Poachers Slaughtered Elephant Family in Kenya; Poaching Pushes Animals to Edge of Extinction
ANDERSON: Kenyan park rangers are hunting for a gang of poachers who they say slaughtered a family of elephants and hacked off their tusks. Now warning, you may find the next images a little distressing. According to Kenya's wildlife service, 11 elephants will killed in Tsavo National Park in the country's south at the weekend. Now, conservation groups have warned, the animals are being hunted at an alarming rate to feed what is a huge demand for ivory. When you follow the money of black market ivory, you'll mostly find it comes from increasingly affluent Asian countries, including China and Thailand. Ralitsa Vassileva has this report.</s>RALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hong Kong customs displays its latest hall of smuggled ivory. Officials found almost 800 elephant tusks, chopped up and hidden in crates between slabs and stones, destination unclear. Poachers shot the elephants and then hacked out their tusks with machetes. Elephants need the tusks to breath, fight, and feed.</s>VINCENT WONG, HEAD OF PORTS MARITIME COMMAND: These ivory tusks, after they are crafted, they are high-value goods. The smugglers will send these ivory goods to places that they can get the profits.</s>VASSILEVA: Hong Kong customs believes that the $1.4 million shipment comes from Kenya and was smuggled through Malaysia. Besides Hong Kong, major illicit ivory seizures have been made in mainland China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. As people become wealthier in Asia, they're driving up demand for ivory products, with China shaping up as one of the biggest markets.</s>WONG: There is no intelligence and no information suggesting that there is an increasing trend of smuggling cases, of smuggling ivory tusks detected.</s>VASSILEVA: But Friday's one ton shipment is Hong Kong's third major seizure of illegal ivory in three months. Customs seized nearly four tons of ivory, worth $3.5 million, last October. That haul was smuggled from Kenya and Tanzania, two of the many countries where elephants live in Africa, seen here in red. The elephant population in many of those areas is at risk of shrinking. Biologists say at this rate of poaching, the illicit ivory trade could all but wipe out Africa's elephants in less than 20 years. Ralitsa Vassileva, CNN, Atlanta.</s>ANDERSON: Well, earlier, I spoke to the environmentalist and host of CNN's "GOING GREEN" show, Philippe Cousteau, and I asked him which animals -- or I started by asking him, at least, which animals are being pushed the edge of extinction from poaching. This is what he said.</s>COUSTEAU: Well of course, Becky, across the world, we're losing animals, species are going extinct every day. But the large poster children, if you will, for the extinction crisis, the rhinos, the elephants, the tigers, continue to be extremely threatened, especially tigers, for example that are -- It's an interesting fact that there are more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild. So, and the increase -- the drastic increase in elephant and rhino poaching that has occurred in 2011 and 2012 is, of course, of tremendous concern.</s>ANDERSON: I've been to Tsavo National Park. It makes me sick to my stomach when I read about this story of this family of elephants. I was well aware that there were poaching incidents elsewhere in Kenya and beyond. What can we do, you and I and our viewers today to help stop this?</s>COUSTEAU: Well, I believe it's critical to remember that the old-style of poaching where it was a lone poacher trying to feed his family -- I talked to a lot of people, and they say that, isn't that what's still happening? There's a misperception about the scale of poaching, of the crisis and how it's working, and a lot of people are surprised to find out that, indeed, it is supporting terrorist organizations, it's destabilizing nations and leading to the deaths of people. So, it's a much bigger global security issue, and once people realize and recognize that, I think that there is -- there's an awakening. And then, we can start to see the type of federal and government will. Because that's really what needs to happen. We need to demand that our elected leaders step up and help to equip these rangers on the front lines of these battles that are oftentimes equipped with small, single-shot rifles, and up against armies -- virtual armies of attack helicopters and assault rifles. And the individuals need to understand that this is a very, very, very serious issue from a global security perspective, let alone from an animal rights perspective. And that's the first step. I think the awareness needs to be raised and people need to be -- need to demand change. The next step then, of course, is from a federal perspective. Nations like the United States, where just last July, $2 million seizure of ivory happened in Manhattan, in the middle of New York City, from two antique stores. So, it's not a problem that's just far away in Southeast Asia or in Africa, it's here on our own shores. And also as individuals in the federal government, we need to recognize that we cannot purchase these products. The rhino horn that ends up in traditional Chinese medicine, Los Angeles is a hub for that trade, is also something that we need to say "no" as a buyer, and the federal government needs to step up that enforcement.</s>ANDERSON: If there are viewers tonight who are minded to book a trip, say, to one of the African countries still advertised as what is -- let me just put it quite bluntly -- poaching tourism, what would you say to them tonight?</s>COUSTEAU: Well, there's a wonderful quote that says shopping is politics, and we make huge decisions and influence the world with our dollars, where we travel, where we go on vacation, what we do. And we can send a very, very strong message to countries and to places that don't have effective enforcement of their wildlife laws and don't protect their wildlife and say, you're not going to get our tourism dollars. That's one very direct way that we can send a message to nations that if you're not responsible, you won't get our business. And elephants killed once may be worth a certain amount of money on the illegal market, but an elephant kept alive continues to pay for its lifetime in terms of tourism, that value. It's virtually the goose that laid the golden egg. These animals are worth much more alive than they are dead, and if nations are not doing what they can and what they should to protect them, then we should not be giving them our business.</s>ANDERSON: Philippe Cousteau with -- well, it's a pretty stark warning, there, right? Coming up after this short break on CONNECT THE WORLD. Why the film industry has returned to an iconic London scene time and time again.