Fresh Air, Daily Show, Bret Baier

October 7, 2016

I had a great time on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which aired today. You won’t hear it (I think) but my stomach growled so loud mid-interview Terry had to go to her office and get me a banana. I also got to drink a bottle of water Beyonce had left unconsumed during her visit to the show. And, Terry announced our interview the day before at the close of her interview with the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, whose raw American poetry I’ve admired all my life, bolstered by this exchange with Walker Percy first published in that great, bygone (why do those words link so often today?) publication DoubleTake.

Next week (Oct 12)  I’m on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, where I’ll share a few details not included in the print story. And Friday, I’m on Special Report with Bret Baier who’s done a great job chronicling criminal exploitation of wildlife.

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Posted in Blog Post, rhino, rhino horn, Terrorism, Wildlife Trade | No Comments

Ivory and Terrorism: The Truth

November 6, 2015

Last week the New York Times ran a shameful Op-Ed entitled, “The Ivory-Funded Terrorism Myth,” which falsely claimed that ivory is not funding terrorist activity in Africa, and suggested that even if there is ivory-funded terrorism (let’s just call it “regional militias,” he suggests), what happens in Africa when it comes to terrorism is okay as long as it stays in Africa.

The author, Tristan McConnell, who wrote a nearly identical piece for USA Today a year ago, bases his argument on a single 2011 report linking Somalia’s Shabab to the ivory trade. For him to criticize a Shabab-ivory link–amplified by politicians and in Kathryn Bigelow’s film, “Last Days of Ivory”–is one thing (I did not find a Shabab link during my reporting either, though the Times has), but to paint the brutality going on in central Africa as not terrorist activity, or not “international” unless it crosses the Atlantic Ocean, is absurd, and worse. These groups are operating across multiple states, ivory is part of their funding, and park rangers on the ground are being killed for standing between terrorists and their human victims, too.

Below is my letter to the Times editors, submitted the following day.

I am writing in response to the op-ed, “The Ivory-Funded Terrorism Myth,” (10/29/2015, NYT) which shamefully trots out one specific, and already widely-criticized story to grossly mischaracterize the ivory-terrorism issue.

 Joseph Kony, the Janjaweed, Seleka in CAR, and Hutu FDLR in the Congo are all terrorists killing for ivory in central Africa.  Your own reporting has spoken to the connection, including even to the Shabab link questioned by your writer.

 In many places in central Africa where terrorist groups kidnap children, rape women, steal food and medicine, and disrupt community, park rangers are the only law enforcement on the ground to confront them. To support these rangers is to support the fight against terrorism itself.

 As National Geographic has pointed out in a recent documentary and story, the ivory-for-arms trade in central Africa runs separately from, and parallel to, the organized crime form of ivory trafficking taking place in East Africa. It’s wrong to play the terrorism card to bring attention to a problem, and it’s wrong to play the terrorism card to ignore a problem, too.

 

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Posted in Blog Post | 3 Comments