This is an issue that we both have endeavored to shine light on, in and out of office. One of us (Clinton) worked with President Barack Obama to draw attention to African elephant poaching in the 2000s — when close to two-thirds of all remaining forest elephants were wiped out to meet the global demand for ivory — and embraced a strategy in 2013 through the Clinton Global Initiative to stop the killing and trafficking of elephants. The other (Kasich) supported legislation as a nine-term member of Congress to address the crisis and engaged President George W. Bush on the potential for losing the world’s elephants entirely without an international ban on the importation of ivory.
We supported bans on ivory sales in U.S. states with the largest markets — including New York, California and Hawaii — just as we supported action in Congress to close the domestic ivory market of our country, an action that encouraged other key countries such as China and Britain to do the same.