Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 6 • Number 8 • 28th April 2006
CITES Announces Limits to Trade in Endangered Species in 2006
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The Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) on 10 April published a list of how much trade in the species covered by the Convention will be allowed in 2006. Included in the list is 150,000 kg of allowed exports of agarwood and 8,000 live humphead wrasse from Indonesia, but no quotas for the great white shark or hoodia plant, all of which were added to Appendix II of the Convention at the most recent Conference of the Parties (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 21 October 2004). On the controversial question of shared caviar stocks in the Caspian Sea, the Secretariat decided that only Iran will be allowed to export. The decision to allow Iran to export up to 44,370 kilogrammes of caviar comes after CITES decided in January 2006 to stop issuing certificates necessary for legal import of caviar from the region, saying that it did not have enough information to ensure that any country would be able to export and sustainably manage their stocks of sturgeon (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 20 January 2006). While the other Caspian Sea countries, namely Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, failed to provide the required information proving that illegal harvesting and trade are not adversely affecting wild specimens, Iran’s documentation passed the grade in April, and as such will be allowed to fish and export from the shared waters. According to CITES rules, potential exporters of threatened species protected under Appendix II of the Convention have to provide satisfactory information about the effectiveness of management and the sustainability of their use of the species based on scientific surveys and a regional conservation strategy in order to qualify for trade quotas backed up by certificates.
The listing of export quotas for trade in CITES species is available at http://www.cites.org/common/quotas/2006/ExportQuotas2006.pdf and for caviar at http://www.cites.org/common/quotas/2006/Sturgeon2006.pdf
“Hold the caviar: UN-backed body bans export of most endangered sturgeon”, UN News, Service, 17 April 2006; “CITES finalizes 2006 caviar export quotas”, CITES, 13 April 2006.
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