I want to make another point, Mr. Chairman. That is that we don't wish to hinder legitimate trade in wildlife or wildlife products. In fact, we believe that healthy wildlife populations are good for the trade. It is the destructive poaching of fish and wildlife that must be controlled and I reaffirm my belief in Congressman Lacey's idea that the role of the Federal Government is to dry up the interstate and international market where the fruits of poachers who will then cease to carry out his nefarious traffic.

Senator CHAFEE. What are other nations doing-other so-called consuming nations? Are they vigilant in this area? Japan, West Germany?

Mr. GREENWALT. Not very well, sir, and I have to confess that the United States is not as vigilant itself as I would like it to be. We in the Fish and Wildlife Service work very closely with the Customs and other people. We don't give it a scrutiny that it really warrants because we lack the capability to do that.

I will say that we have had a long and very profitable history of association with the Customs Service. And without them, we would have been unable to do anything of the sort that we have accomplished in this past several years. Our Nation is one which has the advantage in this regard. Other nations do not have anything like our capability and, therefore, the attention paid to this problem in other consumer nations is not nearly as great as it should be.

Several of the European nations are very diligent and have an opportunity to be very effective in this regard. In my experience, there is not the capability worldwide among the consumer nations to do this sort of thing very well.

Obviously, the producer nations, given the nature of producer nations these days, are unstable governments and economic problems are unable to do very much at all. It is a very difficult problem and I think can be in part at least resolved by providing the kind of tools we think come with the amended Lacey and Black Bass Acts to achieve this end.

Senator CHAFEE. Mr. Greenwalt, I am afraid we are going to have to move along here.

Mr. GREENWALT. I recognize that. I would like to say only that the two acts, the Black Bass Act and the Lacey Act as we have proposed, will offer an opportunity to improve and to do a better job.

I would say that among the things that we are concerned about and it is a small thing and it is only-the only thing we do not want to change in the Lacey Act is its name. We think it is only proper that Congressman Lacey receive continued recognition of the basic philosophy of the act which we still strongly support.

I would be glad, Mr. Chairman, to offer other comments that I might.

Senator CHAFEE. In your testimony you say:

This spring in Texas we seized 16,000 furs valued at $1.1 million. These furs were from animals killed illegally in Mexico and destined to the European market. Because of problems with the current Lacey Act, the U.S. attorney agreed to a settlement which returned half of the seized pelts to the defendants and a fine of $10,000 and 5 years probation.

Will these changes take care of that situation?

Mr. GREENWALT. The changes, had they been in effect at the time this was undertaken, would have resolved the problem.

Senator CHAFEE. Are you satisfied, under this act, that you have a strong enough forfeiture provision? Seems to me if there can be forfeiture, we will have taken a big step forward.

Mr. GREENWALT. We have recommended much more simplified forfeiture procedures so that the relieving of the violator of the contraband is a much more streamlined process.

We feel that that will help immeasurably, particularly in the administrative sense.

Senator CHAFEE. As I understand the proposal, you take the Black Bass Act which is separate from the Lacey Act, and you combine them together.

Mr. GREENWALT. Correct.

Senator CHAFEE. Into a new Lacey Act.

Mr. GREENWALT. That is right.

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you very much. Now, let me ask you this: If this bill passes, is Fish and Wildlife prepared to commit the resources to it? We have on, numerous occasions, passed stringent acts and improvements in present law, but then the agency that deals with it doesn't have the resources. So we are no further ahead than when we started.

Mr. GREENWALT. Mr. Chairman, this is an area in which I have some understanding. We would like very much to commit the resources recognizing that while I and my folks may recommend the commitment of such resources the decision is not mine alone to make.

Senator CHAFEE. I appreciate that, but in your priorities, after all

Mr. GREENWALT. We do set our priorities.

Senator CHAFEE. Where is this going to be in your priorities? Mr. GREENWALT. Substantially higher in our priorities than we have made it in the past, because I think with the improvement of the Lacey Act, the Presidential support that we have received, the efforts that the President is presently making with respect to wildlife law enforcement, we can justify and convince those who might otherwise not agree with this that we should receive the kind of resources that are necessary effectively to carry this out.

It will, Mr. Chairman, be high on our priority of Fish and Wildlife Service activities.

Senator CHAFEE. Your chart for game trophies imported to the United States during 1972 to 1978 shows a spectacular shot upward in 1977? What happened?

Mr. GREENWALT. I am informed that part of it is the improved reporting procedure and we haven't really determined what it was that happened at this time that may have caused this to go upward so rapidly.

Senator CHAFEE. Some in the chart on, live reptile importations, 1972 to 1973, it dropped down and 1977 to 1978 it shot upward.

Mr. GREENWALT. I think again, there may be a sort of vogue involved in some of these things. Certain kind of pets or

Senator CHAFEE. Again in the next chart. Large mammal importations. It goes off like a rocket in 1977. Also live bird importations. I have never seen such precipitous changes in graphs.

Mr. GREENWALT. In part, it is improper reporting procedure. There is also a clear increased interest in the importation of these things

because there is a market for many of these creatures or their products. Products made from these creates, it is a reflection of the times I would say.

Senator CHAFEE. I see. Thank you very much, Mr. Greenwalt. We will be talking with you further on this and there might be additional questions.

I see Mr. Meyers from the Pet Council is going to testify. He obviously will raise some points. We can take those up with you at another time so that you don't have to wait around this morning.

I notice that Mr. Green from the Customs Service is going to be on the panel and we can check with him on the points that Mr. Meyers will be raising.

Let's take the next panel, the conservation panel. Mrs. Stevens, Ms. Duplaix, and Mr. Heymann.

Why don't we proceed this way? Why don't we allow the maximum of, say, 40 minutes for this panel. I assume that everybody has statements. I see Mrs. Stevens' statement, Ms. Duplaix's statement, Mr. Heymann's statement.

You don't have to read these in their entirety. Why don't we start with Mrs. Stevens. We welcome each of you here.

Mrs. Stevens, if you would like to proceed. You can summarize your statement, speak from it, do as you want. Yours isn't too long, so you handle it the way you want.

STATEMENTS OF CHRISTINE STEVENS, SECRETARY, SOCIETY FOR ANIMAL PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.; NICOLE DUPLAIX, DIRECTOR, TRAFFIC (U.S.A.), PROGRAM OF THE WORLD WILDLIFE FUND, WASHINGTON, D.C. AND HENRY HEYMANN, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE, INTERNATIONAL PRIMATE PROTECTION LEAGUE

Mrs. STEVENS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I think I might ask that these numerous pictures and exhibits be brought up to you. Because it would be easier to follow.

On the top are our pictures which are not mentioned in my statements, so I will start with them. This is an article from the old Life magazine, which shows giraffes at sea. They slowly became more and more ill and debilitated. If you turn the page, you see one that finally collapsed and died, even though he was said to be a favorite of the crew. And the dead giraffes were thrown overboard.

That case received substantial publicity. The people responsible and who were named in the indictment, were represented in court by eight very high-powered lawyers, and they got off scotfree. Now that is a rather gross example of failure of the Lacey Act to do what it should do. I bring up this old example because a major animal dealer at the meeting last week of the Animal Air Transportation Association referred to the fact that these people got off. He was quite interested. He attended the court proceedings to find out what was going to happen to them. He also stated that the same people were involved in the recent scandal at the Rome Airport, which I do refer to in my written testimony. It is one of the most horrible things that has happened in recent times. I have seen the eyewitness reports. These

animals slowly and horribly died even after representatives of animal welfare organizations got there. They could not get the animals out. And they should never have been sent in the first place without legal permits.

Now, that kind of dealer has got to be punished. But it has been years and years that he has been doing such things, and he keeps getting off. That is just one example of why we feel so strongly that the Lacey Act enforcement has got to be made effective. It simply hasn't been. The idea behind the Lacey Act is absolutely correct, but as you have certainly heard in full detail from Mr. Greenwalt, Interior can't actually make it work.

Now, I would comment on the other things you have there. You have a picture of a Little Dennis, the orangutan. That was taken some years ago, also. He was seized at National Airport and he looks happy there now in the flowers of the National Zoo, but he was packed into a crate that really was too small even for a coffin for a creature of that size, and he was mislabeled as a monkey so that nobody knew, unless they looked very hard, that he was an endangered great ape.

I have seen these small crates. In fact, reference to snakes reminds me of the fact that I once went up to look inside a cargo airplane, and they told me "don't go up there because we lost a couple of poisonous snakes up there and you should really not go up."

Well, of course there weren't any snakes up there, that is just a very common way of keeping anybody that wants to look at things out, because of the actual phobia that many people have about snakes and the fact that some are dangerous.

Well, chimpanzee infants packed in these tiny coffinlike containers is what they didn't want me to see. One was dead. Now

Senator CHAFEE. In your testimony, you stress that the loss of the animals, never mind the illegality, and the fact that these animals are taken from other nations where they are endangered and they are endangered internationally as well. But in the mere transport of them into the country, so many of them die and so there, they are not even-they don't arrive here alive, they die enroute.

Mrs. STEVENS. Yes. Those two books, manuals you might call them, the "Bird Business," by Greta Nilsson which goes into the U.S. business, "Airborne Birds" and "All Heaven in a Rage," by T. P. Inskipp which report on the trade into and through Britain. All of them provide excellent workmanlike documentation. You asked, Mr. Chairman, about other countries. Great Britain is making an effort, and they have an excellent organization, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that has been very active. But the trade at the present time is really beyond every country to regulate properly at this point. And I am sure if the United States strengthens its Lacey Act, that will help a great deal to lead the way as we have in other wildlife conservation matters for other countries who are also struggling with this terrible problem. It is just plain greed. I mean, there is a huge amount of money to be made; exotic pets are very popular now.

Now, this does not address the legislation that we have before us right now. But there is widespread international feeling that the use of exotic animals and birds for purely commercial purposes should be rapidly phased out before, like the whales, the commercial interests wipe themselves out because they have got nothing left.

Senator CHAFEE. You point out that that is a separate subject from what we are dealing with today. I think that would, the mere mention of that would get the pet people thinking that this is like the camel getting his nose under the tent and so forth.

As we approach this subject, to curtail the possession of animals is not one of my objectives. I haven't even thought that through. I don't even want a suggestion that this is the first step in that direction because as far as I am concerned, it isn't.

Mrs. STEVENS. I perhaps should not even mention it, but I don't feel it is the first step. In fact, if you are to pass this bill, and the trade is cleaned up, that would be the greatest reason for the pet trade to be able to continue. At the present time, it is indefensible because of the violations.

Senator CHAFEE. Yes. Well, fine.

Mrs. STEVENS. Mr. Chairman, if I can just submit my statement for the record. [See p. 91.]

Senator CHAFEE. Great. If you could, will you remain at the table?

Mrs. STEVENS. Yes.

Senator CHAFEE. Unless you have anything else you want to add at this minute, we will hear from Miss Duplaix, and then Mr. Heymann. After which I will have a few questions that I would address to the panel as a whole.

All right. Miss Duplaix, representing director of TRAFFIC (U.S.A.), located in Washington.

STATEMENT OF NICOLE DUPLAIX

MS. DUPLAIX. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am Nicole Duplaix, director of TRAFFIC (U.S.A.). TRAFFIC (U.S.A.) is a scientific, information gathering organization monitoring the trade in endangered and other wild fauna and flora. Funded entirely by the World Wildlife Fund-US, TRAFFIC is a specialist group of the Survival Service Commission (SSC) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). I am pleased to represent the environmental community along with Mrs. Christine Stevens of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation-SAPL and Mr. Henry Heymann of the International Primate Protection League-IPPL. We are here today to support the proposed amendments to the Lacey Act, and our testimony includes ideas and suggestions of many conservation organizations not represented on this panel. Attached to our testimony are tables detailing the volume and value of live animals and their products imported into the United States in 1978 and January through August 1979. The data in these tables were obtained from the Department of Commerce. May we request these be included in the record?

Senator CHAFEE. Fine. That will be done. [See p. 17.]

MS. DUPLAIX. Most prosecutions under the Lacey Act have involved only the transport of wildlife across State lines within the United States, that is, violation of State regulations rather than those of international commerce. Obtaining sufficient evidence to prosecute international violators successfully has been the main stumbling block.

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