Hillary Clinton announces program aimed at stamping out elephant poaching, ivory trade

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-announces-program-aimed-at-stamping-out-elephant-poaching-ivory-trade/2013/09/26/3c258c40-26c1-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story.html

Hillary Clinton announces program aimed at stamping out elephant poaching, ivory trade

By Philip Rucker, Published: SEPTEMBER 26, 3:54 PM ET

NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new global effort Thursday to protect Africa’s wild elephants from poaching, part of a long-running personal crusade for the former secretary of state.

Clinton joined the presidents of several African nations and wildlife preservation advocates to unveil an $80 million, three-year program aimed at ending ivory trafficking, including new park guards at major elephant ranges and sniffer-dog teams at global transit points.

The announcement was a centerpiece of the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton family’s annual charitable gathering in New York. In remarks at a Thursday luncheon, Clinton said the slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks had reached crisis proportions.

“Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years,” Clinton said. “I can’t even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values.”

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