Some people think it may be as few as 300,000 animals, so we might be losing 1 6 of the continental population of africas elephants every year. Peters in many countries in africa, the elephant is already ecologically extinct. [gunshots, elephant trumpets] narrator every 20 minutes, an elephant is killed for its tusks. The reason greed. The price of ivory has skyrocketed. Raw ivory sells for as much as 3,000 per pound on the black market, but the cost for humanity is unfathomable. Elephants may be gone in 10 years. Ruggiero the problem begins very simply with demand. Narrator and china drives the demand for ivory. Knights china now is estimated to be 70 of the worlds ivory market. There is a tradition of ivory carving, but also, of course, the massive growth of the chinese economy. Narrator around 300 Million People make up chinas middle class today. Thats more than the population of the United States, and they are looking to spend their money on luxury goods. Ivory has particular appeal because of its long history in china. It has been carved there for more than 2,000 years, expressing many core chinese cultural and traditional values. Knights i think in some cases, people are speculating that ivory is almost like a currency that they can invest in for the future. Alie you walk through beijing and in some of the stores you see ivory mantelpiece, exquisite carvings going for like 50,000 u. S. Dollars, 60,000 u. S. Dollars. Knights but in addition to that, you have things like chopsticks, bangles that people wear, small carved items. All these things are made from ivory, and unfortunately they are still in popular demand in china. Roberts the United States of america is probably the number two destination for illegal ivory after china. Narrator europe, vietnam, thailand, malaysia, and the philippines also have substantial illegal ivory markets. Knights ivory has been used in the same way that blood diamonds has been used in west africa. Its been used by insurgent and militant groups as a source of financing. Narrator one group cashing in on illicit ivory is joseph konys lords resistance army, or lra, which sprang to life in 1988. Kony is an aggressive, messianic warlord wanted by the International Criminal court for crimes against humanity. Hutson kony leads a fierce band of a couple hundred remaining fighters who originated from northern uganda, but who now predate throughout congo and Central African republic up into the sudans, and they commit mass atrocities. Theyll take their machetes and systematically take apart a mother and feed her to her children. Narrator the lra killed tens of thousands, displaced almost 2 Million People, and abducted over 60,000 children. They turned girls into sex slaves and boys into child soldiers. The lra supports such atrocities by poaching elephants and trading ivory. Much of konys ivory comes from Garamba National park in the democratic republic of the congo. Hutson garamba is considered to be at the end of nowhere. It is one of the last wild habitats. Narrator the lra raids the 1,900 square mile park with impunity and trades ivory for arms, ammunition, food, and cash. Their trading partners include the armed forces of sudan. Sudan is a country designated by the u. S. Government as a state sponsor of terrorism. Hutson one particular former lra fighter said that he was with a group who shot six elephants on konys orders, and they hand carried the tusks through Central African republic. And they went to the kafia kingi enclave on the border of sudan, and there in the presence of joseph kony, they sold the ivory to a sergeant in the Sudan Armed Forces. Narrator garamba is a converging point for military units from several countries looking to kill elephants. Hutson so youve got the lra rebels, youve got armed forces from sudan, from south sudan, and from uganda all competing with fardc, the Congolese Forces to poach the last Wild Elephants that remain in the park. Narrator these units come armed with satellite phones, night vision goggles, and ak47s. Elephants are also shot from helicopters, as was the case with 22 elephants killed in garamba in march 2012. Hutson we do know for certain that the elephants were killed from a helicopter used as a shooting platform. They shot the elephants through the top of the head. They first herded them, and elephants instinctively group into a circle, with the babies and juveniles in the center and the adults facing outward for protection. And thats how their bodies were found. Narrator more than 90 of elephants in garamba park have already been killed as a result of massive and continuous assaults. Ruggiero its well understood that elephants have a sense of mortality. They understand that a carcass of, say, one of their family members has had its trunk cut off and its tusks are no longer there. They will go to an elephant thats died. If the tusks are there, they will remove them from the carcass and pass them around frequently and carry them off into the bush, for example. So theyre cognizant. They are communicative. Theyre sentient. Theyre extremely intelligent. They have a great memory. Its not just a cliche. So they suffer. Roberts elephants are hugely matriarchal herds. Youve got grandmothers and daughters, granddaughters, aunts, nieces all living together. The minute you allow those herds or individuals in those herds to be killed, youre decimating the entire fabric of that elephant society. Ruggiero usually the larger animals are killed for ivory first. The social unrest, the disturbance of their complex social systems is completely upset, so even if there are numerically several hundred elephants in an area, when a biologist looks at them, they frequently see juveniles and subadults running around aimlessly and without leaders. Narrator what is likely the worst elephant massacre on record took place in cameroons bouba ndjia National Park in early 2012. Arabic speaking horsemen from sudan, armed with ak47s, machine guns, and rocket propelled grenades killed 650 elephants, more than 60 of the parks population over a bloody threemonth period. Among the dead were newborns, calves, and adults, many still alive as their tusks were hacked off. Alie we were the first ngo onsite in the park when the animals were slaughtered. The evidence gathered in the cameroon case was linked to sudanese militia, i. E. The janjaweed. We had some very specific links the use of weaponry, the use of ammunition that was coming out, the satellite imagery that showed these folks coming in on horseback in the park, slaughtering these animals, and then making their way back out. [shouting orders] narrator the janjaweed, called devils on horseback, are a notorious militia backed by the government of sudan. Insurgents for hire, they are associated with the genocide in darfur that claimed almost half a million lives and displaced more than a Million People. Ruggiero theyve been raping and pillaging, killing elephants, being brigands on horseback for 150 or 200 years or maybe longer. As long as there is recorded history in the area, theyve been doing this. Kalron theres an obvious link to the fact that they are able to ride thousands of kilometers and pass countries, obviously having some sort of local support in some way, either paying them or actual accomplices. Ruggiero i saw and witnessed personally in the Central African republic that the janjaweed were going far out of their way to accumulate as much ivory and rhino horn as they could to support them, to make money. Kalron everyones talking about them, about these horsemen riding through the sahel reaching areas thousands of kilometers from their house and coming back with their loot. We have seen clear evidence of that happening. Weve collected casings linking specific scenes of poaching in three Different Countries to sudan. Narrator in addition to cameroon, shell casings were found in the Central African republic and chad, all linked to Sudanese Paramilitary and military groups. And these groups are also killing park rangers. Sudans military is alleged to have murdered six rangers in chads zakouma National Park in 2012. Hutson that murder was accomplished by a joint force of the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan Central Reserve Police unit known as abu tera. The park rangers, being good muslims, went out to pray one morning at sunrise, and this joint force executed them in an infantry style. Narrator the rangers in zakouma are among the 100 or so rangers killed protecting elephants in africa each year. Vira these guys put their lives on the line, and many of them, until very recently, were operating with, you know, broken down rifles, no pensions, no mechanisms, no clear mechanisms in place to take care of your family if the primary breadwinner dies. Shelley terrorists are operating as businessmen these days, and they are seizing targets of opportunity. Narrator al qaeda affiliate al shabaab is an example. Kalron al shabaab is built out of former warlords. Their profession is trafficking. If its not in ivory, then its in weapons, in narcotics, in fuel, in goods, in timber, in charcoal. Narrator the u. S. Designated terror group, based in somalia, was responsible for the september 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall in nairobi that killed 67 people, and for the death of over 140 in the april 2015 attack on Kenyas Garissa university. Nir kalron investigated the links between al shabaab and illicit ivory trade in 2012. Kalron al shabaab was controlling the ports of kismayo, marca, and big parts of mogadishu, including access to the port through its agents. Evidence from kenya suggests the local and regional poachers used that access. Wed seen evidence from ports in marca and kismayo of ivory, large stocks of it, and had collected evidence from individuals that testified to having profited from that trade with al shabaab agents. Knights al shabaab did control various ports in somalia where the ivory is being shipped out of, and they would basically charge a tax for anything being shipped out. Narrator al shabaab levies a 2 to 7 tax on ivory that passes through areas they control, making about 250,000 a year from ivory. Insurgent groups and Armed Forces Units are not the only poachers. Local villagers, who know the terrain, are also involved, and they are increasingly recruited by wellfinanced, organized criminal groups. Roberts when you kill an elephant and you sell that ivory tusk in the bush, its only going to be maybe 25 or 100. There might be a 500 markup by the time it gets to the consolidating point for export, and then a 4,000 markup by the time it reaches the marketplace. Hutson its the middlemen and the people on the other end, on the demand side, who really are becoming rich off of this. Vira you know, even though the poaching might happen at sort of the bush level in a very gritty way, very quickly you start moving up the chain to find very significant, powerful, and wealthy people controlling the trade. Peters so you dont see animals killed on spec. Theres always a buyer in place and the financing in place for it. And we see very, very little opportunistic killing of animals. Narrator the lure of high profits, easy money with little risk, makes ivory an attractive target for organized criminal syndicates. Vira theyre well integrated into the International Financial system, into the International Transportation systems. They are able to move significant amounts of product across very, very long distances, and theyre well integrated with other forms of transnational organized crime. Shelley the same people who are doing this are International Drug traffickers, theyre International Human traffickers. They have a long time experience in evading law enforcement, moving goods, having key facilitators of money and transport. Vira they know where they need to go, they have buyers in place, and theyre able to poach at really an industrial scale. Peters thats a highly organized, highly efficient organized Crime Network that is putting that type of operation together. Narrator between 2009 and 2014, organized criminal networks moved an estimated 170 tons of ivory, the yield from a quarter of a million dead elephants. Vira we estimate that there probably are less than, you know, 25 of these networks operating globally that account for a very large proportion of the trade. Narrator one of them is the xaysavang network, reported to be one of the largest Transnational Criminal Networks to traffic wildlife. The u. S. Department of state offered a 1 million reward, the first bounty ever placed by the agency for information leading to the dismantling of the network. Vira xaysavang is based out of laos and is widely suspected that they have the complicity of senior laotian government officials, which is part of the reason why, despite a bounty, despite all the attention, despite all the investigative reporting, not very much is being done to really disrupt that network. Narrator central and Eastern Africa are the current hotspots of elephant poaching. Africans are the trigger pullers and transporters of the ivory from the bush to urban centers, where its prepared for shipment from ports like mombasa, dar es salaam, and zanzibar. Asian criminal syndicates move the ivory through various transit points en route more often than not to china. Alie we see hiding of ivory under coffee, under avocados. These methods to conceal these products are very sophisticated. Roberts you might have a legal shipment in a giant shipping container that has 20 tons of capacity, and that 20 tons of capacity is filled with 18 tons of dried seaweed or stones or cashew nuts, a perfectly Legal International commodity, but two tons of ivory smuggled in. Alie to undertake this type of transaction requires bribery, requires paying people off at each link of the chain. Thornton you cant have that kind of poaching and that amount of ivory moving out of a country unless you have some very big players that are right near the top that are protected people that protect the people that are doing all that destruction. Vira its not uncommon for ministers, its not uncommon for local governors to be involved. Hutson corruption that extends all the way to the president ial level. The kinds of corruption that couldnt happen without president ial authorization from the president s of congo and sudan and other countries as well. Shelley and therefore, theres no reason that the police will investigate this crime or that the courts will be prosecuting and judging any of the really high level traffickers. So in most cases, the individuals are going scotfree because of highlevel corruption. Narrator only an estimated 10 of traffickers ever get caught, and for those that do, penalties are usually small. Massive numbers of elephants have been slaughtered for ivory before. Knights 1970 and 1989, African Elephant numbers fell from 1. 2 million to around 450,000. Narrator that was more than half of the entire elephant population of africa at that time. In the mid1980s, the environmental investigation agency, or eia, an independent nongovernmental group, uncovered evidence about the scope of the ivory trade. They filmed secret chinese ivory carving factories in dubai. Raw ivory was being partially carved there to avoid export permit costs when it was shipped to asia. Thornton there were 60 carvers working 16 hours a day carving ivory, and there were bags of ivory stacked 10 feet high. And those operations in three years went through 1,000 tons of ivory. Narrator the eia identified three chinese and one kenyan syndicate involved in the operation. These findings helped build momentum for the 1989 International Ban on ivory trade by the convention on International Trade in endangered species, or cites. Roberts when you have a global, uniform, and unequivocal prohibition on the trade in elephant ivory, a number of things happened. The prices for ivory dropped because the market dries up, and the market dries up because it becomes taboo to have this illegal product. And when the market dries up, theres a disincentive to poach elephants and kill them for the ivory. Narrator after the cites ban, elephant populations began to stabilize. Thornton and everyone said theres elephant babies everywhere. And it was like a genuine miracle, where the dramatic decline of these magnificent animals was stopped. Roberts but what happened after that was that Southern African governments, namely botswana, namibia, and zimbabwe put incredible pressure on cites parties to reopen a quote unquote limited ivory trade, allowing stockpile sales from stockpiles in those three african governments to one approved trading partner, japan. Thornton that trade from the Southern African countries to japan started to lead to an increase in poaching again. Narrator in a controversial move in 2008, cites authorized a second sale of stockpiled ivory to japan and china. Once china became involved, poaching skyrocketed. Thornton the allowing sale by cites of legal ivory to japan and china, all the evidence shows that was a catastrophic blunder. Narrator ivory in african government stockpiles is confiscated, or comes from culled or naturally deceased elephants. Its sale is legal, but legal ivory creates a stream of commerce in which illicit ivory, or ivory from poached elephants conceals itself. The loophole in cites was that it only banned International Ivory trade, not Domestic Trade or trade within a countrys borders. Thornton what happens is that the smugglers can easily get the ivory into china or japan, and its de facto legal. Poe these terrorists kill animals so they can get money to kill people. The combination of these two evils, the killing of endangered species and innocent civilians to further radical terrorism is an international threat. Roberts there is a real groundswell of concern about this issue the likes of which i havent seen in the 23 years ive been doing this work. Prince william it is wrong that children growing up in countries vulnerable to Wildlife Crime are losing their birthrights in order to fuel the greed of International Criminals. Clinton this is not just about elephants. It is about human beings. It is about governments trying to control their own territory, trying to keep their people safe, as well as protect their cultural and environmental heritage. Narrator wild aid, a nonprofit conservation group, is working to curb consumer demand for ivory. A number of International Celebrities joined the campaign. Norton if you buy elephant ivory, you may be part of a criminal gang. A gang of ruthless killers. [gunshot] a gang of smugglers. [gunshot] and corrupt officials. And because youre paying them, that makes you the boss. When the buying stops, the killing can, too. Narrator wild aid features celebrities like chinese basketball legend yao ming to educate the chinese public about ivory. Knights well, the Chinese Government has been very supportive. Weve been very lucky that cctv, which is the main government run tv station in china, has run our messages in prime time. Hutson when theyre surveyed, up to 70 of chinese consumers say they didnt know that for them to buy an ivory trinket means that an elephant actually has to die. And once they learned that fact, most of them say they will no longer buy ivory. Narrator must africas elephants go extinct . Saving them calls for a multifaceted solution. Hutson we have to look at the demand side, at the supply side. We have to cooperate internationally. We have to involve businesses and statecraft and private citizens and ngos and law enforcement, and we have to educate people worldwide that your ivory trinkets mean that an elephant has to die. Thornton we need to go back to the total ivory ban, including complete ban on Domestic Trade in china and japan. If china and japan banned domestic ivory trade today, poaching will be going down by next week. Thats how big the demand is there, and closing that demand is the number one way to help save and protect africas elephants. 10 16 23 10 16 23 [captioning made possible by democracy now ] amy from new york, this is democracy now we are seeing an unprecedented dissent into darkness. No electricity, no internet, no water, no food, no aid. Bombs raining down on gaza. Israeli government signaling that they plan to commit atrocities. They must be stopped. Amy the death toll from the israeli bombardment of gaza has
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