Chris Coons: “I am going to take a few minutes, if I might, to celebrate something that we, frankly, have a chance to celebrate far…”

“I am going to take a few minutes, if I might, to celebrate something that we, frankly, have a chance to celebrate far too rarely--a bipartisan legislative success. I am thrilled to be here to celebrate the passage of the End Wildlife Trafficking Act, a bill Senator Flake and I have been working on for months since it was introduced in December of last year, an idea which we have been working on for well over a year. This bill has been a long time in coming. I first saw the tragic consequences of poaching and wildlife trafficking decades ago when I was a young man in Kenya, and I first visited Africa with a number of my colleagues on a trip to look at the dramatic increase in wildlife trafficking just a few short years ago. President Obama issued an Executive order to combat wildlife trafficking back in 2013, and Senator Cardin and I held a joint hearing on the topic in 2014 when I chaired the African Affairs Subcommittee. Senator Flake, now the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee, and I introduced this bill together last December, and now we are excited to see it pass this body and be one step closer to becoming law. Why is this bill important? Why does wildlife trafficking in Africa matter? Because nearly 100 elephants are killed every single day so their ivory tusks can be sold on the black market.…”