Rules Needed to Protect Endangered Species, National University of Singapore Researchers Say

Charles Q. Choi LiveScience.com Yahoo News 23 Dec 10;

A critical shield for endangered species around the world - an international agreement that keeps tabs on the sales of animals and plants - needs vital reforms if countries actually want to protect wildlife as they want, a group of researchers says.

The worldwide and often illegal trade in wildlife can endanger species, pass infectious diseases across borders and spread destructive, invasive organisms to ecosystems that can't handle them. With 175 member countries, the most important global initiative to monitor and control such traffic is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, known as CITES, which regulates the trade of nearly 34,000 species.

However, serious weaknesses in this initiative have emerged over the years. Urgent changes are needed quickly if world leaders want to preserve Earth's biodiversity into the future, the researchers say.

Trouble in the tropics

For instance, many CITES members fail to monitor and report illegal wildlife trade. Brazil, a key source of illegal animals, does not have a functioning central program to report wildlife confiscations, while the United States, a leading importer of wildlife, lacks a coordinated national authority for monitoring such imports.

In addition, most CITES-listed species occur in the tropics, where governance is often weak and corruption high, the researchers said.

"There is a very well-known ecological trend called the 'latitudinal species gradient,' which basically consists of the inescapable fact that there are many, many more species in tropical areas of the planet," said evolutionary ecologist David Bickford at the National University of Singapore. "If you look across any measure of sociopolitical corruption, there is a similar trend, whereby many, many more countries in the tropics have very high corruption and governance problems that prevent specific kinds of regulations from being effective. International wildlife trade, unfortunately, falls under this rubric."

This lack of regulation ends up harming these countries, and the whole world, Bickford said.

"The sad consequences are that most tropical and poor countries are forfeiting their future for immediate economic benefits," Bickford told OurAmazingPlanet. "In the long run, however, it won't just be those countries that lose - it will be the species driven to extinction, and the rest of humanity who will have fewer resources and a less robust ecosystem from which we ultimately derive almost all of our livelihood needs. This is not a tropical problem - it is a global one."

Call for contributions

At the same time, many CITES members only list animals by their class and not by their species, which can overlook imperiled members of those groups. Also, most CITES data is collected from airports and other easily accessible trade routes, rather than from black markets or public border markets where poaching and illegal wildlife trade usually occurs. A single small-scale trader at an informal border market on the Mekong River in southeast Asia can sell more plants in a single day than reported by CITES over a nine-year period, the researchers noted.

To strengthen the initiative, the researchers call on all CITES members, especially the major wildlife importers, to dramatically increase their contributions to it - as is, the initiative only received $5.2 million annually from 2009 to 2011. The researchers also noted that increased trade levies and penalties for industries and individuals behind such trade should contribute to the initiative's costs, much as how polluters are required to pay for the damage they cause.

"Like so many other seemingly great ideas, this will be very hard to initiate," Bickford said. "For success, all stakeholders will have to agree and 'cheating' the system cannot be tolerated. The time has come for responsibility and integrity to be the precursors of a realistic and sustainable future, and that means that member countries and traders need to step up."

From informal discussions, "I can tell you that there are many parties to the convention that welcome such reform," Bickford said. "These countries would be able to provide leadership and plans for the transitions that need to take place."

Bickford and his colleagues detailed their strategies in the Dec. 24 issue of the journal Science.

U.N. species convention needs urgent reform -study
* Poor data and enforcement placing rare species at risk-study
* Poor monitoring also raises risk of spread of diseases
David Fogarty Reuters 24 Dec 10;

SINGAPORE, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Poor data, minimal funding and lax enforcement are undermining the fight to protect endangered species, raising the risks from the spread of pests and diseases, scientists say in a study made public on Friday.

Destruction of habitats, over-hunting and climate change have already driven the extinction rate for plants and animals to the highest level since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, the United Nations says.

More than a fifth of all mammals and nearly a third of all amphibians are threatened and at risk of extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's benchmark Red List of Threatened Species says.

The new study, conducted by scientists from the National University of Singapore and Britain's Oxford Brookes University, said the main U.N. convention governing trade in endangered species needed urgent reform and a boost in support from member states.

This was crucial to prevent more species from being wiped out by trade but also to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and invasive species into new areas where they can threaten crops and livelihoods.

Key issues were lax enforcement and a lack of data on species being collected and traded, allowing governments either to make poor conservation decisions or corrupt officials to turn a blind eye to illicit trade.

"Data collection at all levels depends on proper species identification, which remains a leading challenge," the scientists, including Jacob Phelps and Edward Webb of the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore, say in the latest issue of the U.S. journal Science.

"Wildlife trade studies are surprisingly few and far between," Phelps told Reuters in an email. "For many species -- not only tigers and rhinoceros, but hardwood trees, primates and birds sold as pets and medicinal plants -- wildlife trade remains a leading threat."

The authors called for an overhaul of the U.N.'s 35-year-old Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates the trade of nearly 34,000 species.

The authors said the secretariat that runs CITES depends on member states to provide data and enforcement. Yet many CITES parties failed to systematically monitor and report international wildlife trade, the authors say.

CORRUPTION RISK

More than half of documented live-animal imports into the United States from 2000 to 2006 were identified only by class, while only about 14 percent were identified to species, they said, opening the door to potentially damaging foreign species.

Other problems were CITES' lack of internal and external checks and balances and the secretariat's annual operating budget of only $5.2 million.

"CITES relies exclusively on country self-reporting, although incentives are high for biased analyses and misreporting, and most CITES-listed species occur in the tropics where governance is often weak and corruption high," the authors say.

Poor data collection also risked massive undereporting of animal and plant trade.

Phelps pointed to a recent visit to a Thai border market along the Mekong river where a trader could sell more CITES-regulated wild orchids in a day than officially reported trade into Thailand from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar over a nine-year period.

"It is very likely that similar under-reporting is occurring for other protected species," Webb told Reuters in an email, pointing to the need for much greater funding, stronger collaboration, better compliance standards and improved data collection and analysis.

The study was published two months after world nations agreed on 2020 targets to save nature. Collectively, species provide crucial services to mankind and economies, such as clean air and clean water from forest watersheds and coral reefs and mangroves that protect coastlines. (Editing by Ron Popeski)

(Created by David Fogarty)

CITES: 35 years on, more resources needed
TRAFFIC 24 Dec 10;

Washington DC, USA, 24th December 2010—35 years after it came into force, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) remains highly relevant, but funding remains a principle limitation to the Convention, in particular to strengthen enforcement and the quality of trade data finds a new study published today.

A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore and Oxford Brookes University published their deliberations today in the journal Science on how they believe the effectiveness of CITES could be boosted.

CITES is an international agreement between governments that aims to ensure international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

The paper’s authors note that while credible biological and trade data are core to informing decisions and garnering political will and consensus among CITES Parties “many CITES Parties fail to systematically monitor and report international wildlife trade.”

“The net result is that analysis of available data often remains insufficient to identify species threatened by trade and to detect trade inaccuracies and loopholes,” says Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes University, and an author of the Science study.

The collection of trade data only along easily accessed trade routes, such as at airports, is also problematic as it fails to convey the full scale of wildlife trade, say the authors.

To address these, and other issues, the paper calls for a much greater degree of co-ordination among CITES Parties, including initiatives already underway on enhanced data-sharing and analysis, such as the Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System, and the planned illegal trade database.

The majority of such proposed solutions depend on enhanced active, sustained, and reciprocal engagement of CITES Parties with external partners, a process the authors recognize would by administratively demanding, costly, and politically challenging.

To meet these requirements, far greater resources are needed: as the report notes “The [CITES] Secretariat operates on meager party donations,” and it calls for “Parties, particularly importing nations, to increase contributions dramatically.”

“After 35 years, the CITES framework remains highly relevant,” says Nijman, “but only through increased resources can the Convention move toward proactive, real-time monitoring and regulation to strengthen wildlife trade enforcement and data quality.”

“These are vital improvements: a strengthened Convention is essential to protect imperiled biodiversity.”

The paper, Boosting CITES by Jacob Phelps, Edward L. Webb, David Bickford, Vincent Nijman and Navjot S. Sodhi is available through the Science website