Ivory And Insecurity: The Global Implications Of Poaching In Africa (2012)

INTRODUCTION Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am honoured to appear before your committee. My name is Iain Douglas-Hamilton, and I have been studying elephants in Africa since 1966. I founded the African Elephant Specialist Group of the IUCN in 1975 and launched the first pan-African elephant survey in 1977, funded by WCS and WWF. I have testified three times before Congress in the 1970s and 1980s when elephants were in peril from the ivory trade. We are once again in that situation. We are experiencing a huge upsurge in poaching, possibly to levels as high as those witnessed in the 1980s before the ivory ban. This time, however, we have more eyes on the ground and some unified systems endorsed by parties of the CITES treaty, for monitoring illegal killing of elephants (MIKE).