WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will increase enforcement of illegal wildlife trafficking, including using American intelligence agencies to track an estimated $20 billion a year in global sales, officials from the State, Justice and Interior Departments are to announce Wednesday.
The administration will also increase pressure on Asian countries during trade negotiations to stop the buying and selling of illegal rhinoceros horns, elephant ivory and other items, which President Obama has called an “international crisis,’’ and try to reduce demand worldwide.
“Right now, wildlife trafficking is a very profitable enterprise,” said John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Our goal is to take the profit out of this illegal trade with all the tools at our disposal.”
But the planned actions, the result of a two-year administration review on how to limit wildlife trafficking, will be supported by only a modest increase in funding and staffing for the law enforcement arm of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency chiefly responsible for policing the wildlife trade.
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Trafficking in wildlife has decimated elephant and rhino populations in Africa. The latest figures from South Africa show that 1,215 rhinos were killed last year, up from a little more than 300 in 2010. More than 100,000 elephants were killed for ivory since 2010, according to a 2014 Colorado State University report. Rhino horns can fetch prices as high as $30,000 a pound, and ivory can command prices as high as $3,000 a pound.
Congress is also trying to address wildlife smuggling. Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, introduced a bill that would increase fines for trafficking in wildlife and allow law enforcement officials to confiscate the assets of traffickers.
“The problem with these wildlife crimes is that the penalties are too low,” Ms. Feinstein said. “They aren’t much of a deterrent. We want to change that.” The bill is pending.
