From The Guardian 2016: Hillary Clintons little-known crusade to save Africas elephants
I wonder if this has anything to do with Trump reversing the ban on elephant trophies.
From The Guardian (Oct. 2016):
Relentless poaching is decimating Africa’s elephants. But the world’s largest land mammal could have a powerful, new champion if Hillary Clinton becomes president of the U.S.
When asked by Ellen DeGeneres what her spirit animal is, Hillary Clinton had a surprising answer: the elephant.
Although the symbol of the GOP, Clinton spoke on the Ellen DeGeneres Show this May with rare passion about the need to protect real elephants from a poaching crisis that has killed at least 110,000 of them over the past decade, pushing the world’s largest land animals – especially forest elephants – closer to extinction.
“I love the way…the matriarch of the family looks for everybody, I just have such a sense of connection to elephants and it just breaks my heart that they are being poached and murdered and babies being left to fend for themselves,” Clinton said on a portion of the show that only aired on Facebook.
Clinton’s affinity for elephants is not widely known or reported. But during her tenure as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, she helped bring the issue of global wildlife trafficking out of obscurity.
“International criminal syndicates are orchestrating the slaughter of many of the world’s iconic wildlife species and profiteering by marketing ivory, rhinoceros horn, and other wildlife parts in the U.S., Asia, and Europe,” said Jorge Silva, a spokesperson for the Clinton Campaign. “Many of the criminal syndicates have ties with, and are helping to fund, terrorist groups around the world, and also are engaged in human, drug, and arms trafficking.”
Experts believe that groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army, Al-Shabaab and even ISIS may be in part funded by the illicit sale of ivory and other wildlife parts.
Clinton’s personal love for elephants springs out of a trip to Tanzania in 1997 as first lady. Her daughter, Chelsea, accompanied her, and since then mother and daughter have shared a passion for pachyderms. During the period, Bill Clinton’s administration opposed any opening of the ivory trade. Despite this, Cites began approving one-off trades in elephant ivory in 1999, 2002 and 2008. Experts have linked the current poaching crisis to the approval of these trades, especially the last one.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2016/oct/11/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-election-elephants-wildlife-extinction-poaching-trade
= new reply since forum marked as read
Another reason it's a tragedy that she is not in the WH now. Even the elephants will suffer for it.
