By Barry Kent MacKay | Director
This is a very long explanation, and we live in a sound bite era of limited attention spans. You don’t have to read it or understand the tool for protecting animals I’m about to discuss. But here at Animal Alliance of Canada, we do have to know this sort of thing if we are to be effective in protecting wildlife. That’s my job, and I present this not to bore you, but to explain one small, complex, and very important way in which we do help animals. I’ll start with a brief, personal explanation of my involvement in the issue.
In my youth one of the richest men in the world was Aristotle Onassis, a Greek multimillionaire whose fortune derived from many sources, especially shipping, where profits were enhanced by cutting regulatory corners. In 1970 Canada’s East Coast experienced what is still Canada’s largest single Atlantic shore oil spill when an Onassis-owned tanker, the SS Arrow, ran aground in Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia. According to a subsequent enquiry, most of its navigational equipment didn’t work, the officer on watch was unlicensed and only one crew member had navigational training, and not much.
Such cost cutting was one way to get rich. Another was killing whales. From 1950 to 1956 Onassis often ignored restrictions designed to protect whale populations as his crews plied the South Atlantic. As one worker, Bruno Schalaghecke, who worked on an Onassis-owned factory ship, later reported, “Pieces of fresh meat from 124 whales we killed yesterday still remains (sic) on the deck. Among them all, just one could be considered an adult. All animals that pass within the range of the harpoon are killed in cold blood.”
Whale numbers declined, some species never recovering. The North Atlantic Right Whale (so named because it floated when killed and carried a lot of valuable oil so was the “right” whale to kill) is probably Canada’s most endangered mammal, although legally protected.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States of America. A young, handsome, intelligent war hero, he fascinated the world, as did his wife, socialite Jacqueline, affectionally called “Jackie”. When she was photographed wearing a full-length leopard skin coat, (not to mention similar pictures on such mega-wealthy and famous women as Queen Elizabeth II and American actress Elizabeth Taylor) there became a marked demand for leopard skins. It takes about 8 leopards to make one coat. It is estimated that the fad resulted in about 250,000 leopards being killed in the 1960s. The species became endangered. When the designer of Jackie’s coat, Oleg Cassini, realized what he had triggered he promoted leopard print versions. It was too little, too late.
Whales and leopards were not alone in being driven toward extinction because of the demand for them, or parts of them, on the international market, driven only by greed. In the 1960s, spurred by such events as the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which thoroughly documented how the effects of DDT were wiping out so many other species, the modern conservation movement was born. That brings us around to the topic of this blog: What is CITES and how does it help conserve species of wildlife and wild plants.
Here is a footnote. After President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, his widow married Onassis. Her nickname changed to Jackie-O. I thought their union was a sadly appropriate symbol of how wealth, greed and hubris can destroy all others, not human, who try to share this planet.
Luxury goods, from ivory carvings to rosewood tables to caviar, expensive furs, pangolin leather boots and snakeskin accessories, tropical orchids and pet parrots and so much more were causing so many species of wild animals and plants to become endangered or extinct that in the year of JFK’s death and a year after Silent Spring’s 1962 publication conservationists of, I’m proud to say, my generation adopted a resolution at the general meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to create an international Convention to prevent demands for such products from exterminating more wildlife. The result was the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), conducted in three official languages, English, French and Spanish. It opened for countries to sign onto in 1973, with Canada one among the first eighty countries to do so, and entered into force on July 1, Canada Day, 1975. Shortly after that my mother found an endangered Thick-billed Parrot in a cage in a hair salon in North York. According to this new law, it was possibly obtained illegally.
Could CITES help? Yes…the head of CITES-Canada showed up at our home, which was promising, but he then preceded to brag about having shot more African elephants, “than any other white man”. That was disheartening.
The bird was seized, and an investigation instigated. To our discontent my mother, an expert in caring for birds, was turned down when she offered to home the parrot until things could be sorted out. She was not a designated holding facility under CITES. The Toronto Zoo was, and the very tame bird was sent there, isolated in quarantine at the start of a three-day holiday weekend, and was so stressed that by the time regular staff returned and found the bird was ill, it was too late. The parrot died, and the exotic pet industry was quick to point out that the new treaty didn’t work. And yet, putting parrots in cages was endangering many parrot species. This unpleasant event pushed me into a critical involvement in CITES related issues, zoos and the exotic pet industry, both already areas of concern.
SO HOW DOES CITES WORK?
For countries to sign on to CITES they needed assurances that it did not affect their domestic legislation. Any signatory can make laws that are more, or less, protective of their native species of fauna and flora, than CITES. CITES can only address species traded between countries signatory to the Convention, and even then, any given country can post a “reservation” exempting themselves.
Key to understanding CITES is a trio of lists of species called the Appendices. Appendix I lists endangered species for which international trade “for primarily commercial” purposes is forbidden. Trade for such non-commercial purposes as conservation, scientific study or education, may be allowed if both the exporting country (the country of origin) and the importing country agree that the trade in the species, “its parts or derivatives” does not further endanger the species in the wild. Then the individual animal or plant, or its parts or derivatives, must be accompanied by documentation asserting the trade will not endanger it.
Appendix II is harder to understand. Its initial purpose was seen to apply to a species that might be rarer than it once was, or in decline, but might still be commercially traded without putting survival of the entire species at risk. It might also apply to a species where the volume of trade, thus the amount of risk to the species, is unknown, thus may be enough to put the species at risk of extinction. It serves to help monitor trade. It controls and monitors but does not prevent international commercial trade in these species of wild animal or plant or their parts or whatever is derived from them by virtue of each signatory country issuing a permit under the approval of their own “Scientific Authority”, a branch of the CITES mandated, governmental Management of Authority determines that export won’t further endanger, or exterminate, the species.
There is also a provision to list species on Appendix II that are themselves not at all endangered but so closely resemble those that are that are on Appendix I, that they are listed as “lookalike” species. Appendix II allows often controversial “whole taxa listings”. Since customs officials are not trained zoologists or botanists and with tens of thousands of animals and plants now listed on the Appendices, that lookalike clause can be very practical for conservation objectives.
As an example of a lookalike situation, our native River Otter is not at all endangered, and since the decline in use of fashion furs has reduced demand for its fur, its numbers may be increasing. The fur industry is not threatening the River Otter in Canada. The Giant Otter of South America does not, in life, look much like a River Otter. But it is seriously endangered and killing any could contribute to their extermination. Its skin could easily passed off as coming from the non-endangered River Otter. An Appendix II listing for all otters, a “whole taxon listing”, by requiring trade in them to be regulated by the Appendix II permitting system, makes that far less likely to happen.
There is an Appendix III listing that is applied unilaterally by at least one country. It asks all the other countries to look for the Appendix III export permit attached to any animal or plant, its parts or derivatives that originate from that country, or countries. Canada has one Appendix III listing, the Walrus, so that if a live Walrus, its tusks, hide, meat or any other part of derivative is shipped from Canada it must have that Appendix III certificate, which is not required if coming from another “range state” such as the U.S. (Alaska) or Russia.
DOES IT WORK?
Yes and no. The leopards were saved from extinction, but there are endangered populations throughout their range. They are long gone from much of their previous range across Africa and Asia. As a compromise to countries where there are still significant populations in southern Africa some export of skins and body parts is allowed. However, poaching continues and internal hunting – including trophy hunting – can still occur and they are often shot as pests by farmers protecting their domestic animals and they are losing habitat, causing population fragmentation that leads to inbreeding because of isolation. But CITES has stopped the threat that added on to all those other threats – the fashion fur industry – from being a factor in the decline in leopards.
And that’s just one species. CITES is far from a panacea. Right now the exotic pet trade is wiping out populations of animals faster than their conservation needs can be assessed. But there are literally tens of thousands of animal and plant species listed in the Appendices. Critics sometimes argue that a CITES listing promotes poaching, but a CITES listing, properly done, only occurs when there is already a decline in the species because of the very international trade that provides incentive for killing them. Whether done legally or illegally, it has been the physical removal of animals and plants that has been responsible for so much decline in so many species, and much of that removal has been in service of international markets. That is what CITES addresses. Countries like ours have extremely few endemic species found nowhere else and has more economic and other resources to seek to protect them than do many “emerging economies”, so international trade is rarely a factor in the decline of Canadian species, and at Animal Alliance of Canada our focus is on native wildlife and domestic animals. That said, though, we are a major market for wild animals or their parts, and so we do proudly support Species Survival Network, which addresses only CITES-related issues on behalf of the many conservation and animal welfare organizations who also provide support.
While that, in a two-thousand-word nutshell, helps explain what CITES is and why I spend a small but significant part of my time on CITES-related issues, for those who are interested we cover some more of how it works, and what some of the challenges and complexities are in Part II, below.
CITES. Part II: COPs, terminologies, and voting:
Like any area requiring expertise, CITES can seem a wilderness of specialized word definitions, acronyms, and phrases. We will examine a few.
COP, or CoP, is an acronym for “Conference of the Parties”. CITES holds a COP every three years, each in a different part of the world. The next, the 19th, thus called COP 19, will start on November 14 in Panama City, Panama. They last two weeks. See also: Article XI; The structure of CITES; Conference of the Parties.
Each nation participating in a COP sends a delegation authorized to vote on proposals. The proposals that get the most attention from the animal protection and conservation communities are for adding or subtracting species from the three Appendices, although many other issues can be of equal or greater importance but may be too technical to be well understood.
To add a species to an Appendix that thereby provides greater protection from international trade is called an up-listing, while placing it in an Appendix that provides less protection – from Appendix I to Appendix II – or removing it altogether, is called a down-listing. Either choice must be formally proposed in writing by at least one signatory country and agreed upon by two thirds of the parties present and voting in order to pass. The final decision is made in plenary session but ideally consensus is reached before in meetings of the interested parties in break-out committees, of which three are permanent: the Animals Committee, the Plants Committee and the Standing Committee, the latter focused on technical and administrative issues that are often the most important and least understood or appreciated.
If proper accreditation, or permission, is acquired in advance, representatives of non-governmental organizations, often called NGOs, can attend the Conference, and the plenary session, and at the discretion of the CITES Secretariat or Committee chairs, attend meetings and possibly comment or make suggestions. Outside of the meetings, before or during the Conference NGOs can provide delegates wit information promoting their respective organizations’ various views.
NGOs include conservation and animal protection organizations plus a wide range of commercial and otherwise exploitive interests, including trophy hunting, ivory users, the exotic pet and plant industries, the fur and exotic leather interests, the forestry industry, various fisheries, the zoo and aquarium industries, the animal research industry and so on, each promoting its views, and trying to win converts, thus votes, from among the multi-national assembly of delegates. Culture clashes, ideologies, linguistic nuances, political sensitivities, alliances, betrayals – they all come together under one roof for two intensely exhausting weeks. The fates of countless animals, many rare, many who are little known that may or may not be at risk of imminent extinction, depend upon the decisions made, or not made, at the COP.
While it is beyond the scope of this blog to explain all complexities of CITES and how they are treated, we can mention a few. For example, CITES is driven by its members, 184 countries, although “regional economic integration organizations (REIO) such as the European Union, can be treated as a member state, thus be party to the convention and vote as a bloc, with the number of votes equaling the number of countries the REIO represents.
Each member is obligated to submit an annual report to the CITES Secretariat telling how many CITES permits and certificates were issued, the numbers, amount and type of “specimens” exported, and, of course, of what species. The information is stored in a database managed by the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitory Centre based in Cambridge, U.K. The Secretariat is also obliged to produce an annual report on what it has done and how well CITES has been implemented. You can read them yourselves, here.
But what to do about those vast numbers of animals who don’t come from “range states” but from the oceans, the high seas? Some argue that fish, whales and other marine organisms of commercial value are sufficiently protected by other international laws, treaties, conferences and agreements. And yet, the serious decline in so many marine species indicates failures. I well remember how whales declined under “protection” by the International Whaling Commission. Worldwide large, predatory fish are in serious decline. Our position, therefore, is that CITES is an appropriate mechanism, another tool, to assist the conservation of these various species. CITES listed species must be certified by a country-designated “Scientific Authority” who provides a “Non-Detrimental Finding” or NDF, that the “introduction from the sea”, as it is called, does not contribute to the endangerment or the species of the “specimen” involved.
What of species of animals and plants that are captive bred? That does not lead to endangering wild populations, unless, of course, wild animals are being moved into captivity to be bred, so their offspring can be sold with the claim that whatever happens to it does not have an impact on wild populations? How do we know?
How can customs officials be expected to identify parts of animals or plants – scales, pelts, teeth, blood, bile, meat, sperm, seeds, spores, roots or whatever, to be sure they are what they are claimed to be? What does one do with seized live animals, like that Thick-billed Parrot, so many decades ago when CITES had just come into being and was a new tool? It is all complicated, and part of the challenge is to figure out resolutions through various amendments. Should an ivory ban include a Victorian era piano whose ivory keys greatly predate both CITES and any decline in elephants? What about that alligator-leather brief case, that coral pendant picked up on a Caribbean cruise or the dried seahorses piled in bins in Chinese apothecaries selling culturally traditional cures?
The number of reasons why wild animals and plants are in trade are many and CITES now has a “purpose of transaction code” to facilitate paperwork involved in issuing permits and certificates. It is as follows:
T – Commercial;
Z – Zoo;
G – Botanical garden;
Q – Circus or travelling exhibition;
S – Scientific;
H – Hunting trophy;
P – Personal use;
M – Medicinal (which includes biomedical research);
E – Educational;
N – Reintroduction into the wild;
B – Captive breeding or artificial insemination;
L – Law enforcement, including for judicial or forensic evidence.
We live in a huge, international, interacting, complex and often fractious society driven by countless human needs, belief systems, political considerations and, perhaps above all else, hubristically-fueled greed. We have imposed ourselves so heavily upon the natural world that some scientists propose we call this the Anthropocene, a period of relatively abrupt change and mass extinctions. But we seek civility, we not only subjectively value, but pragmatically need biodiversity. It is in no one’s interest to be the destructive killer our species has become. CITES is not the answer, but it is part of the answer, part of what we need to do, and part of what we are doing to help protect the others who share this world.