Update: Shark protections survived a last round challenge from two countries at the CITES conference that closed last week. Japan and Grenada attempted to reopen debate on protecting the oceanic whitecap and hammerhead shark that are being decimated by the shark fin trade, but failed to achieve the necessary votes. As result of the international action five shark species are now listed on Appendix II which requires permitted trade only. The next conference of the parties to the treaty occurs in 2016 hosted by South Africa.
{13.03.13}Species facing threats from human harvesting got protection at the CITES conference in Bangkok. Sharks and Manta Rays were listed in Appendix II of the Convention. Five shark species including hammerhead received enough votes to be listed, but the vote in favor could be overturned in the plenary session. Sharks are being harvested at an alarming rate for their fins, considered a delicacy in China. One estimate puts the number killed at
100 million annually. Rays are killed for their gill plates which are used in the superstition of traditional Chinese medicine. Appendix II imposes stricter regulations, but not an outright ban on harvesting these animals, so listing is opposed by Asian nations particularly China and Japan.
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| wengé stump in DRC |
Species of rosewood and ebony tress from Madagascar, Latin America and Southeast Asia were also granted protected status. Madagascar's forest cover has suffered dramatically from illegal plundering of rosewood and ebony trees. China once again is in the forefront of demand for these timber species. Smuggling of rosewood from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos has erupted in battles with Thai enforcement officials where a logging ban is in place. A single cubic meter of Siam rosewood is worth $50,000 in China. INTERPOL says the illegal logging trade is worth $30 to $100 billion each year, yet it devastates forests and disrupts societies with its associated criminal activity in drugs, weapon sales, and human trafficking. The
United States, Australia and now the European Union have all banned timber harvested illegally abroad. The famous US guitar maker, Gibson, was fined $350,000 and forfeited $250,000 worth of materials for violating the ban. INTERPOL recently arrested 197 illegal loggers across a dozen Central and South American countries in its first coordinated strike against the worldwide illegal trade in timber. Operation Lead seized 50,000 cubic meters of timber worth around $8 million. But this success is outweighed by the vast amount of illegal harvesting that goes on without criminal prosecution.
Greenpeace says the Democratic Republic of Congo is loosing its endangered Wengé tree
(Millettia laurentii) to loggers that circumvent the country's moratorium on industrial logging imposed in 2002.
[photo: Greenpeace] Much of the illegal DRC timber is sold to European countries.
Also at the CITES conference, the United States lost its bid to prohibit the trade in polar bear parts from Canada. Animal welfare organizations wanted the ban to assist the survival of the species under threat from the melting of their Arctic habitat. Canada defended the hunts for polar bear as integral to the culture of indigenous Inuit. The proposed ban would have allowed hunting for food but prohibited the exportation of skins and body parts. The US acknowledged that climate change was the biggest threat to survival of the remaining 20,000 bears, but said the ban would give them a better chance to persist in the wild. Biologists expect that two-thirds of the bears will be extinct by 2050 due to climatic change. The trade in polar bear parts is expanding despite their decline in numbers. Between 2001 and 2010 37,400 specimens were traded equivalent to 5,680 bears killed or nearly two per day. Over ninety percent of the skins are exported mostly to Japan.
