Poaching And Terrorism A National Security Challenge

Poaching and terrorism: a national security challenge : hearing before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourteenth Congress, first session, April 22, 2015.

Elephant and rhino populations in Africa are being decimated by poachers looking for high profits with little risk and little consequences. Between 1990 and 2005, poachers killed an average of 14 rhinos each year in South Africa. In 2013 and again in 2014, they killed over 1,000 rhinos each year. The black rhino population has declined by 93 percent since the 1960s. A total of only five white rhinos are left in the whole world today. Elephants are in just as much trouble. The elephant population has dropped 60 percent since 1979, and poaching numbers rise. Why? It is all about the money. The black market price of ivory in Africa is anywhere between $1,000 and $1,800 per pound. A rhino horn is now worth about $60,000 per kilogram. That is 2.2 pounds. That is twice the value of gold and platinum and more than cocaine or diamonds. In all, the illegal wildlife trade is estimated as a $10 billion to $20 billion a year business.

The planet is currently experiencing alarming levels of species loss caused in large part by intensified poaching and wildlife trafficking driven by expanding demand, for medicines, for food, and for trophies. Affecting many more species than just the iconic elephants, rhinos, and tigers, the rate of extinction is now as much as 1000 times the historical average and the worst since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. In addition to causing irretrievable biodiversity loss, wildlife trafficking also poses serious threats to public health, potentially triggering a global pandemic. The Extinction Market explores the causes, means, and consequences of poaching and wildlife trafficking, with a view to finding ways of suppressing them. Vanda Felbab-Brown travelled to the markets of Latin America, South and South East Asia, and eastern and southern Africa, to evaluate the effectiveness of various tools, including bans on legal trade, law enforcement, and interdiction; allowing legal supply from hunting or farming; alternative livelihoods; anti- money-laundering efforts; and demand reduction strategies. This is an urgent book offering meaningful solutions to one of the world's most pressing crises.

Learn how whistleblowers have saved lives, stopped frauds, protected their jobs, and earned million-dollar rewards for doing the right thing in Rules for Whistleblowers, Stephen Martin Kohn’s seventh book on whistleblowing. This book is a fully updated and expanded revision of The Whistleblower’s Handbook, the first-ever comprehensive consumer guide to exposing workplace wrongdoing. Kohn’s thirty-seven rules highlight the “traps” facing whistleblowers today and address how to file anonymous cases and qualify for multi-million-dollar rewards. Kohn carefully explains complex rules and laws governing whistleblowing including the Dodd-Frank, IRS, and False Claims Acts, as well as detailed strategies for fighting retaliation. He also covers controversial issues such as taping, removing documents, and ignoring nondisclosure agreements. Modernized laws have revolutionized the rights of employees both in the United States and internationally, enabling whistleblowers to be paid over $10 billion in rewards for doing the right thing. No employee should blow the whistle without knowing their rights. Too much is at stake.

An updated edition of the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing by the nation’s leading whistleblower attorney The newest edition of The Whistleblower’s Handbook brings the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to exposing workplace wrongdoing up-to-date with new information on wildlife whistleblowing, auto safety whistleblowing, national security whistleblowing, and ocean pollution whistleblowing. It also includes a new “Toolkit” for international whistleblowers. This essential guide explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing, and in the step-by-step bulk of the book, presents more than twenty must-follow rules for whistleblowers—from finding the best federal and state laws to the dangers of blindly trusting internal corporate “hotlines” to obtaining the proof you need to win the case.

Beliefs about security are based on threat perceptions in the environment. Assessing security is a cognitive process based on the repertoire of beliefs that make up a person’s subjective view of reality. The issue of security can, therefore be considered in political, societal, and economic terms. Changing security beliefs are based on global trajectories and the realignment of transnational environments. For the last two decades, the international community has been concerned by the emergence of non-state actors waging war against the state in ways hitherto unknown in conventional warfare. Widespread transnational terrorism and other anti-national movements have spurred the need to reconcile national security concepts and perspectives, in order to enable domestic development, growth and harmony. India has been a victim of various kinds of security threats, both internal and external. The United States of America has also faced major security threats, which reached new proportions with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In strategic terms, international cooperation is vital to fight terrorism. India and the USA, being among the world’s largest democracies with strong federal structures, have great potential to work together and collaborate effectively to combat such threats. With these considerations in mind, the CPPR-Centre for Strategic Studies decided to conduct its first international conference on ‘’National Security Management in Federal Structures: Perspectives from India and the United States.’’ The focus was on the federal framework of the two countries and the best way forward to tackle security issues in the emerging political and economic scenarios at the federal level. The themes and deliberations of this conference highlighted the significance of national security in federal structures. The participants examined current Indo-US policies and threw light on new security dimensions, both from an academic as well as a practitioner’s perspective. This book is a compilation of the resource proceedings of the Conference which has been contributed by eminent strategists, academicians, policy makers etc.

Maritime security is one of the latest additions to the field of international as well as national security. The concept has received growing attention especially due to the intensification of concerns over maritime terrorism since 2000. The rise of modern piracy, maritime crimes such as human trafficking, and the increasing importance of the 'blue economy' and issues relating to freedom of navigation, maritime environmental protection and resource management have resulted in increased significance of maritime security studies. A significant number of states and other international actors such as, Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and Transnational Corporations (TNCs), have placed maritime security high in their security agenda. This priority is reflected in several governmental and intergovernmental strategies for maritime security. In addition to that the regional grouping in the Indian Ocean and Indo – Pacific, such as ASEAN, BIMSTEC, IORA, and IONS have placed maritime security issues high in their agenda.