; Whereas, between 2002 and 2013, as a result of poaching, about 65 percent of the forest elephant population was killed and that species lost 30 percent of its geographical range; Whereas World Wildlife Fund elephant surveys conducted between 2014 and 2016 and covering 6,000,000 hectares confirmed this catastrophic trend, documenting losses of 66 percent of the remaining elephants between 2008 and 2016, placing forest elephants on track for extinction in the next decade; Whereas fewer than 50,000 wild Asian elephants remain and poaching of these populations is on the rise, with an average of 1 elephant poached every week in Burma, driven by demand for elephant skin products; Whereas the number of rhinoceroses killed by poachers in South Africa— (1) dramatically increased from 13 in 2007 to 1,215 in 2014, an increase of more than 9,000 percent; and (2) was 1,028 in 2017; Whereas the 3 species of Asian rhinoceroses also remain under constant threat of poaching, with a greater 1-horned rhinoceros poached in Kaziranga National Park in India as recently as January 2018; Whereas pangolins are often referred to as the most trafficked mammal in the world; Whereas all 8 pangolin species spanning Africa and Asia are faced with extinction because pangolin scales are sought after in the practice of traditional Chinese medicine and pangolin meat is considered a delicacy; Whereas approximately 100,000,000 sharks are killed annually, often targeted solely for their fins, and unsustainable trade is the primary cause of serious population decline in several shark species, including scalloped hammerhead sharks, great hammerhead sharks, and oceanic whitetip sharks; Whereas the vaquita porpoise of Mexico, with fewer than 30 individual porpoises remaining, is being driven to extinction through bycatch in gillnets set for the totoaba fish, the swim bladder of which feeds a lucrative illegal trade through the United States to Asia