Meet the Planet With Doug Ivey

QUESTION: With us here in the studio today we have Bo Derek and Claudia McMurray, who are here to speak on behalf of wild animals that are part of the wildlife trafficking industry, a $10 billion-a-year black market. This worldwide illegal trade of animals and animal body parts exists because the demand for exotic parts, rare food consumption, trophies and medicine.

And Claudia McMurray is the Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureaus of Ocean and International Environment and Scientific Affairs since February of this year. And we also have Bo Derek and she does not need an introduction. Most of us have seen her talent in movie and television screens. But more importantly, Ms. Derek has been the spokesperson appointed by Ms. McMurray to help combat wildlife trafficking.

Ms. McMurray, welcome to Meet the Planet.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Thank you very much. Good to be here.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask your first question. You’ve made a lot happen since you took over the position, and could you tell us the top priorities in the next few months?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, on this particular topic what we’ve tried to do is bring together key countries who care about this issue and also countries that have the splendid resources that we’re trying to protect, and also work with non-governmental organizations to work together to cut the supply and the demand for illegal wildlife and wildlife products, both. And what that means is we have to get the word out to people in America and overseas that these products are illegal and they really need to find other things to buy.

QUESTION: What’s your method of getting the word out to people?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, exactly what we’re doing right now talking to you is one way. We’ve spent two days here in San Francisco talking to groups from students to foreign affairs experts to newspapers, anybody who’ll listen basically, we want that word to get out.

QUESTION: It’s unbelievable that we’re talking about a market that’s $10 billion a year.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: That’s a conservative estimate, too. Some people say it’s twice that.

QUESTION: I’m wondering what illegal trafficking -- maybe I guess drugs and arms that are greater than this.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: It’s second to drugs really. Arms are less of a quantifiable criminal activity.

QUESTION: That’s unheard of. If people knew that, you’d think they’d all want to get involved.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, what we’ve been trying to do, in addition to the appearances that we make here in San Francisco is also to get the word out to tourists when they’re leaving the United States and going to other countries, either if they’re on cruise ships or on airplanes or even at the airport, at the San Francisco airport, there’s a display that shows the products -- at least some of them, that are illegal, and brochures that say, “please don’t buy these things.”

QUESTION: And that’s really where it starts, with the consumer.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: It is. One of the concerns we have and one of the reasons why we in the U.S. formed the coalition to start was that we looked at where the markets were. And the two biggest markets in the world are China and the United States. And they’re very different products that go to the different countries, but we do have a very serious stake in the problem here in the U.S.

QUESTION: Is it more the live pet trade in the United States that makes us one of the top countries that are doing this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: That’s certainly part of it. A lot of other countries, when I travel around the world, a lot of other countries point out to me that we have quite a few tigers in certain states in the United States that are kept for pets, and that’s something that really doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Tigers are killed in other countries for their parts and for their skins, but we seem to be unique in keeping them as pets.

But we also have other products that come in, whether they be tortoiseshell glasses that come from sea turtle shells or coral reef products, all sorts of jewelry and other items that come from the ocean floor. And some people eat shark fin soup. It’s a delicacy in Asia. I’m told it’s served in some restaurants here in San Francisco. And that comes from the fin of the shark, not from the meat of the shark but the fin.

QUESTION: You know, with laws in place, where are countries failing to prevent this illegal market?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, we have an international treaty called the Convention on Trade and Endangered Species, which is quite important and quite strong, and 190 countries have signed up to it. But it’s really up to every individual country to enforce its provisions. And that’s what our coalition is working on. In addition to raising the public awareness, which we’ve already talked about, to try and get the countries that might have weak enforcement or even weak laws to learn from our experience and to strengthen their own enforcement capability so that they can actually deter activity where it is.

QUESTION: Bo, I wanted to ask you a question. What got you involved in this project, this wildlife trafficking?

MS. DEREK: It was a personal experience. I was touring the Galapagos Islands six years ago, and that’s where I learned of the shark-finning trade. It’s illegal, and it’s a process of fishing where just the fins of the shark are sliced off and the carcass thrown back.
Now all these years, for centuries sharks have been able to survive, keep their numbers up, even with the consumption of, say, shark fin soup. But now with this new global economy and this new middle class coming up in Asia, the demand for shark fin soup is so great that the numbers are being decimated.

And in the six years, just personally, that I’ve been going to the Galapagos Islands, one of the most treasured places on earth, I’ve seen the decline in shark population, and it’s frightening. So that got me involved to begin with.

QUESTION: Well, I wanted to ask you quickly, do you think that these consumers who are buying these shark fins over in Asia, wherever it may be, that they’re aware of what’s happening out on the high seas?

MS. DEREK: No, because surveys show that when they do find out, they’re repulsed by it and they don’t want to eat it anymore. But it’s such a status symbol, such a part of their culture, that one of -- someone from an NGO just came back from Thailand recently, and they said that they were -- they attended some weddings and there was no shark fin soup. That’s equivalent to us not having turkey at Thanksgiving, so that was a good sign that the message is getting out.

QUESTION: So the word is out there, and when people find out about it, it sounds like they do take steps to stop consumption of these awful products that contribute to this.

MS. DEREK: They do. It doesn’t have to stop completely. It just has to get -- the demand has to get down to a number where the -- some of these animals can sustain themselves.

QUESTION: Thank you so much. And we’ll be back later in the show with Claudia McMurray.

QUESTION: Hi. We’re back talking about wildlife trafficking. With us is Claudia McMurray, and we also have Bo Derek.

Claudia, I wanted to ask you, who are the biggest culprits in this industry that are going out and doing this awful wildlife trafficking?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, it’s a combination of two kinds of groups. One is an extremely organized black market, a mafia of sorts. It’s not organized around the world, but it’s organized in individual countries. And we’re finding that they’re usually part of the drug trade, the trade in weapons, as well as illegal trade in wildlife. So this is an overall crime problem that we really have to address.

But the second group is a little more innocent. They’re the people who really don’t know the difference between illegal and legal products when they go overseas. And I think Americans are a big part of this. We obviously consume a lot in this country. We travel a lot. And we go overseas, and we find these really unusual items that we think must be legal if they’re being sold. But the case is they come home and sometimes they come through Customs and it gets taken away from them, sometimes they manage to get through with it. But it’s something that they really need to understand better.

I just recently spent half a day at our facility in Denver, a government facility that takes all the seized products, and it’s in a big warehouse. And these are only the dead items. These aren’t live things, obviously. And you would be amazed at the number of products that come in. And the one I always mention is the Green Bay Packers baseball cap that has an exotic snake skin on the cover of it. Apparently whoever wanted that didn’t actually get to take it home. But there are boots, there are coats, there’s traditional Chinese medicine, there’s ivory. You name it, it’s in that facility.

QUESTION: This is a warehouse in Colorado?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: It’s a government-owned warehouse in Denver, right outside Denver.

QUESTION: These are all seized goods?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Yes, and a number of them have been used in cases as evidence, so they are now government property. But some of them just came in because an individual had them in their bag.

QUESTION: Gosh, it’s amazing when you think about the two types of groups and individuals that are doing this, and some that willingly do it and the other ones that have no idea.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Right. Well, that’s why we make a big point of having to get at the supply to get at the criminal activity and to get at the demand, which we see as more of a kind of lack of knowledge on the innocent tourist.

QUESTION: You have a double-edged sword. You have to go after and apprehend the ones that are breaking the law and on the other you have to be gentle and -- more of an awareness with people that aren’t really up to speed about what’s happening and what they’re contributing to.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Right. Exactly.

QUESTION: What type of animals are we talking about, just I guess everything across the board?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, there’s a broad range. We see a lot of still, you’d be surprised, are skins from cats, endangered cats, snow leopards, tigers, other kinds of animals that are endangered, jaguars. And they’re used for rugs. They’re used for coats. They’re used -- sometimes the head is cut off and it’s stuffed and put on a wall. And then of course there’s still an enormous amount of ivory that’s being traded despite the ban for more than 10 years. And then there are products like combs that are made out of tortoiseshell or jewelry that comes from coral reefs. Those are quite common.

QUESTION: Bo, I wanted to ask you a question. Are you finding more and more people in the limelight, celebrities and actors and actresses, are getting involved with issues like this?

MS. DEREK: They are, and I really, I have a problem with it personally. But at the same time, in my own personal experience, how do you say no to this, when someone you admire who has dedicated their whole life to a very important purpose says you can help. It’s very difficult to say no. I am not an expert in this, but I am a human who cares. And the way I see it, this will stop. Consuming these items will stop, either because we choose to as a global community and we preserve these animals because they’re so endangered or there won’t be any. Either way, we must give it up, and I choose to try to convince people to do it now before the animals are gone.

There are more tigers now in homes, in private homes, than there are in the wild.

QUESTION: Oh my gosh. Is that true?

MS. DEREK: Yes.

QUESTION: Wow. That’s unbelievable.

Claudia, you had mentioned earlier that this is something that you think was winnable within our lifetime, unlike other very large problems that we may not see the results of until long after we’re gone or other generations after we’re gone. But on this particular trafficking, the $10 billion a year, what would be the best we could hope for?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Well, I think one of the key species that we’re focused on are the several different kinds of tigers that still exist in the wild. That’s clearly something that people identify with. They know what a tiger is. It’s usually a symbol of strength and dominance, and certainly in the Chinese culture and the Indian culture it’s a very important symbol.

But there are only 5,000, we think, tigers left in the wild. And that’s a really staggering statistic if you think about the hundreds of thousands that used to roam the planet just a couple of centuries ago. So if we can stem this tide for that particular animal, I think we could hold the line. I don’t know if we could cause the populations to grow, but we could at least stem the losses that we’re experiencing.

QUESTION: Would it help to make stiffer laws to people who break the law?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: I get asked that a lot. I think our country has some pretty good laws and we have very good enforcement compared to any country that you could look at, at the rest of the world. Other countries may have strong laws, they may not. Certainly the penalties could be increased because if you look at the price that some of these products command, it’s quite a lot. I mean it’s tens of thousands of dollars for a bird or a tiger, and then penalties may not deter that behavior because of the price you can get.

So there are certain countries that probably need a little bit of help in that regard, but we really think the biggest thing they need is just the knowledge and the experience of how to identify what an endangered species is. And then once they actually detect criminal behavior, how to prepare a case for consideration by a judge in a court and then how to get it all the way to prosecution and get that person in jail so that then you deter the behavior in the future.

QUESTION: And you have a tough choice, because you’ve got people who are willingly breaking the law and you have people who are breaking the law unknowingly.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Right.

QUESTION: And so the laws have to be the same, and it’s hard to prosecute somebody because they willingly did it and somebody else who accidentally did it.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: You know, I think our country recognizes that differentiation to some degree, and prosecutors try to use some discretion. But in other countries, you’re right. It’s a little less, less -- it’s more of a blunt instrument. Let’s just put it that way.

QUESTION: Well, we need all the laws we can for stricter enforcement and much more education. And again, we can’t thank you both enough for appearing here with us on Meet the Planet and going around the country and spreading the word. It’s something that I think we all need to look at, and again, to find out $10 billion a year, I’m still so stunned by that number. And we need to have people wake up, because there’s really something they can do.

Thank you again for appearing on Meet the Planet.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY McMURRAY: Thanks for your help on this.

QUESTION: Claudia McMurray and Bo Derek, thank you again.