Welcome back to the Trace podcast, Bribes, Swindle, or Steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today I'm speaking with

Kevin Chaplah about the problem of poaching and trafficking in wildlife in Central Africa.

Kevin has been an Army officer for over eight years and has worked as a civil affairs officer for the last four.

In that capacity, he leads a team working with foreign governments and civilian populations to advance U.S. government foreign policy initiatives.

Kevin, thank you for joining me.

Hey, thanks for having me, Alexandra.

Really happy to be here.

Why don't you go ahead and start by describing your team and the work

you've been doing generally and then we'll get a little bit more focused on trafficking?

I've been an officer in civil affairs for about four years and typically our work includes

supporting some sort of foreign governmental entity with something civil military related.

So that can range from disaster response

preparedness, understanding conflict dynamics in a certain area, all the way to conducting

some sort of medical civic action program. And your team specifically, the team that you've

been working with most recently? I just returned about a month ago from Gabon in central West Africa. That wide

range of things that civil affairs teams actually do now includes conducting training to counter

illicit trafficking and countering poaching. So our team consisted of four US Army service

members. I was the captain and I was joined by three enlisted service members

who, their experience ranges from eight years all the way down to just three years, as is the case

for my medic. I understand, and I think everybody will understand the good embedded in the

overarching objective of ending wildlife trafficking. But what is the U.S. government interest in that in such a

far-flung location? It is not something that you typically associate the U.S. military with doing

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