Sustainable use group founded by former CITES Secretary-General collaborated with tobacco industry
A previously undisclosed document shows a frightening relationship between IWMC and the Tobacco Institute.
IWMC World Conservation Trust is a sustainable use group founded by Eugene Lapointe following his departure from CITES where he was Secretary-General. A previously undisclosed document taken from UCSF’s tobacco industry library shows that IWMC worked with the Tobacco Institute’s president on issues regarding wildlife trade regulations.
The document is a set of communications involving IWMC vice president Stephen Boynton, Tobacco Institute president Sam Chilcote, and US republican politician David Dreier.
Boynton sent a letter to Chilcote, inviting him to a discussion about an upcoming CITES conference. Boynton states that a “CITES conference will be held to address critical issues which will surely have a dramatic and lasting impact on the U.S. agriculture industry.” He adds that they will “discuss the committee hearing on CITES with companies and industry representatives that will be affected.”
Attached to Boynton’s letter is a handwritten note from Dreier requesting Chilcote to attend the discussion. Dreier said that Chilcote “was very helpful when we assembled our bile crowd last fall.”
“Bile” in Dreier’s note refers to the bear bile trade. Lapointe mentions in a 2012 IWMC report that he first started visiting Chinese bear bile farms around the time that these folks would have assemble their “bile crowd.” The report also framed bear bile farming as a humane practice that was not threatening wild bear populations.
[The reality is that bear bile farming is anything but humane. How any organization could claim that squeezing bears into small metal cages and tapping them like maple trees is humane is simply unbelievable.
Additionally, a Traffic report notes that commercial bear bile trade is a threat to wild bear populations. Research demonstrates that farmed bear bile does not displace demand for wild bear bile and that many Chinese doctors and pharmacy workers believe that wild bear bile is more effective than farmed bear bile.]
Why is it concerning that a sustainable use group worked with Chilcote and Dreier?
These powerful men have a history of pushing anti-science disinformation and fighting against the rights of marginalized people.
Chilcote has firsthand knowledge of how the tobacco industry marketed tobacco products to children and pushed disinformation about the health hazards of smoking tobacco.
A Tobacco Institute document revealed that their own research demonstrated that smoking regulations were overwhelmingly popular. But the organization planned to fight regulations by positioning “anti-smokers as unreasonable in their demands” (this is not unlike what we see with banning trophy hunting imports to Western countries).
Dreier is a politician with financial ties to the tobacco industry. He has a particularly concerning voting record when it comes to human rights.
He voted to ban same-sex couples from adopting children, voted against including sexual orientation and gender identity in hate crime legislations, and supported the anti-abortion movement. His political career can be summed up as expanding corporate power and restricting human rights.
What are the implications for wildlife conservation?
IWMC collaborating with pro-disinformation, anti-science, anti-human rights individuals tramples the narrative that sustainable use activists are fighting disinformation and using evidence-based conservation practices to benefit marginalized communities.
We must take a critical view at the concept of sustainable use and those who promote it. The idea that trophy hunting and wildlife trade are tools for conservation and community empowerment is not grounded in reality.
IWMC working with Sam Chilcote also demonstrates that wildlife conservation decisions are not made in a vacuum. There are powerful industries, like the tobacco industry (and, therefore, the US agriculture industry), that wish to see sustainable use implemented on a global scale.
But the good news is that these communications give us insight into how industry representatives lobby against effective regulations.
Powerful alliances form when industry is threatened. Disinformation campaigns launch to obscure the truth and fight science. Manipulative marketing campaigns target vulnerable people to build faux grassroots opposition to industry regulations.
[Safari Club International shows that disinformation campaigns and faux grassroots movements are commonplace in the trophy hunting industry.]
Those wishing to dismantle the sustainable use paradigm need to study the successes and failures of the anti-tobacco movement.
There must be effective advertisement campaigns to go toe-to-toe with the marketing firms hired by sustainable use groups. Researchers and other members of the scientific community must speak out and testify against the anti-science, pro-industry policies that have become normalized in wildlife conservation.
However, the victims of sustainable use must not be stigmatized. Focus needs to be on the systems, institutions, and the people of power that enable sustainable use.