Jim Saxton: “Mr. Speaker, during the years that I have been involved in this issue, from time to time folks come to me and say why…”

“Mr. Speaker, during the years that I have been involved in this issue, from time to time folks come to me and say why are you concerned about the situation involving the Asian elephants. I just wanted to take a few minutes this morning to explain why that is and how we got to where we are with this program that has been quite successful. Mr. Speaker, in 1997 I introduced this bill because I became startled to learn that there were less than 40,000 Asian elephants living in the wild. Furthermore, nearly 50 percent of those elephants were living in various national parks in India, while the remaining animals were scattered in fragmented populations in 12 other countries in South and Southeast Asia. Mr. Speaker, it occurred to me that with the rapid decline in the population of this species, it is not without reason that one could conclude that they would actually some day, in the not too distant future, become extinct unless something was done by the variety of people who care about issues involving wildlife. The primary reason for this serious decline in population is the loss of essential habitat.”