Hillary Clinton Makes Surprise Appearance At Tribeca Film Festival To Discuss Elephant Poaching

Hillary Clinton made a surprising appearance at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday.

HILLARY CLINTON AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

The former Secretary of State and presidential candidate has mostly stayed out of the spotlight after her 2016 loss, but joined a discussion on illegal elephant poaching as a panelist at the festival.

The talk followed the premiere of Kathryn Bigelow‘s virtual realty documentary The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers’ Shoes. The eight-minute film puts viewers in the shoes of park rangers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as they attempt to save elephants from the illegal poaching trade.

“We’ve got to bust this market,” said Clinton of the global ivory trade. More than 30,000 elephants are killed by poachers yearly in Africa. “When we were looking at this, we thought there were three overriding goals: stop the killing, stop the trafficking, and stop the demand,” she said. “It became clear to everyone that this was not just a terrible crisis when it came to the elephant population,” explained Clinton. “It was a trade, a trafficking that was funding a lot of bad folks, a lot of bad actors. It was being used to take ivory and sell it in order to buy more weapons, and support the kind of terroristic activity that these and other groups were engaged in.”

Clinton also mentioned the March for science, which took place in DC and around the world on the same day. “Here it is, Earth Day, and we are marching on behalf of science,” she said to applause.