Translator: Nadya Rivera Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
In Thailand, there's a Buddhist temple that, until a few years ago,
had tigers walking around.
Real, live tigers.
The tourists loved it.
Where else can you go to pet a grown tiger and have your photo taken with it?
But it turned out that in the middle on the night,
when the tourists weren't there,
the monks were selling some of those tigers on the black market.
And when the authorities raided,
they found 40 frozen tiger cubs socked away in the freezers.
And that's just one crazy story in the world of illegal wildlife trade.
Now, you all know that wildlife is in big trouble.
In May, the world's experts estimated
that a million species are at risk of extinction,
mainly from climate change and habitat loss.
But for so many species, including tigers,
there's a much more urgent threat: people buying and selling them,
dead or alive.
Illegal wildlife trade
is estimated to be worth as much as 23 billion U.S. dollars every year.
It's big business.
People want ivory from elephants and horn from rhinos.
From tigers they want skins, bones, and penises.
These guys, pangolins, are the most-traded animal in the world right now
because people want their scales and their meat.
On any given day at ports around the world,
customs officials can open anything
from a cargo ship container to a Pringles can
to find poisonous snakes, turtles, spiders, songbirds, orangutans,
you name it.
I've been studying wildlife trade for over 20 years.
I went to law school all those years ago
because I wanted to do something to help stop the extinction of wildlife.
And again and again, in the media, in newspapers, and on blogs,
I've heard an argument that some people, conservationists and government officials,
are convinced is the magic fix.
It's simple: make the trade legal.
Demand won't change, they say,
so increase the supply -
that will make the price go down and those traffickers and poachers
will get out of the business.
It's a free market argument;
supply-side economics in its simplest form.
I actually wish it would work. I wish it were that simple.
But the truth is that for the most endangered species,
it's not the answer,
and it will almost certainly make things much worse.
So let me tell you why,
and then let me tell you what we can do instead.
One of the biggest things the free market folks assume
is that demand for wildlife parts won't change.
But that's not true.
Demand does change.
It can go up and it can go down.
They're assuming that uses for wildlife
are mostly for cultural practices
like traditional Chinese medicine.
But uses for wildlife change constantly.
Fads come and go.
And those fads aren't based on anything like scientific evidence.
Take rhino horn.
You've probably heard that rhino horn is used as an aphrodisiac in China,
part of traditional Chinese medicine.
But the biggest market for rhino horn right now is Vietnam.
And according to TRAFFIC,
an international organization that studies wildlife trade,
only a tiny fraction of it is used for traditional Chinese medicine.
The majority is for brand new uses: as a hangover cure,
and downed at parties by businessmen showing off their wealth.
Now, sometimes it's not new uses that threaten wildlife,
but old uses that hop from species to species
when it becomes too difficult to sell the traditional animal.
For example, people want to buy tiger bone wine.
Tiger bones have become more scarce
and now people are willing to buy lion bone wine instead.
And now wild African lions are in decline.
In Japan, demand for rhino horn went down when traditional medicine manufacturers
were willing to switch to using something else.
They were willing to switch to using regular cow horn,
but the government suggested saiga antelope horn,
which was great for the rhinos, but not so good for the saiga antelope.
Once abundant, they're now critically threatened.
Now, social media can also fuel new demand, of course.
In the Arab Gulf, for the last several years,
it's been really cool to post pictures on Instagram
of your pet cheetah posing with your fancy car.
Illegal trade in cheetah cubs bound for the gulf has gone up fast,
and now conservationists are worried there won't be any wild cheetahs left.
And here's another one.
The slow loris.
Cute, huh?
So after all those YouTube videos of slow lorises supposedly being tickled -
they're actually really stressed - everyone wants one as a pet.
And now, slow lorises are in trouble.
Worse yet, when you legalize something,
the stigma attached to consuming it goes down,
and that can make demand go up.
So think about it.
If you see something for sale, like these ivory bracelets,
you're probably going to think it's OK to buy them.
And that can fuel demand.
Now, when wildlife parts are made legal,
that legal supply may come from farmed animals.
I'm talking farmed tigers, farmed rhinos, farmed lions.
But it turns out that consumers often want the wild version instead.
Because they think it looks better or is more potent.
Let's face it: if you're someone who wants to consume tiger penis,
you're probably going to think that the wild version is better.
(Laughter)
So the poaching continues and there's still a black market.
Only now, demand has gone up because everyone thinks it's OK to buy it,
and it can be cheaper to poach a wild animal
than to raise a farmed one.
These traffickers are sophisticated.
They trade in drugs, guns, people, and any wildlife they can sell.
If it's cheaper to take an animal from the wild
and sell it to a now thriving market,
they'll do it.
The free market argument has problems.
Serious problems.
It's based on bad assumptions.
Legalizing trade in wildlife can increase demand;
and that means more poaching, not less.
So does that mean we need to ban all trade in wildlife?
No.
There's a lot of legal trade in wildlife that doesn't threaten extinction.
And, unfortunately, it's not realistic
to think that we can stop using all wildlife products.
But we cannot apply a blanket approach to all wildlife.
We have to consider each species individually.
We have to ask how endangered is the animal,
how many people are using it, and what are they using it for.
Is it a one time use or daily consumption?
Now, this stage is not the place for me to answer those questions
for every single animal.
But I can tell you this now.
For the most endangered species, for which demand is high and uncontrolled,
we cannot afford to risk legalizing trade.
Elephants, rhinos, tigers, and pangolins all fall into that category.
So for those most endangered species, we need all-out trade bans.
Now, you might be thinking: "Wait, haven't we tried those?"
No.
We've had trade bans, but there have always been exceptions -
loopholes, like legal trade inside countries
and the occasional international sales of ivory.
And exceptions for things like trophy hunting.
Trade bans don't work as well when there are exceptions
because everyone can see that the product is sort of available,
and it's a heck of a lot harder to enforce a partial ban.
Take this shaved rhino horn being offered for sale here.
Is it from a farmed rhino or a wild poached rhino?
How would you know?
Just as demand can go up, it can also go down.
There are many examples. Let me share just a few.
In the United States, people no longer wear beaver fur hats.
For a while, certain bird species were at risk of extinction
because we were using their feathers in ladies' hats.
Public outcry led to a fashion change, and those birds are still with us.
And in Yemen,
demand for traditional dagger handles made from rhino horn
has gone way down.
Behavioral scientists and marketing experts
have already had some success with ad campaigns to reduce demand.
With total trade bans in place,
those campaigns will only be more effective.
The free market argument doesn't cut it.
There's no such thing as a magic fix.
Legalizing trade in wildlife fuels demand and can increase poaching.
It's an experiment that we cannot afford to risk for the most endangered species.
But we're not helpless.
Demand can change, and it's our job to reduce it.
Governments can help by putting in place trade bans and enforcing them.
And then it's up to us
to stop using wildlife before it's all gone.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)