Canada & Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking

Canada Joins the International Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking

Claudia McMurray, Assistant Secretary, Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs;
The Honorable John Baird, Minister of the Environment, Canada and
John Berry, Director, Washington National Zoo
Washington National Zoo
Washington, DC
April 12, 2007

John Berry: Good morning, my name is John Berry and I'm the Director here at the National Zoo and we are incredibly honoured to host so many wonderful guests here this morning and to serve as a backdrop of a critically important announcement.

Let me just introduce some of the folks that you will be hearing from this morning. We are very honoured to have the Minister of the Environment from Canada, the Honourable John Russell Baird, who you will be hearing from shortly along with Ambassador Wilson from Canada. And we are extremely honoured to have a dear friend, Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Science and the Environment for the United States, Claudia McMurray. In addition, we are very honoured to have representatives here today from the Namibian Embassy and from the Brazilian Embassy. Dr. Ivor Rubinov who is the head of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and is currently the Acting Undersecretary for Science and my boss at the Smithsonian is here with us. We are also honoured to have Carter Roberts who is the head of WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, and Laurie Marker, the head of the Cheetah Conservation Fund from Namibia is with us as well along with representatives from other governments and other NGO partners and organizations in conservation including the Wildlife Conservation Society from New York and many others that we are pleased and honoured to work with every day in conservation.

Every animal that you see here on the Asia Trail at the National Zoo is endangered today because of commercial exploitation. Much of that exploitation is illegal in nature. And as our population grows many of these animals which have been able to have been sustainably used by humans over thousands of years unfortunately today with our numbers we cannot sustain that commercial usage. And so in the 1970s nations came together to form the conference called CCITES, the Conference on Controlling, Trying to Control the International Trade of Endangered Species.

But what was done in 1970 lacks the teeth that is needed in this century. And so many organizations are working hard to strengthen the controls on this illegal trade and nobody is working harder than the leader who has created a new vision and a new approach to attack this illegal trafficking in these animal parts which are leading so many animals to the edge of extinction. And I am very honoured to introduce to you today the Assistant Secretary, Claudia McMurray, who has been the founder of this effort and the leader in this effort of this international campaign to tell you more about it. Claudia, welcome. (Applause.)

Claudia McMurray: Thank you, John. Talk about a dear friend of endangered species. John Berry is the dearest. And we really appreciate your hosting us here today at the National Zoo for this really important announcement. We are especially indebted to the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo for all the work they do in wildlife conservation both through public education but I think most importantly by providing the basic scientific knowledge that we need to save so many endangered species in the wild.

I'd like to welcome Minister Baird and our Canadian friends to Washington, D.C. But most importantly l'd like to welcome them to the Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking. Canada joins a global alliance that is dedicated to combatting criminal activity that is, as John mentioned, driving many endangered species to the brink of extinction. The demand for exotic pets and rare skins and furs and traditional Chinese medicines are all undermining global efforts to protect endangered and threatened species.

The illegal trade in wildlife may also contribute to many life threatening infectious diseases such as avian flu and SARS and our international cooperation to detect, tract and treat these diseases is really undermined by this illegal trade. And then, perhaps most importantly to some, in addition to the threat to extinction, wildlife trafficking is often really closely linked to other international organized crime activities. It involves some of the same offenders that engage in smuggling and trafficking in arms and drugs and people. So this is an attack against crime as well.

Currently, by conservative estimates, there's a $10 billion annual trade in wildlife products on the black market. It's high profit, it's low risk and it's attracted the attention of many international criminal syndicates. The U.S. federal enforcement agencies, our customs officials, our fish and wildlife inspectors and many, many others work at our borders to curb this illegal trade and as good a job as they do it became very clear to us a couple of years ago that the U.S. could not stop this illegal trade all by itself.

And so we knew we needed help. We went to our international friends and partners in the NGO community and industry and in other governments, conservation groups, a whole list of people which I'm going to read to you in a minute because it's a really impressive group. But what we decided we would do is form the coalition about a year and a half ago that had three goals: to improve wildlife enforcement by creating wildlife enforcement cooperation such as the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network that's recently been created in the Asia Area; also to reduce consumer demand for illegally traded wildlife through public awareness campaigns; and then perhaps most important and what we're demonstrating here today is to show high level political support for putting an end to wildlife trafficking and we've not only done that through our partner countries but we've also put it on the agenda of the G-8 environment ministers' meetings, the leaders' meeting and other international fora where these issues are discussed.

But I need to mention -- John's mentioned some of the partners here. But we have 18 partners now and it's been a really long effort to get to this day to get our 19th but this is exciting for us so I want to just read the names of the partners. Australia, India, United Kingdom, the World Conservation Union, American Forest and Paper Association, the Cheetah Conservation Fund, Conservation International, Humane Society International, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Safe the Tiger Fund, the Smithsonian Institution, Traffic International, Wild Aid, the Wildlife Alliance, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund.

So today we are very pleased to count Canada as our newest partner in this fight. The United States and Canada have a long history as neighbours working cooperatively on issues related to trade, security and energy among many others. We also share a commitment to good stewardship of the environment. For example, we cooperate closely under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to protect the 20 percent of the world's supply of fresh water contained in the Great Lakes. We collaborate through the Arctic Council for the conservation of flora and fauna, in climate change science and sustainable development in the North. And through the 1991 U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement, we continue to work together to improve air quality and reduce cross border air pollution.

I look forward to this new stage in U.S.-Canadian environmental cooperation. With Canada as a member of the coalition against wildlife trafficking, we will build on the coalition's work to halt the loss of biodiversity by curbing both the supply and demand for wildlife and wildlife products. Like so many of our other joint efforts, we believe that with the U.S. and Canada working together we can make a real difference in this battle.

Now I'd like to introduce the Honourable John Baird, Canada's Minister of the Environment. Minister Baird, we're so pleased to have you here today and we look forward to a long and productive working relationship with you. Thank you. (Applause.)

Hon. John Baird: Well, thank you very much. It's a great pleasure for me to join you all here in Washington to show Canada's support for a very important initiative, the Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking. I'm very pleased to be here today and joined by Canada's Ambassador Michael Wilson. Thank you so much for all of your work, Ambassador. And by Richard Charette, the director of Wildlife Enforcement for Environment Canada. Richard, take a bow. Richard is one of the leaders in Canada on the front lines of dealing with this travesty.

I also want to begin today by thanking John Berry for welcoming us here to Washington Zoo. It's exciting to be here and I do hope we have a chance at the end to have a little bit of a look around. This is really a world renowned and exciting facility.

I also want to acknowledge the hard work and the personal dedication and leadership of Claudia McMurray from the U.S. State Department. Her personal interest in making this initiative work is really great American leadership. So congratulations to you and the United States.

Canada certainly shares your view that public and political attention is required to finally put an end to the trade in illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products. We are pleased to be here in Washington to show the Government of Canada's and the people of Canada's solid support for this great initiative. Following the drug and arms trade, the trade of endangered and threatened wildlife and wildlife parts is now the third largest illegal trade in the world, worth about $10 billion a year, as Claudia said. Wildlife trafficking is undermining wildlife protection and driving many species on our plane to the brink of extinction. Canada's government recognizes that we must be vigilant to prevent this illegal activity and Canada is committed to taking real action.

We are here today to take action by sending a clear signal that those who profit from exploiting wildlife that Canada is committing to put an end to this illegal trade. But, to be successful, we cannot act alone. There's trade in wild animals and plants across many borders between our countries. We need worldwide cooperation if we are to safeguard certain species from extinction.

Thirty years ago, that cooperation began with the recognition by world leaders that our global biodiversity was under serious threat and this was one of the big issues we recently discussed among the G-8 nations, the importance of biodiverity. Governments agreed that they had to work together, had to work hard together to tackle wildlife smuggling. They signed the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species and Wild Fauna and Flora with this very goal in mind. And today Canada's joining this new coalition because it complements existing global efforts to enforce existing conventions and, most importantly, create a comprehensive and wide-reaching framework to protect our planet's wildlife.

While this existing convention allows for the legal trade to take place when there is scientific evidence that it will not negatively impact a species, this new coalition will address a very different challenge: the trade that is illegal, that's non-sustainable and that is very harmful to the very survival of the species. The coalition aims to improve wildlife law enforcement through regional networks by raising consumer awareness of the impacts of wildlife trafficking.

This is a great opportunity for Canada and today this government is pleased to renew its commitment to bringing our expertise and experience to bear on this global problem by joining the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, and the impressive, very impressive group of numerous non-governmental partners that I've had the chance to meet with many here this morning. Canada will be an active part in helping to shape the development and strategic direction of this very important initiative. We will work with our partners to help provide effective global leadership on the protection of wildlife and on the protection of our biological diversity.

By joining the coalition, Canada is showing the world that it wants to remain a leader in protecting our environment not just in Canada but around the planet. We're not just talking the talk, we're walking the walk. Our government is serious about enforcing our environmental laws. That's why in our recent budget last month we invested more than $22 million of new money over two years to double the number of enforcement officers to protect our natural heritage. And joining this coalition is another, yet another concrete example of Canada taking action both domestically and around the world. We know that working together that governments and organizations the best way to achieve our conservation goals to protect our planet for future generations. And it's through effective partnerships like this that we will truly make progress on protecting and on conserving our environment.

I want to tell you this is an important priority for us politically. We are so blessed in Canada and here in the United States with a great environment and we must provide real leadership around the world. There's a great film that's just come out in Canada called Shark Water. It'll be being released in the United States I believe in September. And what it does, it's a young Canadian filmmaker who chronicles the threat to the world's shark population. The world's sharks are some 400 million years old. It's one of the very oldest species on the planet. And it talks about the real challenge of shark finning and long line fishing where up to 160 sharks at a time can be caught and just simply cut off their top fin, cut off their back fin and thrown either dead or alive back into the water where they soon would perish. And already we've lost upwards of 90 percent of the world's sharks and this is another great example of a Canadian filmmaker. This film just came out in Ottawa about a month ago and it's already the third highest grossing documentary to hit Canadian film cinema. And we're very excited to see another Canadian take leadership. And that'll be something that we want to talk more about in the months and years ahead.

Thank you very much for hosting us here at the zoo and we hope we have the opportunity to take a little look around before we have to head out. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. (Applause.)

Released on April 13, 2007

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