CoP17 blog: Future ivory trade is off the CITES table – and it's about time!

... After a frenetic and sometimes farcical afternoon session on Monday (September 26), Parties to CITES overwhelming voted not to extend the “Decision-making mechanism for a process of trade in ivory” (DMM).

This is the end of a long-running saga that first began in 2007 and is a welcome boon to elephant conservation. EIA has always opposed the development of the DMM because we believe any trade in ivory poses a serious threat to elephants and the main objective of this mechanism was to facilitate international legal ivory trade.

We welcome yesterday’s decision and commend all CITES Parties who voted the right way to protect elephants.

... EIA has long-argued that discussions on developing a DMM should be closed because the elephant poaching crisis is simply too great and that it was distracting CITES and its Parties from the real issues – the rising levels of criminality associated with the ivory trade and the poor governance that is facilitating so much of it.

This is the first of what we hope to be many successes over the next 10 days but this result would not have been possible without the support of several Parties such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Senegal, which all pro-actively opposed the DMM.

Read today's EIA blog in full at eia-international.org/future-ivory-trade-off-cites-table-time

#CoP17 #ivory #elephants CITES

Image: Carved ivory legally on sale in China (c) EIA / Mary Rice ... See MoreSee Less

21 hours ago  ·  

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CoP17: China accused of defying its own ban on breeding tigers to profit from body parts

China has been accused of deceiving the international community by allowing a network of farms to breed thousands of captive tigers for the sale of their body parts, in breach of their own longstanding ban on the trade.

The Chinese government has allowed about 200 specialist farms to hold an estimated 6,000 tigers for slaughter, before their skins are sold as decoration and their bones are marinated to produce tonics and lotions. Campaigners say this has increased demand for the products and provoked the poaching of thousands of wild tigers, whose global population is now down to just 3,500.

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* EIA's Tigers Campaign has long been at the forefront of efforts to investigate and expose tiger farms and their links to illegal trade.

Learn more in the report 'Hidden in Plain Sight: China’s Clandestine Tiger Trade' at ht.ly/nOpx304Bwjr
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China is expected to come under pressure at this week’s Johannesburg conference of nations who have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). The Guardian has found that Chinese delegates have tried to obstruct debate at the conference by rewriting a critical report and questioning the wording of a key decision.

The Chinese say their domestic market is nobody else’s business since Cites covers only international trade.

... Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) discovered that, having opened the farms, the SFA had been quietly issuing licences for the sale of skins from the tigers that were bred there. The SFA claimed that the skins were only sold to museums and universities for scientific purposes, but the EIA found at least half ended up in the plush apartments of China’s elite.

... Inspired by China’s behaviour, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos also opened tiger farms, some of which were suspected to be not only breeding animals for body parts but also “laundering” wild tigers that had been captured. Wild tigers are close to extinction in Vietnam and possibly already extinct in Laos. China is believed to have only 50.

Read in full at www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/27/china-accused-of-defying-its-own-ban-on-breeding-tige...

#China #Thailand #Vietnam #Laos #tigers #tigerfarming #CoP17 #whereRthetigers? CITES

Image: Tiger bodies and skins in cold storage in Guilin Tiger & Bear Farm, China (c) Belinda Wright WPSI-ITC ... See MoreSee Less

22 hours ago  ·  

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