Prince Charles and Prince William Speak Out Against Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade [VIDEO]

Ahead of the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade on Thursday, Britain's Prince Charles and Prince William released a video urging greater global efforts to stop the illegal wildlife trade.

The video and upcoming conference come at a time of unprecedented poaching. Between 2007 and 2012, rhino poaching increased 5,000 percent, CNN reports, and just last year one rhino was killed in Africa every 11 hours, according to The Zoological Society of London.

Elephants are facing grim odds as well, with more than 10 percent of Africa's elephant population being slaughtered for ivory in the last two years alone, the ZSL reports.

The $17 billion-per-year international wildlife crime trade is the world's fourth largest illegal activity, behind drug trafficking, the illegal arms trade and human trafficking, according to Mary Rice, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, which ahead of Thursday's conference released a report filled with wildlife crime case studies.

Funds from wildlife crime and related forest crimes are used to fund insurgents, destabilize governments and have been linked to terrorism, Rice said last week in a video statement.

Individuals and organizations engaged in wildlife crime are incentivized by the high-reward, low-risk nature of the trade, Rice added, noting that there is a lot than can be done to invert the current nature of the system.

"We have come together to lend our voices to the growing global effort to combat the illegal wildlife trade, a trade that has reached such unprecedented levels of killing and related violence that it now poses a grave threat not only to the survival of some of the world's most treasured species, but also to economic and political stability in many areas around the world," Prince Charles said in his video statement.

"I have said before that we must treat the illegal wildlife trade as a battle, because it is precisely that," Charles said. "Organized bands of criminals are stealing and slaughtering elephants, rhinoceros and tigers, as well as large numbers of other species, in a way that has never been seen before, pushing many species to the brink of extinction."

Prince William noted the importance of preserving landscapes and ecosystems for future generations.

"It is nothing less than immoral that they are losing their birthright to fuel the greed of international criminals," he said. "We have to be the generation that stopped the illegal wildlife trade and secured the future of these magnificent animals and their habitats, for if we fail, it will be too late."