there is the deforestation, but other environments, other biomes are also suffering from even more than the Amazon, such as the Atlantic first, for example. But I think that we need to think about wildlife trafficking not only from the animal suffering perspective, but as a conservation, environmental conservation issue, because there are unpredictable impacts that can come from withdrawing these animals from nature, which can vary a lot and even bring species to the brink of extinction. And this can bring imbalances to entire ecosystems. So I think that we should be looking not just at the Amazon, but at several biomes. And I think that wildlife trafficking is just one side of this pressure that these ecosystems are suffering. And it's just one hand of the deforestation and lack of protection that they are under. That's really, Mike, you know, you in some ways represent a different side of the frontline defender story. You were moved to action by what you saw happening in the field. And you went out, and I understand you took an anti-poaching boot camp. I know a lot of people who are looking at this, they're very concerned, but maybe they can't go out and do what you did, put themselves on the frontline in such a direct way. What do you suggest people can do in their own lives to help with wildlife trafficking? I get asked this question all the time, and a lot of people feel like they can't connect. But with the internet and the way social media works these days, everyone has a role to play in this. From educating yourself on the topics that are going on, all the issues involved, to educating your friends and family, you can throw fundraisers, you can help with elected officials and local policies because the United States plays a major role in this. We were up until recent laws, one of the major stopovers for ivory and rhino horn, and we were just now closing those markets. So the impact is a global scale, but can start at home, and it can be as little as you know something about drones, you know something about communications, or you have somebody who's connected to law enforcement and maybe they have a new idea. Really you've got to think outside the box, but pretty much every application can be used for this because the problem is so global that we need all pieces to be plugged in so we can make a change at the end. Can I ask you that? Yes, please. I think that also people need to first and foremost understand that for example wild animals are not supposed to be pets, why follow these fashion trends, and understand that even when you buy something that looks legal, it can have entered the legal supply chain but can be poached or have an illegal source. And I think that people are unaware that the next door pet shop may have animals from illegal origins, and that's a problem that it's next door, it's here, and consumers here in the West, in Brazil, in big cities, may be supporting these entire illegal supply chains. So I think that first we have to think, why do we have this desire of owning something that belongs to a wild species and should be in the wild? And second, really think about that there are so many ways that dishonest people will do to bypass laws and regulations that even when something is completely legal, may not be sustainable, and when it looks legal, may not be completely legal. So I think we should be really aware of our responsibility as consumers concerning the supply chain of what we're buying. Yeah, that's fascinating. So Mike, can you walk us through this? How do these products get into a pet shop or get into a boutique? What does that look like? So from the ground level, you're going to see somebody from the local community who's connected to this system somehow. So someone approaches them and says, I hear you're the best person in this habitat, you're the best hunter. What if I gave you $10,000 in this rifle and you bring me back a rhino horn? And that pressure is stepping over from somebody from Southeast Asia who's saying, I need this and so you're going to get it from me. And if you don't, there's going to be a consequence or I'm going to go to the next guy who can. And so then it goes to the next level over all the way back to the demand market where there's somebody who's using it at home who may not understand the implications of what they're doing, just like Juliana is saying. If the end user or the purchaser, it's home for them. So someone who's in Hanoi may not realize that they caused the death of people and rhinos and corruption through government officials and embassies throughout the list just to get this end product. So they may not be realizing how that's going on where it literally started from home and one side and impacted home all the way across the continent or the world and everybody in between was affected. So causing on the front line for rhino poachers and ivory poachers, either the death of rangers and rhinos or the death of poachers and the impact to the local community and causing a divide or just the criminal network itself building a stronger base, taking over the local communities then all the way to the other side where even in the home communities of the user market, the gang members and the corrupt officials are getting money illegally and they are strong arming the rest of the world for their tactics and they are not doing it for the betterment of people or animals. It's short-sighted profit and greed. So Juliana, when you listen to that story, what do you think that have you seen a success story in changing people's consumer behavior and tamping down demand? How do you think you go about getting people to see this problem in a holistic way? I have to be optimistic, otherwise I would not be doing this kind of work. I think it is possible, but it takes a long time. It is my personal experience and it may sound a little cliche, but the work with kids is the one that has the best outcomes. So until all these kids who are being educated now grow up, we have to support law enforcement and we can't allow this crime to happen. But I think that what I find is that people are unaware of wildlife trafficking. They may hear about rhinos and elephants, but they are unaware about parrots or about little songbirds or about crocodile skins in a very fancy boutique and what we see I think can be summarized in two words, traceability and impunity, accountability. So we have a very difficult traceability problem. If we have a legal trade and we have an illegal trade, we have to differentiate them. And it's very easy to make illegal things seem legal through fraud, fraud, corruption, etc. So one thing may look legal, but may not be legal. When we educate people, we show them, for example, if I have the time, Obama's the Brazilian federal environmental agency is doing an operation called delivery, which is revolutionizing counter-war life trafficking in Brazil. Because what they're doing is instead of giving leg bands to identify chicks hatching captivity, to legalize breeders, just sending them by mail, they're going to these facilities and looking at the chicks to see if they were really hatched, they're really there. Just a couple of weeks, the Sao Paulo results came back with only 1.9% of the leg bands going to legal animals hatching captivity. 98% were going to launder poached animals from the wild. And they're going to look legal and be sold as legal and be traded as legal. So I think that when we show that to people and we show the volume and the impacts that stretch far beyond animal suffering, they include environmental impacts, human impacts, and all these governance impacts, economic impacts, I think people tend to change. Mike recently, Thula Thula Reserve in South Africa had an attack. And I guess my question is what can reserves do in the future to prevent poaching and to protect their people, their staff? I'm glad you mentioned Thula Thula. I was hoping to bring it up. We deployed our team to Thula Thula days after the attack, waiting for all the proper channels of clearance. And our team is currently there providing backup and support. It's all about proper funding. You don't want to send funds to the wrong organizations or organizations that appear to be doing something because that could hurt the ground. So the ground operations, for example, if there's 50 reserves in one zone and one is getting all the profit because they're the one that has the best marketing, you are hurting the rest of them because you create this conservation fallout zone where you have fort knocks of conservation right here and the poachers are going around it and they're wiping everything else out. Now that's not the case over there, but for Thula Thula, but what needs to happen is unfortunately this attack got people who were not paying attention to pay attention. And all of a sudden people are like, oh, it's getting worse. Oh, it's so bad. The only thing that's changing in my opinion is that people are becoming more aware and more involved. So by becoming educated in the situations that are happening, you can find the right channels to support the right efforts. Rangers on the ground, they hold the shield while policies and governments get the game together. SIDES boosts efforts. Federal agencies are capturing all the middlemen and the traffickers. And then to add to Julia's point a little earlier, educating the kids is the 20-year planned investment, where you start to see the change, what they see, the benefit of having ecotourism in a healthy, stable environment because people are traveling there to see this and that might be the only livelihood at the current time being. But Thula Thula's attack was pretty serious all around. It impacted people and the animals, two orphans were killed, two rhino orphans were killed, and the payoff for those horns is almost nothing. So it has us with more questions and answers at the moment where we're looking at the situation going, why would they go after orphans when the horns are so small unless there's tie-ins to other plans? So right now before I go too far into Thula Thula's operations, we are strategizing a long-term support plan, and we have our guys on the ground currently helping to defend and support Thula Thula so that this kind of attack doesn't happen again. Thank you. So we have a question from one of the online viewers named Andrew, and he asks, within the jurisdictions you work in, have you seen any impact from new wildlife laws on curbing demand or improving our facilitating enforcement efforts? There were some big wins recently, internationally, and are either of you seeing those laws making a difference? I am for sure. You can start. I can. Yeah. We're seeing it for sure. The internet is holding certain governments and other officials accountable, and the growing pressure from the awareness and all the laws are making it harder for these criminals to hide. And now with these new laws in place and more players in the field, if you will, more people are getting caught and they're getting prosecuted, where that wasn't happening just even two, three years ago. And I see another side of this issue is with different countries looking to strengthen their laws and enhance their collaborations in efforts such as the development of wildlife enforcement networks, countries such as, for example, Brazil feel pressured to enhance their national laws as well. Right now, the environmental legislation in Brazil, especially in concerning wildlife trafficking, is very weak. And it gives the wrong message to society and offenders because nothing happens to them. They're not held accountable. But I see a growing international pressure for the change. And I also see very committed governmental officers doing everything in their reach to prosecute these people, to try to use the laws that are available to them, to try to change the legislation. So there is a growing movement for sure. Well, both of you work with different types of wildlife guardians. And you yourself come from both very interesting backgrounds. A mammal keeper, a geneticist, respectively. So what kinds of professional fields do you think are underrepresented in wildlife trafficking? And where do you think that new players and new skills can be brought to bear on this global problem? Do you want to start? I can, yeah. I think that as a geneticist, I see with great eyes the work that I learned at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab, National Forensics Lab, which is a forensic lab that works only with wildlife-related crimes and evidence. So I see the role of science as very relevant right now. And I am very optimistic with the use of DNA, stable isotopes, and all sorts of different tools to enhance our traceability ability, to enhance our ability to infer the origin of animals with unknown origin, to return them back to the right place. So I think that scientists, people developing databases, studying population genetics to see what is the genetic variability like in nature so that we have the database to compare the animal with, I think that there is so much room there. And of course, people in the judicial system, lawyers and prosecutors that know the laws and understand why it's important to prosecute environmental crimes. Many times we see that judges and some prosecutors see them as lesser crimes, acceptable crimes. If judges understand that the offender has to be held accountable, has to have a penalty, has to pay for the damage, then things are going to start to change. So I think there is a lot of room for interested professionals. Mike, what do you see from your point of view? I think the judicial system is a huge, huge play in this. There are not enough people who specialize in some of these fields and they can be so specialized where, just like Juliana said, you have this massive court case come through and so many different individuals and agencies have finally got the person captured and sitting for their sentence and then they walk. So lawyers and judges, forensic crime scene, those databases that we use because we have to investigate all these different crime scenes individually. In the databases, there's a lot of science, like Juliana is saying, that there are so many avenues to work in and it's really important that we listen to those specific disciplines like population biologists, the forensic guys who can tell you the date, time, age, frame of these specific incidents and how they categorize that for our court case. And then on another side of it, the science and technology field has just amplified our reach to whole new levels. We use drones on the ground, we use handheld GPS. We use different scanning tools and just regular cameras every day make everything so much easier for documentation. So the technology field is a real easy one to kind of just jump into and offer help with because most of the time there isn't enough funding and conservation to get that really nice technology that we need in the field. Can I just add to that, that's true, because there is so much room. Some tech students back home were doing their final project and they were trying to develop some sort of scan that would scan cars going through major roads and highways in Brazil to try to find heartbeats or heat from trafficked birds. So all sorts of crazy things are being done. Yeah, no, I know, well, Mike, we know you partially because San Diego Zoo was very much part of the State Department Zoo hackathon this year, which brought together coders, tech people, graphic artists, and others to sort of come up with tech solutions for demand reduction. It was really interesting. We do have a question now coming in from Twitter, from our US Embassy in Madrid. And the question coming from Europe is what's the role of Europe in wildlife trafficking and what can government agencies do to help? Europe stands as a hopping point for a lot of these traffickers. Wherever the laws are weakest for wildlife trafficking, those are the safe havens for the criminals that are using their networks. There have been networks caught in Ireland. There have been networks caught in the UK. I think it was London in specific. France just tightened down some some laws recently. And it would come to a shock to many that just because there isn't, you don't feel it happening in your country. That doesn't mean that it's not a problem there because just like we were referencing earlier, the United States was playing as one of the largest markets for ivory and illegal wildlife products. And it was because we didn't have specific laws. So if you got caught in the States, if you made a million dollar purchase and a million dollar profit out here on illegal wildlife goods, you could serve maybe six months if they got you in the right line. So Europe stands to be closing the bridge for these wildlife traffickers so they don't have safe havens to move their product around and also just working in collaboration with all the different agencies across the world. It's a global scale problem, so these guys are going to be all over the place and they may come from parts of Europe. And it's not only a very relevant consumer market, but a very relevant part of, for example, from South America to Europe, to then Asia or the Middle East. So it's a part of transition, yeah. And I don't know if the situation is still as I'm going to tell you, but a couple of years ago I learned that, for example, in Switzerland, offspring of illegal smuggled animals was actually considered legal. That's legalizing trade. So some of the biggest, I think, parot or bird breeders in the world are in Europe. There was one in Switzerland, one in Spain, if I'm not mistaken. And it's just insane because they get their illegal mattresses and then they start to profit out from this illegal offspring that's legalizing trafficking. So it's very important that good policy is built to prevent that from happening. Can genetics help with something like that? Of course. Of course. It's very exciting because not only we can use paternity tests to if there is not a match of the offspring with the parents, you can that's a good indication that the offspring was poached and they're trying to make it look legal. Depending on how much database we have on the species, we can try to trace which population of origin that animal was taken from. And we can also, I think that it's possible and scientists should be thinking about it as well, to use individual DNA profile as part of the required documentation to every single animal of wild species, which is bred in captivity with commercial purposes, because then you cannot fake it, you can do counterproofs throughout the animal life, and there is no way to fake the animal's DNA. So by all means, yes. How fascinating, Mike, we have a question in and it goes to the point that you made about the role of beliefs and in the wildlife trafficking space. And the question is what role, if any, do religious communities play in countering wildlife trafficking and poaching? I can't say that religious communities in particular have a specific role in the trafficking itself. Really, it just kind of boils down to what region and what species you're dealing with. However, if you're speaking culturally by cultural beliefs and it could tie into some religion from specific areas, some of these demands are fortified for those beliefs. So, you know, not necessarily that it's a cure for cancer, the rhino horn belief, or it could be part of a ceremony or it could be that this art object for this specific religion has to be made from X blank, you know, certain wildlife product. And some of those are pulling in this animal demand. But it's I couldn't say that like specific religions play specific roles. Although we have seen religious leaders take on really important roles in talking about some of these issues. That's what I was going to mention, because from one side, some religious beliefs generate demand. And in South America, both within countries as well as international, so we have wildlife trafficking to feed religious beliefs from other parts in the world, such as Asia. However, not only some religious people could help decrease demand by, for example, understanding that whatever they believe in, all creation is sacred or respecting life. But religious leaders have an amazing educational tool in their hands and they can help educate communities, entire communities look up to their religious leaders and listen to them. So it's a huge educational force that they have, that if they were to really get in this this this war we have against wildlife trafficking, it could make a difference for sure. Well, that's a great example of of different organizations that can play a role in this in this debate that that maybe you hadn't really thought would naturally be involved in these kinds of discussions. You both have your own organizations. But when you look around, what other organizations do you think are doing a good work to any other people that you really want to give a shout out to? Well, yeah, yeah, actually traffic is doing amazing work. The Eagle Network, the Eagle Action Network of your jury, his crew, Wild Aid and their awareness campaigns and their consumer reduction. And then there's so many on the ground that are just doing amazing work that they're working with pockets of specific species or specific markets. And it's really important that for all of us in this field that we work together because you create small island nations and you isolate everybody out. Well, you're not doing anybody any favor and you're ruining the chances for the success for the wildlife. But if we can partner and work across the board, we have more tools that are disposable, more brains, more eyes on more, more eyes and boots on the ground kind of thing. There's there's a lot there are a lot out there. I would be I would want to compose a huge list. I have to at least talk a little bit now. I have there is a role for everyone. It's it's such a big problem that instead of competing, we need to be collaborating. Freeland Foundation has a great initiative that they're calling the Star Alliance against wildlife trafficking, getting NGOs, governmental institutions, intergovernmental, so getting everyone on board. So for example, the Roots Program is an USAID and traffic. WCS is doing amazing work in Latin America. There are some people on the ground in Brazil. SOS Fauna is an amazing underground organization where I started as a volunteer and stayed for seven years and learned so much and they are doing such incredible work and so many very committed governmental officers, the federal police in Brazil. I can cite Obama state police and really so many people coming together. So I think that the answer is, again, another cliche, but so many people are well organized, crimes are organized, let's organize as well. So I believe in bridging and collaborating. So everyone has a role. There are people working with vulnerable communities, with education and income, stable income programs. There are people working to against criminals and trying to get to traffickers. People working with public policy in Brazil. WWF does a lot of public policy. So everyone has their own niche and and only by organizing and collaborating and working together and civil society alongside with governments and not against them is that we're going to start to change because the criminals, they are well organized. Absolutely. Mike, you're talking about you know, some of your experiences. I mean, I'm sort of fascinated by the work you're doing with rhinos, which are are so threatened right now. When you look at the work that you have been doing with this particular species, what sort of stands out as as one of your more memorable experiences? So for patrol or just in general, like like arrests or whatnot, there's there's so many actually I know it must be hard to pick one. How about on patrol? I think in some ways it was interesting to have both the experience of a zookeeper and the experience in the field. I'd say some of it, I guess it's a generalized thing. Some of the things that stand out to us most is when we jump in with another anti-poaching unit and we provide support, so advanced training and combat, tracking technology, we place drones and we get them all this gear, you took the same guys and you know what their potential is, but they don't know it yet. And you've energized them and you've given them the strength that they didn't think they had. And now you took 15, 30 guys who were almost afraid of what they were doing. And now they've completely embraced it. And they're just locked down and their hammers on nails for getting things done. So that every time that happens is probably one of the most memorable. And then any time you capture a poacher before they've committed the act, that is a huge win. I can't say that happens all the time. It's actually a lot more complicated than it would seem to capture poachers because of how organized they are. But when that happens, those are those are the true standout moments. Juliana, you must have some memorable moments in your work as well. I have so many, but I think I want to go back to my field biologist time back when I was with SOS Fauna. They did a seizure of I don't remember now, I think 80 parachutes that were just recently took as nestlings. They didn't even have feathers yet and they work with the police. So they knew where they were from and they are going to say they knew where they were taken from the organization. Rehabilitated the the parrots and they were very well cared for. They were strong, they're flying. They were beautiful and healthy when it came to the time to release them back in the wild in a technically responsible release and in the correct spot. And SOS Fauna did all this work. I was I was volunteering. So but I remember traveling back to Mato Grosso with those animals which were healthy and strong. But then they went through a 40 day acclimation period in which they got fed the natural food sources. Their feathers started to get this amazing color that I had never seen before. Their eyes started to glow because they had the sun and they had the rain and they had the seeds and the flowers and they started to shine. And then when they were released, they fly it out and they were feeding on the correct food sources and they were vocalizing and pairing up in Paris. A month later, they were copulating and suddenly we had eggs and chicks. And they were so colorful and like life went back into them. It's like they were healthy, but there was no vital energy. And after just 40 days, they were just shining in such a way that I will never forget in my life. No, it's really amazing. You know, it must be that that these sort of inspiring moments are what took both of you on this path. Mike, do you have a moment when that really made you decide that this was how you're going to spend your professional career? Yeah, I had a couple. When I was watching the stats rise again for elephants and rhino and recently giraffe, pangolin, vultures, all of the above, I was like I couldn't sit still anymore and I'd been working kind of towards my young life and adult life going towards all of these backgrounds into one. And so when I went and got past ranger training, which was hard, it was like the moment where I tied all these different fields into one point. And then I could branch out and start impacting all of the angles that I wanted to because before that I was working all different avenues. But when I became a graduated ranger, I really then knew this is this is it. This is where it's going. Both of you have such such fascinating careers and such interesting lives. What advice do you have to young people to find to find a career that's as inspiring as the work that you do? Juliana, what people must ask you all the time, how do I get to be you? No, you don't want to be me. I think that I will start with the cliché and then I'm going to say what I really want to say, but I think that you have to come from the heart because it's difficult, it's underpaid, it's overworked. Your family has to be fully supportive. So it has to be something that you cannot rest your head in the pillow at night if you don't do something. It's like for the older people, it's like when Neil from The Matrix took the red pill instead of the blue pill. You cannot not know those things anymore. And then how can I live knowing those things and not doing anything about it? So it's this sort of drive that comes from within and makes you restless. But I like to say that if you're getting a lot of knows and if you're bothering a lot of people, you're probably on the right path. Keep on doing it. You need to question. You don't have to accept status quo and you don't have to care too much about money as well, because it's difficult. But go ahead, go go against the norm, go against the status quo, try to change things. Otherwise, yeah, I agree. I you have to be in it for the passion of wildlife and what you really the actual avenue that you want to be a part of, because you're not going to get a lot of sleep. You're going to work a lot. You're not going to get paid well comparatively to a regular business. And you're going to be restless at all times because there's always something else you want to get done. You're never satisfied with what you're working on, because there's just this massive problem and so many species and so many avenues to work in that you just want to keep going. That's great. We have a viewer on Twitter and has a question about South Africa and their latest proposal to commercialize rhino horns at the national level, which might create a legal market. We both sort of talked about this before, but I wonder, Juliana, do you have a thought on that? And maybe, Mike, since you know Africa a little bit more, you can comment as well. I think that it has to be a balance and an equilibrium because people need to use wildlife products and there is an economy and people need to make a living. But as a rule, what I see mostly in South America is that when we have a legalized trade and a legalized breeding program or commercialization, people say it can supply the demand. So taking the pressure out of decreasing the illegal market, what we see is that the legalized market generates demand because it makes people want more. It makes law enforcement very difficult because you have to differentiate legal from illegal, makes it easy for illegal merchandise to enter the legal supply chain and then a huge flow of money into the illegal and it doesn't supply the demand. Turns out that it just generates, creates more and complicates. So I understand that we're not close to the time when we're not going to use wildlife, but I think that especially with the rhinos and that the situation is so serious and you can talk about this much better than I can, we cannot take this risk. It's too risky. I agree. The time to have tried that would have been 100 years ago. If we wanted to defeat this, so we have a growing market first coming from Asia and we are only seeing a tiny percentage of the demand because that's the market that can afford the rhino horn. If we stop everything, turn tides and give it to them, we are going to create more users. And then from our perspective on the ground, we have the burden of proof for so many things already. If we have to sit in a court case and you have corrupt officials that are actually counterfeiting all these documents saying this is a legal horn, this is an illegal horn, we have another avenue to lose. And it's a big one because now they're getting more money and they're going to launder it through that system. It's not a good idea. I don't agree with it at all. Like I said, we are looking at less than we're looking at approximately 25,000 rhinos left total. Their horns grow at, on average, two inches a yearish, maybe. The level of value behind this horn is 40 to $50,000 per kilo on the streets. It's way out of control and out of proportion right now. So the domestic market that they proposed is just a false front because no one in South Africa is using rhino horn. So you've just legalized the movement within the country that has the biggest problem and we are not going to make any more progress if we do it at this 11th hour. We are like at 11.59 right now and we're just starting to make progress in a lot of avenues. This would be the floodgate that could change the tide and we can't take that risk right now. I encourage people taking a look. It's free online, the UNODC 2016 report on wildlife crime. It has so much information and so much about these products becoming commodities, speculation commodities. And there is so much good information, even if you just read the summary. I really encourage everyone taking a look. It's been such a fascinating conversation. I think we have time, unfortunately, for only one more question. But just on that note, when you are looking at the incredible challenges, I mean, and the global nature of them, what do success look like? I mean, when you are sort of trying to say what you want to achieve, how do you set a goal in that space? I have one. My goal is to work until the day my work is not needed anymore. I dream about being out of a job. That's mine too. When we measure success, though, there are hundreds of incursions. There are thousands of rangers across the continent of Africa. There are poachers all over the place. Every single day that we don't lose a ranger to poacher in the sense that someone has died, every single day that we are not doing a crime scene or taking animals out of a snare or having to do a complex raid, we are we're showing success. When we're trying to deal with individual communities and we can get an entire community to now be part of the support network, that's a huge success for us. Where it's not an us versus them, because we're not trying to create that. But in some places it has become that where the community feels that it's conservationists versus them. And when we can tie them back into their local heritage, that's a huge success for us. I think we've got one more question. Try to get time in for coming from Windhoek. Do you think the question is, do you think governments are doing enough to protect endangered species and are there perhaps something more that can be done? I think that there are too many interests on the table. So I can go about all the conservation implications. But if there is an industry behind, if there is if there are economic interests behind something, they're going to have very strong lobbying abilities. So I think that we have to look at this problem. More it's a national problem where governments need to take action. But also wildlife doesn't see borders. They don't know borders. So we have to think internationally as well. And there's some one point that I would like to make is that governments should be doing more, but when it comes to international community, the only framework we have to protect species and regulate the trade is CITES. And CITES suffers from economic and political pressures as well. So there are several species that are and that shouldn't be listed in CITES. There are not. And also the book of the wildlife trafficking. We have lots of species which are non-CITES listed, but they are. They were illegally harvested. Do you know if they cross national borders, they could be traded in theory internationally legally. So we have to start looking at non-CITES listed species in the international trade as well, because if these illegal harvested species that reach national borders were to be counted in the wildlife trafficking statistics, they would skyrocket. I agree. We've only just begun getting really into wildlife trafficking. If you're looking at the last several years, there's a lot to be done still. I don't think a lot of governments are doing enough. I think that there could be more policies put in place. Conservation is always behind weapons, drugs and human trafficking for funding. However, at least in our field and some of the bigger schemes of poaching, we're dealing with terrorism, weapons trafficking, drugs trafficking and human trafficking, however, we're doing it without the massive budgets that the other government bodies or NGOs are dealing with. So there's a lot of room for more support. And I just wanted to add that governments need to set the tone. They need to send the message. So if you have weak legislation that says that wildlife trafficking is a misdemeanor, that sends the wrong message. So we, as a society, we need to make this choice. Are we willing to take the chances of losing these animals and having this impact? Are we willing to take this change? And it's up to the governments to say, no, and here's a regulation and the offenders will be held accountable. So we cannot wait. Governments cannot wait anymore. They need to show to send the message. Yeah, we have one more comment from our US Embassy in Accra, Ghana. And the question is, what's the role of youth? We talk about governments, we talk about NGOs. But what can young people do? And do you have any advice on concrete steps they could actually take to make a difference? Become educated in your local wildlife issues. See how that plays internationally. And then within every kid in school and every elementary school, high school, whatever it is, those kids are the next step for defense. They're the next geneticists, rangers, policy writers, judges, lawyers. If they're informed at a young age and they can start fine tuning what they want to do, they can step into the workforce and really make a bigger impact because not as many people are at this point, you know, at the same stage that they could be in 20 years. So education awareness is huge for the kids. They can start volunteering in all these lesser efforts that build the bigger picture because there's so many different avenues. But then the kids can also, once they've kind of hit into the adult life frame, they'll be ready to tackle many of the bigger challenges. I think that kids are tomorrow's consumers. So I think they need to be educated and don't become a consumer. Ask yourself, why do you need, why do you feel so cool to own that exotic snake or bird? Why do you have this drive? What's your relationship to animals and to the wild? Do you love that animal? So do you want to have it yourself? Are you going to treat your girlfriend like that as well? Why do you need to own something? So we think your relationship to the wild, we think your choices as a consumer and in that market economy, as we live in most of the world, the consumers set the tone as well. So don't become tomorrow's consumers of illegal wildlife or wildlife if you can. Yeah. Before we go, do you want to tell us one more thing you want us to think about for World Wildlife Day tomorrow? The topic at the State Department today, of course, is is honoring wildlife defenders looking at the people around the front line as as both of you are on this fight. But any concluding remarks? Yeah, I would say get involved. If you have questions or you want to be involved, ask. You know, there are so many organizations, see what you can do. We don't have any time to waste. Unfortunately, where we're out with many species, we're at or past the irreversible damage point, and so now we're salvaging. So don't wait to get involved, get involved as quickly as you can. I think that conservation issues and wildlife trafficking should be seen as with the seriousness that it is, as I said before, it's not just about animal suffering, it's about impacts that stretch far beyond our reach, extract environmental impacts, economic impact, social impacts. So understand and treat that with seriousness, because what we see with our rangers in the front lines, not only they are understaffed, under-equipped, under-trained, underpaid, but they are sometimes mocked by their counterparts who work with drugs and narcotics. They say, oh, there you go, saving little birds. You know, so we need to be educated. These guys are heroes, and the societies need to understand the real impacts and the real reach of wildlife trafficking. And the numbers are shocking. So I believe a thousand people killed in the line of duty over the last decade. And I think that's a story that we're really happy that you helped us tell today. So unfortunately, we're out of time. I just wanted to thank our panelists for joining us today, Mike Field and Juliana Machado-Farera, as well as our online viewers and the watch parties gathered at our US embassies and consulates abroad, including embassies Accra, Windhoek and Madrid. And if you're interested in following up on the very important work that our speakers are doing, I encourage you to check out Mike and the Global Conservation Force on Facebook. I believe it's facebook.com backslash RINOS GCF and check out Juliana's Facebook page at facebook.com backslash Free Land Brazil. And if you miss the first part of this program and come back to this page tomorrow, you can watch the full program on demand. And please check us out on Facebook and on Twitter for more information about wildlife trafficking and other environmental issues. Thank you very much and goodbye.