Opening USFWS Logo
Title slate: Operation Crash - USFWS Director Dan Ashe, and USFWS Law Enforcement Chief,William C. Woody. Interviewed by USFWS Communications Chief Chris Tollefson
Tollefson: Chief Woody, could you tell us a little bit about what’s happened over
the last week in terms of the operation your agents have been mounting?
Woody: Quite a bit for USFWS for law enforcement. In the last week, we had 150 officers, involving
several federal agencies, our agents and refuge officers involved in a takedown that we refer
to as ‘Operation Crash.’ Operation Crash dealt with the illegal trafficking in rhino
horns throughout the United States.
Tollefson: Can you tell me why there is a market for rhino horns?
Woody: Price. Really the price right now, what we have back…this operation has been
going for the past year. And what we have is based on information we’ve gotten back,
prices for rhino horn, for a pound of rhino horns in Asia, one pound is $25,000. And I
would have to say from talking to the folks, that is the sole driving force on the market
for rhino horns.
Tollefson: Dan can you put this in a larger context? What are the implications for rhinos
in the wild of this trade and the illegal trafficking of rhino horns?
Ashe: I think the thing to bear in mind that this is really all about rhino conservation,
so a lot of times we tend to think about law enforcement kind if as a separate piece of
what we do and it’s about getting the bad guys, certainly. It’s about enforcing the
law, but it is really about conservation of the rhino. I learned something last week--they
are calling it ‘Operation Crash’ because a group of rhinos is called a ‘crash.’
This is all a part of being relevant to the American people, people care about wildlife.
They certainly care about wildlife like rhinos.
Woody: This is what we’ve got, (showing example of a rhino horn), and what we are
dealing with black rhinos, white rhinos are the two that are coming through the United
States. And generally what we have is we have them, they come like this and they also come
in mounts. You have to remember, that under the Endangered Species Act, you cannot traffic
in these things.
Ashe: We hear this lot in the environment of enforcing our CITES and other international
laws, is-- ‘well it’s a polar bear pelt.’ Well it’s a dead bear. So why can’t we
trade it? Or it’s an elephant tusks or it’s a dead elephant. So why isn’t it ok to trade
that? Well it’s not ok to trade it because it makes enforcement, all the more complicated
to have those products, moving around in trade. And so I think that what’s important is
that we want to conserve rhino. If we believe, that trade is the driving factor in conservation
in the rhino then we need to stop trade.
Tollefson: I’m sure a part of this needs to be as well educating people about rhino
horns and about the fact that their medicinal properties are not exactly what they’re
touted to be.
Ashe: I think a large part of the trade is driven by traditional medicines and use of
rhino horn in traditional medicines. I think education is an important part of that just
like we’ve done with tiger, and the use of tiger bone and other parts of tiger in
traditional medicines . So education has to be an important part of our conservation effort,
too.
Tollefson: So what is a rhino horn made of actually ?
Woody: It’s made of keratin, like your fingernails, is essentially what it is. So, if you look
close you can see it. It’s really just a hair, you can feel it, down along here and
you can just feel the hair. That’s essentially what it is, if you can get a shot of it there
(closeup of base of rhino horn) That’s all it is.
Tollefson: So really what we’re talking about is the equivalent of fingernails.
Woody: That is correct.
Ashe: I think the first thing to bear in mind is that now rhinos are among the most endangered
animals in the world. We think about a population that once exceeded a million animals in Africa.
And now we’re down to less than 20,000 white rhinos, about 4,000 black rhinos, less than
200 Sumatran rhinos. So we’re looking at across the population of an extremely endangered
animal.
Tollefson: Are you concerned about rhinos disappearing from the wild entirely ?
Ashe: I think we are. I think we’re seeing declines in these populations—I mean we’ve
had good news in the last several decades for white rhinos particularly because of the
exceptional management that’s been happening in South Africa. But continuing bad news for
black rhino and Sumatran rhinos and recently even white rhinos are declining because of
this escalation in trade and poaching. So, I think significant concern that within our
lifetimes we could potentially see extirpation of some of these animals in the wild.
Woody: Last year in South Africa, there were approximately 450 rhinos poached in the wild
on the ground that they found. So 450, and you’re talking less than 24,000 animals
and it’s going up.. If you look at that two years ago, it was lower than that. And
we hope it doesn’t go up but we hope this particular case puts a dent in that over there
as well, too.
Tollefson: And this is despite the Service’s efforts to fund anti-poaching efforts and
cefforts to combat trafficking.
Woody: (We) work closely with them over there. I know we have the agents go over every year
and setup classes, work with South African and some of the other governments over there.
But we will continue to work with them closely, and any assistance we can give to them, we’ll
do it.