Congress: Elephants are on the brink

Sophisticated gangs of criminals are poaching elephants to extinction. Up to 30,000 elephants are killed in Africa each year for their ivory tusks, and the situation is getting worse with each passing year.
Unless we take decisive action now, we're facing a future without elephants.
Congress controls funding for USAID Biodiversity programs that help combat poaching and save elephants. But the funding faces a severe 40% cut from this year's budget, right when elephants need it the most.
Tell your members of Congress to support conservation programs that elephants depend on... before it's too late.

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I'm writing to you as a supporter of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and as a constituent. Illegal poaching and trade of parts of animals like elephants is a major problem around the world and is harmful to U.S. interests. The people and groups who engage in illegal wildlife trade are the same who engage in other illicit activities. Often, the billions of dollars brought in by the slaughter and trafficking of wildlife are used to finance the illegal drug or arms trade. This is a direct threat to U.S. national security. The U.S. contributes foreign aid that is critical to protecting U.S. interests. U.S. foreign assistance is helping local people and communities recover from years of conflict and economic ruin. Some of this funding, including for the fight to stop illegal wildlife trade, comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Biodiversity Program. I urge you to protect funding for the USAID Biodiversity Program, a critical U.S. foreign aid program in the Fiscal Year 2014 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. The situation surrounding poaching and illegal wildlife trade is becoming dire. Just this past April, WCS helped confirm a new troubling slaughter of forest elephants in the violence-ridden Central African Republic (CAR) near the Dzanga-Sangha protected areas. Up to 30,000 elephants are killed in Africa each year for their ivory tusks, which are in high demand in Asia. This follows groundbreaking research by WCS and several partners that found a staggering 76 percent decline in the forest elephant population, from 322,000 to 80,000, between 2002 and 2013. In addition to fighting wildlife trafficking, the USAID Biodiversity Program supports important projects such as community-based natural resource management. Developing countries need a diversified economy to stabilize, and conservation programs can help achieve that. By training rural communities to better manage their resources, from improving livestock health to creating sustainable livelihoods programs, individuals working to manage limited resources can help improve economic and security circumstances. The USAID Biodiversity Program line item has been slashed by 40% in the Administration's FY14 Budget Request. We need Congress to restore the USAID Biodiversity Program line item and fully fund it at the FY13 enacted level. In addition, there is an urgent need for emergency funding for site-based wildlife law enforcement and protection to stop the poaching in Central and East Africa that is devastating elephant populations. We also ask that Congress support the Administration's Request for funding for the Global Environment Facility (the GEF), which is a similarly important force for international conservation. As Congress prepares to mark up FY14 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations, please help protect beneficial foreign aid like the USAID Biodiversity Program and the Global Environment Facility, which are especially valuable for vulnerable species like elephants. Thank you in advance for your support of these important programs.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]

Causes[edit]

World War II saw the British African colonies support the Allies against the Axis powers, but with no mention of independence for African nations. German wartime propaganda had a part in this defiance of British rule. Imperial Japan's conquests in the Far East caused a shortage of raw materials such as rubber and various minerals. Africa was therefore forced to compensate for this shortage and greatly benefited from this change. Another key problem the Europeans faced were the U-boats patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. This reduced the amount of raw materials being transported to Europe and prompted the creation of local industries in Africa. Local industries in turn caused the creation of new towns, and existing towns doubled in size. As urban community and industry grew so did trade unions. In addition to trade unions, urbanization brought about increased literacy, which allowed for pro-independence newspapers.
On February 12th 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss the postwar world. The result was the Atlantic Charter. One of the provisions, introduced by Roosevelt, was the autonomy of imperial colonies. After World War II, the US and the African colonies put pressure on Britain to abide by the terms of the Atlantic Charter. When Winston Churchill introduced the Charter to Parliament, he purposely mistranslated the colonies to be recently captured countries by Germany in order to get it passed. After the war, the British still considered their African colonies as "children" and "immature"; they introduced democratic government only at the local levels.
By the 1930s, the colonial powers had cultivated (sometimes inadvertently) a small elite of leaders educated in Western universities and familiar with ideas such as self-determination. These leaders, including leading nationalists such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Gold Coast, now Ghana), Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), and Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Côte d'Ivoire), came to lead the struggles for independence.