“The wildlife trade is one of the most lucrative trades in the world. The LEGAL trade into the EU alone is worth €100 billion annually.”, stated a 2016 European Parliament Report. The choice of words bears repeating, “one of the most lucrative trades in the world”. The trade is not only incredibly lucrative to business, but the spoils also go overwhelmingly to big business in the richest nations. Detailed research into trade flows published in 2021 highlighted just who the biggest exporters and importers of wild species are – the US/Canada, the EU and UK, Japan and China/HK. Again, this bears repeating. The richest countries in the world are the key benefactors of this trade, not developing nations. [...]

From fins to teeth, skin and meat, the market for shark body parts is a grave concern, with shark finning being the most contentious issue. The coverage of CITES CoP19 in the mainstream media has been thin on the ground, but one decision which did get attention was to list all 54 species of requiem sharks and hammerhead sharks on CITES Appendix II. Whilst this is undoubtedly good news that more sharks have received trade related protections, what will this mean in reality? Is this historic decision just a protection on paper? Sharks are under serious threat from overfishing with 37% of shark and ray species facing extinction. Given the lack of national and international fisheries management, it [...]

The CITES convention is rapidly approaching its 50-year anniversary; the convention was opened for signatures in 1973 and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. This milestone cannot pass without CITES providing all the evidence that it is fit-for-purpose, particularly given the looming extinction crisis. CITES never included a funding model to enable all signatories to adequately resource scientific research, monitoring and enforcement. Far too many signatory countries still lack the mandated scientific authority or a dedicated enforcement authority. Whilst creating a dedicated enforcement authority is optional under CITES, the illegal trade is rampant and growing 2-3 times faster than the world economy overall. This makes CITES effectively a paper convention, impoverished to the point of being [...]

Will 2022 Be Yet Another Year Of Lost Opportunities and Greenwashing? Participating in CITES CoP 18, in Geneva in 2019, it was clear how broken the system regulating the international trade of the world’s most endangered species has become. So, what could provide the leverage for change? The only light on the horizon at the time was the Convention on Biological Diversity Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and specifically Target 5.  The draft Target 5 stated that all trade in wild species would be legal and sustainable by 2030.  Originally scheduled for agreement in October 2020 in Kunming, China, the CBD CoP15 was cancelled due to COVID-19. As a result of the pandemic Target 5 [...]

In recent years the importance of demand reduction campaigns has come to the fore. Certainly, well researched and designed demand reduction campaigns have the potential to trigger behaviour change in consumers and drive down their desire to purchase rare species. But the demand reduction strategy cannot succeed without an equally important sister campaign aimed at driving down the desire to supply. In early 2015, after spending time in South Africa interviewing people from both sides of the rhino horn pro-trade/no-trade debate, I wrote that the desire to supply was the new root cause of rhino poaching. During the pandemic, a period which saw a reduced interest in wildlife consumption in key destination countries, there were significant price drops in [...]

The conservation sector needs to stop calling what are effectively ‘guesstimations’ an evidence-based approach. After decades of trade in endangered species there is still no reliable information on what constitutes a sustainable offtake. Even though this trillion-dollar trade has made mindboggling profits for some of the wealthiest companies and people, in comparison only a tiny amount of funding has been available over the years to assess the impact of the legal trade on the population decline of wild species. There are no trade analytics, no trade risk flags. The data collected are next to useless, as we have demonstrated many times already. And here we go again, this time for hippos. The months leading up to a CITES [...]

One of Einstein’s famous quotes was “You Don’t Have to Know Everything. You Just Have to Know Where to Find It.”. When you want to know about the very real risks associated with the extinction crisis where do you turn? How do to you find the facts and the solutions, some of which have been ignored for years and even decades? One thing is clear, we don’t have that much time left to change our relationship with the natural world, 2030 is seen as a tipping point. The science is clear, and we have run out of time for procrastination. So, what are you willing to change about how you behave in the countdown to 2030? [...]

If there is one species that shows CITES doesn’t work in its current form it’s the Siamese Crocodile. These crocodiles were once widespread throughout much of mainland Southeast Asia. From the 1950s commercial hunting for skins and then the collection of animals to stock crocodile farms, again to supply the international skin trade, means the species has disappeared from 99% of its former range. CITES was set up to protect the likes of the Siamese Crocodile, which has been listed on CITES Appendix I since the convention came into force in 1975. In 1992 the IUCN declared the Siamese Crocodile to be effectively extinct in the wild. It is estimated that there are fewer than 1000 adult individuals [...]