If you go into a bar in Bangkok tonight, don’t be surprised if you find it full of celebrating conservationists.

An international meeting that takes place every three years to regulate trade in endangered animals and plants has bolstered protection for multiple species. Besides clamping down on trade in ivory and rhino horn, states party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) made the unprecedented step of granting protection to sharks and various species of tropical timber in final voting today.

Tom Milliken, who works for the wildlife-trade monitoring group TRAFFIC, which is headquartered in Cambridge, UK and has been heavily involved in the debates about elephant poaching, said, “I think this is one of the best COPs I’ve been to, and I’ve been to 14 of them.”

Before the conference, researchers across the world had warned of the dire state of African elephant populations, which are currently being decimated by rampant poaching. Many urged CITES to mandate forensic examination of large seizures of illegal ivory. Tusks’ DNA can be used to trace their origins, so that law enforcement can be directed to ‘hot spots’ of poaching. The ‘conference of the parties’ (COP) to the convention in Bangkok declared that such testing should be mandatory for large-scale seizures.

“I was ecstatic because it was the first time that the entire COP acknowledged the value and need for DNA testing for the origin of poached ivory. All my hard work had finally paid off,” Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the driving forces behind the push for forensic examinations of elephant ivory, said in an email to Nature.

The delegates also approved measures to curb demand for ivory, which could include public awareness campaigns in countries driving the trade, such as China. Shortly before the meeting, Tanzania removed one impediment to the discussion by withdrawing its proposal to sell stockpiled ivory, a move welcomed by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK and the founder of the Save the Elephants charity.

“For the first time in 22 years there was no proposal to sell ivory. That meant we could start interacting constructively,” he says. Douglas-Hamilton adds that the demand-reduction move means that “we can now say with our hand on our heart that CITES supports campaigns to reduce the trade in ivory”.

Enforcement of rhino protection is to be strengthened, with Mozambique and Vietnam now required to toughen up their controls on trade in horns. Members of CITES also accepted that several species of shark — including the oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus), scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrma lewini), great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran), smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zigaena) and porbeagle (Lamna nasus) — should be added to ‘appendix II’ of the convention, which restricts trade in species not at immediate risk of extinction but in need of protection. Previously CITES delegates have hesitated to interfere with trade in commercially valuable marine species, say many campaigners.

3 Comments

1. 1. AnchovyRancher 03:37 PM 3/15/13

   Prosecute the crap out of the people and countries that are driving the trade in illegal ivory from (especially but not exclusively) Africa. Place a full on trade embargo upon countries that don't comply with the ban on that trade. Shoot/imprison and/or re-educate and employ the poachers. Replace the ivory poaching trade with another industry. On the tail end of this business, poverty drives the machine. The same goes for all the other illegal trade in any endangered species that C.I.T.I.E.S. keeps ineffectively throwing money at.
   
   Better yet...buy the land and place adequately armed guards in stations/forts to police the habitat. Put an multi-national team in place to oversee them and prevent corruption among those guards. Nothing but the removal of profit from and access to habitat of affected animals will stop this trade.
   
   Humans are, by nature, very good at "surviving." It's a travesty that we don't afford our endangered "neighbors" the same opportunity. It's also a travesty that so-called developed nations half-heartedly respond to the negative restructuring and subsequent destruction of entire ecosystems for profit.
   
   Kill the head and the body will die. Stop the trade at its' terminus, mostly newly prosperous Asian countries. If that sounds xenophobic, tough. It's the truth.
   
   

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2. 2. MRC06405 05:01 PM 3/18/13

   Attempts at ending illegal trade without providing a legal supply of ivory or any valuable natural product only serves to drive up the price and increase the incentives for people and governments to engage in illegal trade and violence that goes along with it.
   
   It is wasteful and counterproductive to outlaw a legal sustainable trade in ivory or any valuable natural product.
   
   A well documented and controlled legal trade will:
   - drive down the price of illegal products
   - provide funding for conservation activities and anti-poaching enforcement
   - provide employment for local people who often poach to feed their families.
   - increase the populations and habitat for currently endangered species.
   
   Opposing a legal and sustainable trade in wild natural products may be satisfying, but works against conservation in the real world.

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3. 3. greenhome123 10:14 PM 3/18/13

   hopefully scientist can some day 3d print ivory or grow tusks in a lab. Or, maybe someone could buy up a bunch of land in Africa, or another location that elephants live, and make it into a eco-tourist park, and harvest the tusks by tranquilizing the elephants and cutting off the tusks, or harvest them when they die naturally.

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