The future of hundreds of endangered animal and plant species is at stake during the CITES summit, held until December 5 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. CITES is an international treaty between 185 countries that, since its establishment in 1975, must ensure that wildlife trade does not endanger the survival of species. Last week, okapis and more than seventy shark and ray species received the highest international protection status.
Barbara Slee, senior program manager at animal protection organization IFAW and who has been preparing for the summit for two years, is present in Samarkand for the Netherlands. According to Slee, CITES is unique compared to other environmental treaties because enforcement is included in the agreements. “If a country cannot explicitly demonstrate that trade – if it is still partially permitted – takes place according to the rules, sanctions can be imposed, such as stopping all trade. As a result, countries take the treaty very seriously.”
The impact of both legal and illegal wildlife trade on global biodiversity is enormous. In one CITES report By 2022, the financial value of the legal trade in plants and animals worldwide is estimated at 220 billion dollars (190 billion euros) per year. The illegal wildlife trade is estimated at around 20 billion dollars (17 billion euros) per year – making it the fifth largest illegal activity in the world, after drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking and product counterfeiting. Europe plays a central role in this as one of the largest import and transit areas, according to a report report from Traffic from 2023.
During the summit in Samarkand, participating countries will vote for two weeks on proposals to completely or partially ban or allow trade in animal and plant species. About three quarters of the proposals relate to fauna, a quarter to flora.
Cello and violin
Numerous interest groups are trying to influence the country vote in Samarkand, including nature conservation organizations, but also representatives of the trade in exotic pets, fur and leather, cosmetics and traditional medicines, among other things. During the previous summit, in 2022 in Panama, there was a big commotion in the classical music world. Then all international trade in pernambuco – the Brazilian wood from which almost every cello and violin bow is made – was banned. After consultation, musical instruments were exempted from the scheme.
The most notable victory for conservationists in Samarkand came last week for the conservation of a total of more than 70 sharks and rays, including whitetip sharks, whale sharks, and manta and devil rays. Trade in these species has until now been allowed on a limited basis (what CITES calls ‘Appendix II’) but is now completely banned. (‘Appendix I’).
It is the first time that species with such high commercial value for fisheries have been subject to a complete trade ban. An estimated 100 million sharks and rays are killed annually for consumption, for example for shark fin soup, by countries such as China, Indonesia, Singapore, Spain and India. As a result, the global population of elasmobranchs – the class that includes all sharks and rays – has declined by about 70 percent over the past fifty years.
The green sea turtle, also called the green turtle, proves that CITES trade bans can save a species from extinction. A total trade ban was imposed on these animals as early as 1981. (‘Appendix I’) In recent decades, the turtle ‘climbed’ no fewer than three places on the IUCN ‘Red List’ of threatened species, in the right direction: from ‘endangered’ to ‘safe’. As an international partnership, the IUCN is committed to nature conservation.
Caribbean monk seal
It is rare for an animal species to be removed from Appendix I. When that happens it is usually not a good sign. This year it happened to the Caribbean monk seal, a seal that is not shy of people and has been hunted heavily since the arrival of Europeans in Central America in the sixteenth century. The species has been officially extinct since 2008, and has therefore now been removed from the CITES list.
An estimated one hundred million sharks and rays are killed every year, for example for shark fin soup
According to Barbara Slee, an important topic at the environmental summit is the trade in exotic ‘pets’, which has boomed in recent years. This mainly concerns birds and reptiles, but also popular mammals such as sloths. They are sold through online advertisements to private individuals, mainly in Asia, Europe and the United States.
The trade in large African fauna – which has been a hot topic since the founding of CITES in 1975 – is also causing fierce discussion again this year. For example, Namibia wants to allow the sale of elephant ivory and rhino horn from old government stocks. In 2008, a one-off ‘buy-off’ of 106 tons of ivory was allowed, with disastrous consequences. Slee: “In the period that followed, thousands of elephants were slaughtered. You cannot tell legal and illegal ivory apart, so the new ivory was laundered by pretending it was old.”
Three species on the agenda this year at the CITES summit in Samarkand:
Marine iguana
“The blue spots on the male’s back are a sign that the mating season is starting,” reports an Austrian reptile breeder on Instagram. In his video, two marine iguanas chase each other over a fake rock through a terrarium, accompanied by cheerful music. Marine iguanas, the only reptiles that get their food from the sea, live on the Galapagos Islands near Ecuador. They have the IUCN status of ‘vulnerable’ and trade in the animals is strictly prohibited in Ecuador. The country has not even registered a single export of the animals since CITES was established in 1975. How did the couple end up in Austria?
A study in the journal Biological Conservation from last May shows how wild marine and land iguanas are sold through an international trade network to collectors around the world, supposedly as farmed animals. Uganda has been exposed as an exporter of marine iguanas and three species of land iguanas that are also native to the Galapagos Islands. The smuggling route often runs via Mali or Switzerland before the animals end up with private individuals who find it interesting to have such a special endemic species in their terrarium.
Charles Darwin described marine iguanas as “rather ugly” and called them “devils of darkness” when he visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835, but their unique adaptation to beach life helped shape his thoughts on evolution. Marine iguanas developed a blunt snout and forked teeth, which allow them to scrape algae off rocks underwater. Their distant ancestors must have once drifted from the mainland 1,500 kilometers away to the volcanic archipelago, possibly by clinging to plants, after which they evolved further.
Despite their heroic sea voyage and special adaptations, the marine and land iguanas of the Galapagos Islands are on the Red List, with a status ranging from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘critically endangered.’ Living in small, isolated populations makes them vulnerable to storms and other natural disasters – which are increasing due to climate change. To prevent them from being caught and turning up in a terrarium in Austria, Ecuador is now proposing a complete trade ban. Barbara Slee: “We should support countries that are doing a lot to protect their biodiversity with the CITES treaty.” It will be voted on this week.
Okapi
Last Saturday, the proposal to completely ban the trade in okapis received a majority of votes in Samarkand. The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) looks somewhat like a zebra with its black and white striped flanks, but as an odd-toed ungulate it is the only living relative of the giraffe. The animal only occurs in a few rainforests in Congo (DRC). Its ‘discovery’ by Western science in 1901, thanks to the local population who had known the animal for a long time, revived hopes for the existence of mythical animals such as the unicorn. If such a wonderful animal as the okapi exists, what other animals had managed to hide out of European sight all this time?
The okapi, ‘the unicorn of Africa’.
Getty Images
Things are not going well for the ‘unicorn of Africa.’ Poachers sell their skins for thousands of dollars as decoration while their meat, bones and fat are sold through Uganda as an ingredient for traditional medicines, mainly to Asian countries. The construction of mines for the extraction of gold and precious metals destroys okapis habitats. The presence of the miners leads to an increase in poaching, driven by foreign demand. Population estimates of the shy animals are difficult to make and range from thirty thousand to just a few thousand.
Until now, okapis were not included in the CITES treaty and only enjoyed national protection. NGOs such as the Wildlife Conservation Society see a total ban via CITES as necessary support for Congo, which itself submitted the proposal for the protection of their ‘national animal’. For decades, the government, supported by NGOs, has been trying to protect habitats against poaching and other large-scale illegal activities. The indigenous population who depend on the forests also benefit from this. The okapi projects were not without sacrifices. In 2012, an entire research center in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve was decimated by poachers, killing six people and fourteen okapis. In 2017 and 2020, another five and two rangers from the center were murdered respectively.
Oceanic whitetip shark
Of all the sharks and rays that received the highest international protection in Samarkand last Thursday, the whitetip shark is perhaps the most endangered. The oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus) from the genus of requiem sharks is about three meters long and swims just below the water surface through warm oceans, accompanied by pilot males – black and white striped fish that keep the shark free of parasites and eat the remains of its prey. It has noticeably long tail and pectoral fins that end in round, white tips. Thanks to those long fins, the shark glides stably and energy-efficiently through the water. Unfortunately, those fins also make it a sought-after ingredient for shark fin soup. As a result, the global population has declined by about 80 percent in sixty years.
The trade in whitetip sharks has been regulated by CITES since 2013 (Appendix II). This means that quotas are in force and the fins may only be sold if certificates can prove that the origin is legal, sustainable and traceable. A study published last month in Science Advances shows, however, that reality sometimes pays little attention to the protection on paper. In Hong Kong markets, DNA samples identified 70 times more whitetip shark fins than official trade data suggests. Shark fins are often difficult for authorities to identify by species. A complete trade ban for this species and the other shark species should ensure that governments can take much stricter and more effective action in the future.
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