President Obama’s lasting legacy as a champion for exotic wildlife is in jeopardy, as lawmakers and even his supporters in the environmental community are saying his 2013 executive order on preserving wildlife has yielded questionable results.
Just after winning his second term in office, Obama issued an executive order aimed at cracking down on poaching, and even created a task force and outlined a national strategy against the practice. But some, like Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, are asking if the White House plan goes beyond words on a piece of paper.
“There is a lot of talk about plans, but the subcommittee needs to hear about actions,” she said during a February hearing of the appropriations panel she leads. “A common complaint is that there is very little information publicly available on what the U.S. government is doing to address the crisis.”
But it’s not just Republicans complaining. During a Senate hearing last summer, Save the Elephants’ George Wittemyer said the Obama administration must go beyond Obama’s order that the federal government take all “appropriate” action to fight wildlife trafficking.
“We haven’t seen appropriations put into the most effective agents … some of those individuals in the U.S. government are very busy … with other activities,” he said. For example, the Defense Department “has a lot of responsibilities … putting wildlife on their docket in a way that they will actually engage with it is very difficult. It’s No. 57 on the list and they can’t get to it.”
Lawmakers are also pointing out that dozens of federal conservation programs already exist, but say it’s not clear how those are helping to advance the cause. “The subcommittee needs an update on how much of the funding has been spent, what has been achieved so far, how you evaluate programs, and what you plan to focus on going forward that will turn the tide and help bring an end to the illegal killing of these animals,” Granger said, referring to funding for existing programs.
At the same House hearing, Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., noted that 65 government programs are now dedicated to the issue, 35 of which are new, and asked how they avoid duplication.
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Eric Postel insisted that processes are in place to prevent overlap. “[O]ur ambassadors lead on a country level the coordination across the agencies to make sure there’s no duplication…. And then there’s a lot of things done under the task force to make sure that there’s no duplication or anything like that.”
Obama has had some luck when it comes to reducing the ivory trade. He announced a ban on ivory trade during the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who committed to closing China’s domestic ivory market as well.
State Department Undersecretary Catherine Novelli said the announcement alone had tremendous affect. “In China it cut the price in half … what happens when the price gets lower, there is less incentive for poachers to kill elephants,” she said during a conference call commemorating World Wildlife Day last week.
But the effectiveness of a favorite, internationally-used deterrent to trade in ivory is also under scrutiny.
The U.S., China and other countries have held “crushes,” in which they destroy illicit tusks, skins and other animal parts, to deny traffickers and poachers profits. Still, Granger and others have asked if that actually creates new demand.
“Ivory destruction events remove ivory from supply and potentially signal to the market that the commodity is getting scarcer,” Tom Milliken, who monitors the wildlife trade, told the liberal blog Think Progress after a highly publicized crush.
Even if the China agreement tamps down demand, it might not be enough to change the market.
“I give him credit for giving it attention … the poaching rates are really out of control,” said the Heritage Foundation’s Joshua Meservey. “I think a lot of what he has proposed is really just nibbling around the edges of the problem.”
“Demand is not going to cease just because the legal trade is dismantled; all that business will simply move to the black market,” Meservey said. “If China really wants to fight this problem, it will aggressively go after the illegal trade and try to address the demand problem.”
Without Chinese cooperation, Meservey said, the U.S. can only cajole Beijing, as no administration would even threaten sanctions over the issue.
In addition, Obama has had to watch a Republican Congress chip away at the progress he’s made. In late February, the House passed legislation that would block Obama’s directive to end ivory trade, as part of a larger bill that would allow more wolf and grizzly bear hunting, among other things.
Obama points to the recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership as another chance for international wildlife standards.
“I’ve taken every opportunity in my time in office to protect the world’s wildlife where I can,” Obama told the Humane Society recently. “I won’t let up on any action or any step I can take to help protect the wild elephants.”
“We’ve negotiated the highest-standard trade agreement in history that will provide new tools to protect wildlife,” he said, referring to provisions in the TPP.
However, TPP’s fate is unclear, as Congress may not even vote on ratifying the treaty before Obama leaves office. And whether his successor would push to move the 12-nation pact is uncertain.
