A toucan from the El Picacho municipal zoo in the north of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Most animals captured by wildlife traders in Central America are taken illegally to the United States and Europe. CITES is working to curb that trade.

Credit: AFP PHOTO/Elmer MARTINEZ

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THE HAGUE: Representatives from 171 nations, monitored by a small army of wildlife advocates, began debating dozens of sharply contested measures to decide how best to regulate the global wildlife trade.

"You are making policy for the biodiversity of the future," Gerda Verburg, chairwoman and Dutch agriculture and nature minister, told some 2,500 delegates from the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) on Sunday local time.

Decimated by over-exploitation and smuggling, hundreds of endangered species ranging from orchids to elephants will get a hearing during the two-week gathering in The Hague, Netherlands.

A global threat

Orangutans sold on the black market as exotic pets, wild tiger parts ground up into Chinese medicines, sharks scalped to make soup, rare hardwoods hewn into designer coffee tables – the global appetite for wild flora and fauna is seemingly inexhaustible.

CITES, the world's only international body with the power to place moratoriums on the sale of plants and animals, is also considering a controversial shift in 'strategic vision' that would take the impact on human communities into account. During its first meeting in three years, CITES will vote on measures that could determine the survival of several species of gazelle and shark, Asian tigers, Ugandan leopards, great apes, and a handful of hardwood trees in Latin America.

In some cases, safeguards that helped plants and animals recover from near extinction may be eased or removed. Among the most contested measures is a proposal for a 20-year ban of ivory trade favoured by 20 African nations, led by Kenya and Mali. Even before the opening ceremony, the Standing Committee of CITES authorised the sale of 60 tonnes of African ivory to Japan, a decision condemned by some conservation groups as an encouragement to poaching.

Finding the 'middle ground'

In the coming days, delegates will debate the wisdom of seeking a middle ground between safeguarding wildlife and protecting people's livelihood. Decisions on extending trade protection to a species "should take into account potential impacts on the livelihood of the poor," CITES Secretary General Williem Wijnstekers said at the opening ceremony.

"These changes are long overdue. It is one of the reasons we are failing to be effective," said Juan Carlos Vasquez, Legal Officer for CITES. The
disproportionate focus on big mammals – what Vasquez calls "charismatic species" – leads to "choices that are more emotional than rational," he said.

The new focus on protecting human interests worries some, including Lynn Levine of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. It "may actually weaken or even contradict the principle role and primary goal of the convention, which is the protection against over-exploitation through international trade," she said.

CITES is also seeking to play a larger role in protecting species exploited in the commercial fisheries and timber industries, which were "long considered off-limits to the Convention," Wijnskekers said. Poaching and over-exploitation are not the only threat to endangered species. Shrinking habitats, pollution and, more recently, global warming have all played a role.

CITES came into force in 1975, and currently covers almost 33,000 species, more than 80 percent of which belong to the plant kingdom. Animals and plants can be recommended for various levels of protection by individual countries. Approval requires a two thirds majority.