Recently, I attended, via teleconference, a “stakeholders” meeting hosted by the Canadian authority for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Administered by the United Nations, CITES is a treaty of over 180 signatories, mostly sovereign countries, overseeing trade in more than 35,000 species of wild animals and plants. It bans trade for primarily commercial purposes in species so endangered that such trade could cause their extinction. Such species are listed under Appendix I.
An Appendix II listing is complicated. Put simply, it does not ban commercial trade, but imposes some requirements, including assurance from the exporting country that said export (including parts and derivatives) won’t further reduce the population in question, issuing an export permit to that effect. Some common species are also on Appendix II because they resemble species on Appendix I.
CITES can work if based on scientifically based findings. Increasingly, CITES has seen a division in opinion among “stakeholders,” with both sides of the debate claiming to be conservationists. The side generally opposite my own (with some exceptions) views “sustainable use” as “a viable conservation mechanism.” And, it can be, providing economic incentive to protect the species. But, far more often, the commercial value of wild animals or plants leads to over-consumption that contributes to endangerment.
Far more often, the commercial value of wild animals or plants leads to over-consumption that contributes to endangerment.
Our stakeholder meeting discussed several species that illustrate the dichotomy. Consider giraffes. Five countries where giraffes are native (“range states”) have proposed an Appendix II listing at the next Conference of the Parties (COP) to CITES, which will take place this May in Sri Lanka and which Born Free USA will attend. COPs are where these decisions are made via various voting mechanisms (too often vulnerable to various back room political pressures).
The proposal, quoting CITES text, states that Appendix II can apply to:
“‘…all species which although not necessarily now threatened with extinction [or] may become so unless trade in specimens of such species is subject to strict regulation in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival.’ The species also meets Criterion B of Resolution Conf. 9.24 (Rev. CoP17), Annex 2a: ‘It is known, or can be inferred or projected, that regulation of trade in the species is required to ensure that the harvest of specimens from the wild is not reducing the wild population to a level at which its survival might be threatened by continued harvesting or other influences.’ In addition, the species meets the precautionary measures found in Annex 4 of that Resolution: ‘when considering proposals to amend Appendix I or II, the Parties shall, by virtue of the precautionary approach and in case of uncertainty either as regards the status of a species or the impact of trade on the conservation of a species, act in the best interest of the conservation of the species concerned and adopt measures that are proportionate to the anticipated risks to the species.'”
That all sounds horrifically technical. You just need to know that there has been a precipitous decline in giraffe numbers of 36 to 40 percent over the last three decades. While trade is not the primary driver in giraffe decline, on average the U.S. alone imported about one hunting trophy giraffe per day over the course of nine years. Additionally, there is a burgeoning trade in giraffe bone for novelty items such as knife handles.
Giraffes are slow-breeding animals with a fragmented population. An Appendix II listing won’t stop trade; it will just regulate international trade and make it harder to poach the animals, and thus easier to restrict such trade to sustainable levels, which, ironically, is essential if such trade is to extend into future decades.
It seems a no-brainer to me, and yet the opposition to the proposal is fierce and is also mounted under the rubric “conservation.” Stay tuned.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
