people are selecting specific firearms
specific ammunition going out to the
forest looking just to kill this
gorgeous animal it’s not just this
simple cops-and-robbers model it’s not
as easy as you know good guys bad guys
we need to be able to put law and order
into the equation this is where I
started in Kolkata Dooley in a park in
southern Republic of Congo this elephant
is one guy that we would see relatively
frequently and as you can see he’s got
enormous tusks in over three years
nobody has seen this elephant it’s a
national park it’s got boundaries but
criminals don’t care at all about where
you drew those lines on a map criminals
have much more complex networks and
their logistics go as far as they need
to we’re not talking about a guy hunting
to feed his family wildlife trafficking
is not subsistence hunting we’re talking
about addressing the industrial scale
problem that we’re dealing with leopard
skins are very tough one because we’re
trying to catch the traffickers but at
the same time we know that the hunting
in the forest is often opportunistic so
hitting the traffickers and getting that
message back to the poachers so that the
trigger isn’t pulled in the first place
or the snare isn’t leaving first place
is very hard that is not the case of
course when it comes to ivory where
people are selecting specific firearms
specific ammunition going out into the
forest looking just to kill this
gorgeous animal we’re seeing some giant
seizures over in Asia from Central
Africa it’s coming from Congo Gabon
right smack in the middle where we have
the best elephant populations you get
hundreds of kilos of ivory going out all
the time accumulating into thousands of
kilos inside of big port cities like in
loma and Togo please notice that the
ammunition was an ak-47 clip I don’t
know if you want to call that a leftover
from conflict or just an excuse for a
big problem that we need to talk about
which is corruption you have people in
militaries or police forces providing
ammunition to poachers using their
authority as a cover so that they can go
and make a lot of money off this stuff
so who are these guys everybody has this
basic notion we have the poachers they
give it to a trafficker the trap
gives it to a middle man he goes to
bigger traffickers down the line to your
kingpin and so from a law enforcement
perspective you’d think right it’s easy
we’re going to intercept these guys with
anti poaching on the poachers some
police forces along the way and we’ll
work it out gets a little bit more
complicated when maybe someone in your
police force is part of your network and
I could add a lot of other bubbles and
make this far more complicated when you
look at who’s providing the ammunition
who’s getting them out of jail who is
making it so that even if they get that
strong prison sentence that they can
still slip away or get a fake medical
slip or something we have seen every
permutation of corruption that you can
imagine this is an operation which we
did with the National Central Bureau of
Interpol in Conakry where over 30
thousand dollars was seized and over 800
pieces of ivory
this fellow is and that I really want to
put in jail I have put him in jail a
couple times and he’s still doing that
he’s smiling there but he’s not smiling
here when we’re trying to arrest him
this is a failure of ours we failed with
this guy he is too powerful we have been
trying everything to get him arrested
his name is Akama our dogs have come in
and scanned the place found hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of pieces of ivory
but this fellow got out of jail because
his son is an ex rebel leader an ex
member of parliament and he’s using
every bit of political weight that he
can get to traffic his influence across
the congo to make sure that his father
doesn’t go to jail even though his
father is one of the biggest ivory
dealers in congo at the same time he is
the audacity to go to the police station
a few weeks later and figure out how to
get his ivory back so these are the
types of problems but we have to we have
to figure out is babysit these cases
every single step of the way to make
sure that he doesn’t get his ivory back
here’s the success 126 kilos of ivory
seized in Brazzaville a big trafficker
he’s got a connection to Cameroon and
into Nigeria he was probably going to go
on to go to Togo and all of that stuff
we get the dogs in they search the place
the guy gets two years in jail
the dogs do lovely stuff on their own we
took them into forestry concessions you
can’t hide anything from these dogs and
that enables us to prove that these
camps were not actually working for
logging concessions or just doing their
job and lit them on fire obviously I
like playing with
amazing to have live animals around in
our work that’s the US ambassador as
well who’s shaking hands with Sean and
that’s really important for us we need
political leverage we need that kind of
political weight and that’s kind of the
take-home message here is that with all
of this complicated reality of how
illegal wildlife trafficking networks
function we have to accept that it’s not
just this simple cops and robbers model
it’s not as easy as you know good guys
bad guys it’s really complex we need a
lot of political pressure to make sure
that we’re actually able to put these
guys behind bars and neutralize them for
as long as possible we need to be able
to put law and order into the equation
so spread the word about that please and
let’s not make it a simple thing let’s
address this problem with the reality
that is thank you very much
you
specific ammunition going out to the
forest looking just to kill this
gorgeous animal it’s not just this
simple cops-and-robbers model it’s not
as easy as you know good guys bad guys
we need to be able to put law and order
into the equation this is where I
started in Kolkata Dooley in a park in
southern Republic of Congo this elephant
is one guy that we would see relatively
frequently and as you can see he’s got
enormous tusks in over three years
nobody has seen this elephant it’s a
national park it’s got boundaries but
criminals don’t care at all about where
you drew those lines on a map criminals
have much more complex networks and
their logistics go as far as they need
to we’re not talking about a guy hunting
to feed his family wildlife trafficking
is not subsistence hunting we’re talking
about addressing the industrial scale
problem that we’re dealing with leopard
skins are very tough one because we’re
trying to catch the traffickers but at
the same time we know that the hunting
in the forest is often opportunistic so
hitting the traffickers and getting that
message back to the poachers so that the
trigger isn’t pulled in the first place
or the snare isn’t leaving first place
is very hard that is not the case of
course when it comes to ivory where
people are selecting specific firearms
specific ammunition going out into the
forest looking just to kill this
gorgeous animal we’re seeing some giant
seizures over in Asia from Central
Africa it’s coming from Congo Gabon
right smack in the middle where we have
the best elephant populations you get
hundreds of kilos of ivory going out all
the time accumulating into thousands of
kilos inside of big port cities like in
loma and Togo please notice that the
ammunition was an ak-47 clip I don’t
know if you want to call that a leftover
from conflict or just an excuse for a
big problem that we need to talk about
which is corruption you have people in
militaries or police forces providing
ammunition to poachers using their
authority as a cover so that they can go
and make a lot of money off this stuff
so who are these guys everybody has this
basic notion we have the poachers they
give it to a trafficker the trap
gives it to a middle man he goes to
bigger traffickers down the line to your
kingpin and so from a law enforcement
perspective you’d think right it’s easy
we’re going to intercept these guys with
anti poaching on the poachers some
police forces along the way and we’ll
work it out gets a little bit more
complicated when maybe someone in your
police force is part of your network and
I could add a lot of other bubbles and
make this far more complicated when you
look at who’s providing the ammunition
who’s getting them out of jail who is
making it so that even if they get that
strong prison sentence that they can
still slip away or get a fake medical
slip or something we have seen every
permutation of corruption that you can
imagine this is an operation which we
did with the National Central Bureau of
Interpol in Conakry where over 30
thousand dollars was seized and over 800
pieces of ivory
this fellow is and that I really want to
put in jail I have put him in jail a
couple times and he’s still doing that
he’s smiling there but he’s not smiling
here when we’re trying to arrest him
this is a failure of ours we failed with
this guy he is too powerful we have been
trying everything to get him arrested
his name is Akama our dogs have come in
and scanned the place found hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of pieces of ivory
but this fellow got out of jail because
his son is an ex rebel leader an ex
member of parliament and he’s using
every bit of political weight that he
can get to traffic his influence across
the congo to make sure that his father
doesn’t go to jail even though his
father is one of the biggest ivory
dealers in congo at the same time he is
the audacity to go to the police station
a few weeks later and figure out how to
get his ivory back so these are the
types of problems but we have to we have
to figure out is babysit these cases
every single step of the way to make
sure that he doesn’t get his ivory back
here’s the success 126 kilos of ivory
seized in Brazzaville a big trafficker
he’s got a connection to Cameroon and
into Nigeria he was probably going to go
on to go to Togo and all of that stuff
we get the dogs in they search the place
the guy gets two years in jail
the dogs do lovely stuff on their own we
took them into forestry concessions you
can’t hide anything from these dogs and
that enables us to prove that these
camps were not actually working for
logging concessions or just doing their
job and lit them on fire obviously I
like playing with
amazing to have live animals around in
our work that’s the US ambassador as
well who’s shaking hands with Sean and
that’s really important for us we need
political leverage we need that kind of
political weight and that’s kind of the
take-home message here is that with all
of this complicated reality of how
illegal wildlife trafficking networks
function we have to accept that it’s not
just this simple cops and robbers model
it’s not as easy as you know good guys
bad guys it’s really complex we need a
lot of political pressure to make sure
that we’re actually able to put these
guys behind bars and neutralize them for
as long as possible we need to be able
to put law and order into the equation
so spread the word about that please and
let’s not make it a simple thing let’s
address this problem with the reality
that is thank you very much
you
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