Governments Must Decide to 'Stop the Trade' in Wildlife

Assistant Secretary of State Claudia A. McMurray: China is the "world's largest market" for wildlife trafficking; the United States is second. (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

Secondly, we look at supply and demand. This is organized crime, for the most part. There are sophisticated people who are conducting this activity. And what we need is a really sophisticated enforcement capability on the other side that actually knows what they're looking for and can apprehend the criminals.

On the demand side, the most important thing is creating a public awareness that these products are illegal. . . . I talked about China being our biggest market, but I have to tell you, America is the second-biggest market. I just came back from our repository in Colorado where they keep the animals they have seized. Obviously they're all dead, but at some point they were live. And some came in as products, dead animal products. There are literally thousands of products in that storage facility.

What kinds of products?

All kinds of things: tiger skins that would have been made into rugs, coats from exotic animals. One of the ones that struck me the most were tons of reptile products. There were sneakers that had snakeskin on them. There were Green Bay Packers hats that had snakeskin on the brim. There were rhino trophies. There were also lots of coral products and coral jewelry, coral boxes.

What I came away with from this facility was, we are a consumer nation and we all know that, but there are all sorts of things that we can avoid buying.

How is the administration going to spread the word about this kind of trafficking?

Bo Derek was appointed by the secretary as special envoy to combat wildlife trafficking. She's obviously a well-known figure. We want to take her around not only the U.S., but to some other countries as well, as soon as she's done filming this summer, and have her speak to different kinds of audiences, anything from children to businesspeople to the press to academic groups to get the word out.

You have a number of wildlife photos around your office that you've taken. Can you talk about where these pictures come from and the connection between them and your work?

As an environmental lawyer, I've spent most of my time on the industrial side of things: Environmental Protection Agency issues, clean water, clean air. When I got here, I had the opportunity to work on wildlife conservation issues, which have always been a passion, an interest of mine.

I take the photographs as a hobby, more than as on the professional side. So some of these photographs were taken on vacation in South Africa, but others of them, which you don't necessarily see here, were taken when we were looking at the reintroduction of orphaned gorillas. This was in the Republic of Congo through a project we helped to sponsor through our Congo Basin Partnership two years ago. Actually we do have a picture, over there on my desk. These are baby gorillas who were going to be sold and were going to come into a market somewhere in Africa. Some undercover agents and NGOs were able to intercept the transaction before it actually occurred. . . .

You're holding one of the baby gorillas, right? So what was that like, to hold one of the baby gorillas and release a little gorilla into the wild?

It was a great experience. We were told to put away any loose articles like jewelry because they like to yank on things. They're very playful and very interested.

What I took away more than anything is, to look directly in the eyes of one of these creatures, there really is an element of human-ness, if you will. I don't want to overstate it, but you can't help but look at these animals and think they're more intelligent than we may believe. They look very close to our species of human and they look like they understand what's going on in a way that I had never captured by seeing them in a zoo or in a photograph.