Elephant, large cat conservation reviewed at CITES assembly
New Delhi: Trade in treasured timber and sharks and conservation of elephants, large cats, parrots, eels, marine turtles and totoaba have been among the many many crucial issues reviewed throughout the 77th Meeting of the Standing Committee (SC77) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in Geneva.
Convened practically a 12 months after the Convention’s nineteenth Conference of the Parties (CoP19) in Panama metropolis, the assembly gathered practically 600 contributors from 84 events, 15 worldwide organisations, 88 non-governmental organisations, together with representatives from indigenous folks, and several other representatives of the non-public sector.
The Chair of SC77 and Head of the United States CITES Management Authority, Naimah Aziz mentioned in her opening assertion: “I hope the discussions further our common goals of conserving our biodiversity while supporting legal, traceable and biologically sustainable trade in wild plants and animals…as we demonstrate that CITES, after 50 years, is robust and effective in achieving its mission now, as it was then.”
Over the course of the 5 days and 77 agenda gadgets, the committee deliberated on a variety of compliance points, which concern the necessities for events to have a regulatory and management system in place to make sure that commerce is authorized, sustainable and traceable.
Existing and new compliance instances regarding the applying of Article XIII of the Convention relating to unsustainable, non-compliant or unlawful commerce in West African rosewood, African teak, Asian elephants, birds and sharks in addition to the implementation of provisions associated to the commerce of captive-bred specimens in Appendix I.
These instances concerned interalia Cameroon, China, Bangladesh, Congo, Ecuador, the European Union, Guinea, Lao, Madagascar, Mexico, Nigeria and Britain and Northern Ireland.
Some instances concerned the unlawful commerce of uncommon hen species, reminiscent of Spix’s macaw, Lear’s macaw and white-throated toucan, or unlawful fishing of the totoaba additional endangering the practically extinct vaquita.
The committee additionally recognised the progress made by the Compliance Assistance Programme (CAP) which goals to offer targetted assist to events dealing with persistent compliance challenges.
On species-specific conservation and commerce issues, the committee welcomed continued efforts by events to forestall and mitigate human-wildlife battle and the danger of pathogen spillover and transmission from wildlife commerce and related provide chains.
Kazakhstan acquired commendations from the committee and different events for the outstanding leads to conservation of the Saiga antelope with a major inhabitants enhance in recent years — from 21,000 people in 2003 to greater than 1.3 million in 2022.
Enforcement issues have been emphasised, with the committee stressing the significance of combating corruption and inspiring events to combine monetary crime investigations into wildlife-related crimes.
The secretariat launched the net platform for the CITES Illegal Trade Database, managed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The committee tasked the secretariat with getting ready phrases of reference for the creation of a system for monitoring unlawful killing of jaguars, unlawful commerce of their elements and derivatives, in addition to different features associated to conservation of the jaguar.
