really important that the u.s. government and foreign relations committee should take every opportunity to do that. >> i think many of us are interested in doing that. secretary scanlon. >> thank you, senator. one thing we noticed is sometimes a seizure is seen as a success. a seizure is part of the enforcement chain but you have to go beyond a seizure. you have to investigate. you have to prosecute and you have to penalize. what we're trying to push is that seizure is an important part of the enforcement process but the whole enforcement chain needs to be engaged from the customs of the police through to the prosecutors through the judiciary. this goes to the whole issue of rule of law and good governance. the other thing we're finding is that quite often those who are prosecuted at the wrong end of the inwhich. they're those that in the front line of poaching, perhaps those that are not driving this illegal trade and the ones that are being engaged in the low rate to eventually involve themselves in poaching and

illegal trade. we need to catch the king pin and find out who is where that he is driving this trade and ordering the purchase of these illicit items. that's why we put in place through this consortium i mentioned before training in what's called controlled deliveries and it has been used in dealing with illegal trade in narcotics where by you don't seize the contraband when you identify it. you track it to home. so you can find out who in fact ordered the ivory and get that person, the person lower down the chain, so we try to use more effective enforcement techniques used in drugs in fighting the war against drugs, et cetera, and apply them to wildlife crime. south africa is a very good example of a state taken very strict measures with respect to wildlife crime and they have over the past few months incarcerated nationals of moez apple weakened for over 20 years for smuggling and nationals of

vietnam for smuggling and they are very hard with respect to anyone that's coming to steal their wildlife. they have put in place the sort of measures and coordinated measures through the national crime bureau of interpol and clamp down and send a strong message. we use that with a good example and with all that far effort they're still struggling to deal with the illegal trade. >> do each of these countries having a problem in terms of the elegants being wiped out, do they have the capability you're talking about in terms of getting the king pin? >> i would say no. the analysis we have done shows that the highest rates of illegal killing are those states that have the weakest governments, so where you have the weakest governments you find the highest levels of illegal killing and as we were talking about earlier, this whole issue of governance and rule of law and having systems in place where it is weak we see high

levels of killing. >> well, i am going to stop because we have the senator ridge has showed up and chairman kerry, and we are very excited about the idea that a republican has shown up to at least question. we tonight know what senator rich's position will be but i would yield the floor at this point. >> thank you so much, doing all you can to make us elephants extinct that i thought i should come up. i do have a serious question. you mentioned the rule of law and strong governance as being helpful, maybe even critical in controlling the illegal trade. now, i think that's probably true in everything, whether it is narcotics or whether it is piracy of intellectual property or what have you. who are the bad actors? where do you find the countries where they can take the product in and rework it to whatever they do with the ivory and to

put it into the stream of commerce and are protected by the government or essentially by the culture there? who are the bad actors in this regard? >> thank you, senator. i think as a general statement we can say that the risk of detection with wildlife crime is lower than for other crimes. the penalties associated are lower than other crimes and the risk of incarceration are lower than others. that's pretty much a general statement and we then see examples where wildlife has taken more seriously and i just gave south africa as an example where long custodial sentences were given to individuals stealing the wildlife of south africa. i would say it is a bit of a mixed bag in most parts of the world with respect to the sorts of measures that are in place. one thing we have noticed is what i said before, that seizure is sometimes seen as a success. seizure is in fact a failure. that animal is dead. you have seized the contraband

but the person who wanted it is still wanting it. that's why we have put in place this training and control deliveries and other more effective techniques in dealing with crime, whether it is wildlife crime or not because we have to get to the perpetrators those who actually are driving the demand. i would say in those countries where demand is driven they have strong laws. in china, for example, it used to be they had the death penalty as the highest penalty for wildlife crime and it is now life imprisonment is the highest penalty that can be imposed for wildlife crimes and other states vary. in thailand i know they're looking at legislation and they do have a problem with domestic controls over ivory. they have a legal domestic market. it is not well regulated and needs to be tighten and had we're in discussion with them on that. these are sorts of things very targeted where we as a secretary work with the state to lift them up to a label that would be more in keeping with the objectives of the convention.

>> you're not able to identify a particular hot spot in the world, though? you refer to it as kind of checkered and a mixed bag. you don't have one particular area that you can put your finger on and say, look, this is an area we really need to concentrate on? >> there are certain areas we have to concentrate on. i think the main market seems to be vietnam. i think we need to at a political level and an operational level really enhance our efforts there. we need very strong political signals coming with respect to this being an acceptable and really enhance the effort being made at an operational level because they made so seizures there i don't think since 2008 yet all the evidence coming from south africa and other countries is this is a prime destination. with respect to other states, i think if we look at africa, i think the other states that we'll all be familiar with that have weaker systems in terms of governance and as you said, senator, not just wildlife crime, it is other types of

crime as well that perhaps aren't getting the attention they deserve. again, we try to work with these states to lift them up and there was one state in africa in nigeria that was the subject of a trade suspension for six years because of its inadequate legislation and lack of enforcement effort that was just lifted at the last committee in august of last year following the enactment of legislation in the establishment of a new enforcement authority. the parties decide where they see a systematic lack of if it is put in place enforcement mothers and somalia subject to a trade suspension for trade at the moment and one other state subject to that for lack of legislation. >> anybody else want to comment on that aspect of the issue? >> i would like to say that i

fully support mr. scanlon's idea that you have to go to the person at the top, who is driving the trade, what is the demand and who is that person or who is that syndicate and just the low level poachers is not getting at the problem. the major difficulty of finding who that head of the syndicate is is the ability to hide behind legal structures throughout the world in various jurisdictions around the globe and that's either through a shell corporation that hides its money in a secret bank account and also hides behind a trust, nominee trust or foundation, so there is layers upon layers upon layers of opacity in the financial system and in the corporate structures that enable these syndicates to hide behind, and i think that's the thing that the international community

can do as far as an attempt to cut off the money supply. . >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senator. appreciate it. you mentioned earlier, let me ask a quick question. on the seized material, how much of that finds its way back into the market? senator, do you have any sense of that, dr. hamilton? do you have a sense of that? where does it go? what happens? i saw in the video there briefly enormous stocks of tusks of seized material, but knowing the way things work in a lot of those places, i am wondering, does that stay in the evidence room? is it destroyed? what happens to it? >> sometimes it gets destroyed.

we had a burning of ivory in kenya recently which was a consignment that had been seized in singapore and come from nairobi, but that ivory was not kenya ivory. it came from all sorts of other countries and kenya had been used because of its efficiency in transport as a transit point, so that ivory eventually was surrendered back to kenya and the country's of origin were identified through detective work and through looking at the dna profile of some of the dna found on the ivory, and it was agreed amongst all of those parties they should burn that and destroy it which was a very good solution and it sent out a strong signal. >> does that need to become the norm? should there be a part of the convention that all are assemble and had destroyed? if there is a secondary value,

seizing it and then selling it or putting it into the black market or under the table doesn't do you much good and you still have the same incentive to go after it. >> i think it would be an excellent idea, but one would need to perhaps tie some recome peninsula -- recompensation and could be put into elephant conservation. >> interesting idea. we do have our reward, bill, which we're working on bipartisan, and i hope maybe we can frame something into that. secretary general, you also talked about the need to send strong messages here. you talked about the three states where you want to do that, the rain state, the tran gent state and the consumer state. clearly it is critical to

highlight the need for china, thailand, japan, vietnam, other countries and i think we need to put this on the agenda at other meetings to get them to raise of level of enforcement at penalty, number one. number two, what other messages do you have in mind that might make a difference at each of those state levels, in the rain state, transgent state and consumer state? >> thank you, chairman. one of the create strengths is it is a very practicing 3459 i can and operationally focused convention so it works very much at ground level trying to actually achieve things. one of the weaknesses has been the higher level political engagement and with some of these issues if we don't get very high level politically engagement and very strong political seekings, it is very hard so one of the objectives has been to try to lift this debate, not lose at operational side but lift it to higher

political sphere so in country that is are consumer or transit countries at the highest level the message is unequivocal, this will not be tolerated and you will be punished severely if you're found bridging this convention in the national legislation that implements it. we are working with all states at consumer range and transit states and trying to bring them together to have that discussion about what they're going to do in terms of sending these messages. we do, chairman, have an opportunity at our next conference in march of next year to have a higher level ministerial session where by we can bring together higher political figures to actually send these very strong signals so that's an obvious opportunity but we are in conversation with states. i should say we're also toog that at the operational level. there are good ex changes at the operational level between south africa and vietnam, for example, on rhino trade, but we are

really strongly of the view working through the sort of forward you just mentioned to actually get this on the agenda and send a message and will have a significant impact, a positive impact. >> you talked about the high return from minimum investment with respect to a couple of those things. on the front line if 200 people can get on their hrs and come raging in we have a fundamental problem in terms of security forces, law enforcement, army, whatever it is. what if anything can be done to augment that capacity? could that happen through the african union?

could that happen through some other kind of coordinated force or something? it seems that some minimal level of increased deterrent force would send a strong message. dr. hamilton. >> i think any forum should have it raised. the point is this elephant crisis is just not on many people's radar until now. neither in the states nor in africa. with increasing awareness and raising this point. approximate won't avoid the need for the knitty gritty which is to built up forces on the ground to engage local people and get them on side and to use everything in our armory to solve this elephant problem. >> we're going to have three votes in the senate which generally finds a way to end our

hearings one way or the other in about five minutes, so we have a moment here for colleagues to weigh in with additional questions and a little leeway, but i want to -- as i said in my opening comments, and i understand it, for a lot of -- we are inundated. we have a lot going on. a lot of people are out of work. we have a lot of deficit issues, budget, a lot going on. people are consumed. the trick here, though, is not to lose sight of the connectedness of all of these things. this is not just about elephants. not just about poaching in one place. the dots connect here to the whole issue of failed states, governance, lack of law enforcement, preying on people, the sort of random violence that

comes as a consequence of this, the enormous sums of money, criminal syndicates are walking away with billions of dollars out of this and one of the things that i saw full square in the 1980s when we began to look at noriega's bank of preference and ran across osama bin laden's name was this is all interconnected, the opaqueness is used by all of these illicit entities including terrorist groups to move their money to avoid accountability and to stay outside of governing structures. all of those entities that are outside of those governing structures are depleting the capacity of states to function and to do what they're supposed to do. so i think that this is worth raising the heat on it a little bit because those same thugs who can come in and do that are also

going to rape, pillage, plunder, move narcotics, facilitate somebody's ability to get money illicitly that may wind up blowing up a bunch of people in some community square. so i think it is important to fight back against failed statism, against the absence of governance, and i view this as a component of that, and am i wrong or what would you say to that, both of you involved in the enforcement side? >> yeah. i think that's right. it is not an africa problem. it is a global problem because of all the connections you just laid out, and what facilitates that is the opacity in the system, just as brandice said sunlight is the best disinfect ant and talking in near era about a different issue but that comment holds to this.

without international effort, international focus, without global political will, this problem will not go away. neither will the problems of terrorism or trance national crime because it is the connective tissue is the opacity and the financial system and until organizations like the g-20 and others really focus on this, we're going to be talking about this problem for quite a long time. >> do you want to comment, mr. secretary general. >> briefly, chair, and i think the interconnections are supported by what we observe through the convention. it is supported by what is being observed and past resolutions and also what's observed by the u.n. commission on crime prevention and criminal justice and the resolutions on the topic. >> dr. douglas hamilton, you mentioned darpa, and the possibility of thinking out of the box. can you just fill that in a little bit for us? >> i think that darpa have the

intellectual resources quite extraordinary ones and i know some of the people there and we have discussed ideas for making the dream elephant collar or putting up gunshot detectors on all the hills and integrating this into a system that's sort of command and control system but at a local level where it is very easy to get it, the information fed back to quick reaction force. in a way it is antipoaching is like a minor guerilla war. part, you have to reach out to hearts and minds and other part is you have to beat people in the field. for that, more technical support we can get for that the better. >> give the committee just a short, one minute version of the 1, 2, 3 things that you think will make the greatest difference here that need to be followed up on. >> one is the antipoaching in the field which we have colored

fairly well. number two is controlling the transit points which have been dealt with well by the secretary general and where we need to gain more tracking mechanisms for following ivory and rhino horns and because we have a huge gap of the middle men that we do not get them arrested, prosecuted and put away. we don't even know who they are in many cases. we know the demand is on one side and the supply is on the other, and finally demand, i believe, that if china were to take leadership, it would be huge in their own interests and the moment that they're getting a terrible reputation for the environmental record in africa and by having fingers pointed as being the prime instigators of illegal and rhino horn trading and it is tiny little trade that matters nothing to china

compared to their other interests in building and developing so finally i would end there. >> whether you say the tracking of the ivory, are there mechanisms, do we have any ability to track the ivory now? >> there are gadgets that can be used at a certain level but the problem is they have to be embedded in the ivory and there is dna tracking which is an extremely promising field that needs ra lot more work and you can trace ivory back to its origins through the dna, but if we have little sensors, they can be used. it is a question of which stage they get located. i think, again, the technical abilities of having smaller and smaller sensors are there. it is just that we need to apply whatever might be available to this field.

>> seems to me it would be pretty a peeling to big game hunters instead of killing them tranquil lies them, embed them, and you wind up doing a service in the same process. >> funny enough, we had a program like that. we called it green hunting, and the idea was to use the undoubted energies of hunters for conservation to put them to what i would say is more ethical use, dart an elephant, and use it for science and influence. >> the whole feedback of the entire hunt, et cetera, but you could leave there feeling pretty good about the future. anyway, let's pursue these things, and we will pursue them. senator rich, do you have any more, senator, go ahead. >> thank you, senator kerry, and i echo what you said. i think it was very eloquently said. i just want to come back to this law enforcement side where you

have this total inequality. i mean, when you have 200 armed heavily armed people moving out of sudan down incanmaroon and kl 250 elephants and then take the ivory and move back up and it is part of their whole syndicate, if someone or entity or government doesn't confront that activity, it is going to continue. you're going to see the elephant populations decimated in a variety of different places whether it is canmaroon or the central african republic or others. is there the capability there? if we know that these armed, heavily armed militias or whatever you want to call them are moving across country borders to engage in this kind

of killing, is there a force to confront them and to push them back because it would seem to me if that happens a couple of times it is not going to happen again if they vary decisively encountered and confronted and pushed back. i don't know who would be the best here. dr. hamilton? >> i would like to answer for our own neck of the woods which is east africa. it is not the same situation. you cannot have a roaming gang like that going through kenya and getting away with it. sometimes i feel what we have going is a little bit taken for granted that everybody says, oh, well, kenya is doing very well and decent need any help which i would have bought until a year ago when these figures showed us that actually our level of poaching will like central africa, so i think it is a different situation and that

roaming band that just goes hitt era cross borders is very much a central and west african phenomenon tied up with the resist ants army and heavens knows what other movements. >> mr. secretary general? >> very briefly, what we can do in response to the incident is we activated all of the networks to try and seize the contraband so that at least these criminals got no financial gain for their act. we need to see how we can bring them together collectively supported by the united states ander on parts of the world so they can start sharing intelligence collectively and support one another and the government of camroon did ultimately deploy defense forces to this park to dispel the poachers so they did act albeit it was after the event we're hoping it will set a precedent for any potential incidence in

the future. i think regional or subregional support is necessary and through this consortium we think we can lend them the sort of support they might need to improve their support. >> i think it was the case here that the rangers and the park didn't have any weapons, weren't armed at all and here you have a heavily armed force that moves in and takes that kind of activity, so you need to think it a whole different level in terms of law enforcement when it comes to some of these things that are going on. we really appreciate your lifetime commitment to this, dr. hamilton. you have been working so hard and we really appreciate the secretary general and mr. cardmome working on this. i don't know if you have any additional thoughts on what i talked about. thank you very much.

really appreciate it. >> folks, the vote is now on and we need to procedure to the floor in order to take part in that. i want to thank you for coming in today. i think this has been really helpful, educational, and important and i think it sets out some interesting avenues for us to pursue both in terms of diplomacy and work and also some specific initiatives that we may be able to take and certainly some conversations that we can have with leaders in other countries in order to try to keep the focus moving in the right direction, so, doctor, thank you for your life's work on this effort. with he really appreciate it and respect it and we're going to continue to stay focused on this of i can assure you. thank you. thank you all for being with us. we stand adjourned.

>>. spend the weekend in wichita, kansas, with book tv and american history