CITES to Study Species Over-Exploitation

Kenya Wildlife Service rangers head of operations, Josiah Achoki, second from right, and his rangers look on tusks recovered from ten poached elephants in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya, in this March 4, 2002, photo released by International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, Tuesday June 29, 2004. The 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, opens a 12-day meeting on Sunday, June 3, 2007. (AP Photo/David Ngige, IFAW) (David Ngige - AP)

"Climate change is a major threat, but so is trade," said Susan Lieberman, director of the Species Unit for the World Wildlife Fund. "More and more species are being threatened because of globalization."

Many of the issues to be discussed are familiar from previous CITES meetings.

Botswana, supported by Namibia and Tanzania, wants to relax the 1989 ban on the ivory trade, arguing that its elephant population has rebounded. The 150,000 animals roaming the savanna are increasingly competing with man for space, it says.

Local people think "elephants are a pest," Botswana said in its application. It pledged to earmark state revenue from the ivory trade to elephant conservation and community development.

But conservationists object, saying the illegal ivory trade is thriving and that lifting the ban in some countries would make it easier to poach elephants all over Africa, where herds are shrinking.

China, which agreed in 1993 to halt the trade in tiger bones, wants to harvest tiger products from breeding farms, saying it would help satisfy the demand for traditional medicines without threatening tigers in the wild, which are on the verge of extinction. China has several farms raising thousands of captive tigers.

Opponents argue legitimizing the sale of tiger parts would only re-ignite a public appetite for the banned goods and encourage poaching of the big cat.

"The Chinese ban has been working really well," WWF's Lieberman said. "But they are under a lot of pressure from powerful businessmen."

One new item on the agenda is a German proposal to regulate trade in the spiny dogfish, a small migratory shark commonly used for fish-and-chips. Stocks of reproductive females have declined by 95 percent in the Northeast Atlantic and by 75 percent in the Northwest Atlantic, says WWF. A female takes up to 23 years to mature.

Germany also wants to list porbeagle sharks, another slow-growing shark prized for its meat and fins for shark fin soup.

Among the 36 proposals _ each requiring a two-thirds majority of voting member states _ are recommendations to increase protection for whales, sawfish, European eel, and Brazilian spiny lobsters.