We are having to pull money into site-level protection for elephants just to keep them alive. But there isn't enough money to go around. The people involved in protecting those elephants, like rangers on the ground, are so under-resourced. They have very few vehicles, they have very poor weapons (if any weapons at all), and they are treated as the bottom of the tree when it comes to law enforcement priority.
We are all consumers of wildlife. We may not realize it but there's probably something in your home or something you own that came from wildlife.
In my view, nobody is really effective in tackling those organized crime networks that are making connections from Africa to Asia to fund and facilitate the poaching of massive volumes of ivory, and then selling it on the Asian market. Very few people have tried globally to tackle that serious organized crime threat that is also linked to militia groups. That needs to change. You need to bring the full weight of government attention to dealing with that.
Probably the majority of those things that people possess may be legal or sourced sustainably, but there are other things that people just don't realize. You have to really watch out for this, particularly when you are traveling or buying things off the internet.
There's a good deal of ivory being sold that claims to be antique ivory. In fact, we've seen evidence that there are fake antiques being carved in countries like China.
People ought to shop smart and really think about what they are buying.
You can stand on a stage in New York City and make very strong statements, but now everyone has to be held accountable equally.
