Sharks Voted Down, No Marine Species Protected at CITES Meeting

[Ninong]

Source: USA Today
March 25, 2010

Doha, Qatar - Every proposal to protect marine species at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in Doha, Qatar was voted down.

The only protection that had gone through—for the Porbeagle shark—was brought back to the table on Thursday and voted down, 84 nations for, 46 against and 10 abstentions. It would have required a two-thirds majority, says Dan Klotz, with the Pew Environment Group, reporting from Doha.

More...

My comment: Not a single shark species was added to CITES. It takes two-thirds of the votes to add a species. One species actually was added but Japan requested that it be brought back to the table a few days later for a new vote and in that second vote only 65% of the 130 nations represented voted to add it to the restricted list. Ten nations abstained. Japan had worked its magic in backroom deals with some of the smaller nations. Bribery is widely accepted in many parts of the world. It's only in the West that is considered unacceptable.

"China opposed the shark protection, in part because shark fin soup holds such a hallowed place in the Chinese culinary tradition. However, says Griffin, while China was adamant about it's position, it didn't lobby other nations as Japan did."

Japan successfully blocked every single proposal. That's not hard to do when you are the third largest economic power in the world and many of the 130 nations voting are really tiny and their representatives and leaders back home open to persuasion if the price is right.

Japan led the fight against adding the blue-fin tuna to the restricted list. That's because more than 90% of blue-fin tuna ends up in Japan, where it brings astronomical prices.

[returnofsid]

If Bribery isn't accepted in the West, how the heck did Obama shove his pet Health Care "reform" down everyone's throat!!!??? Can't tell me there were several 12th hour, back room deals made!!!

[Ninong]

CITES Meeting Disappoints Marine Scientists

“This wasn’t about the science,” says meeting attendee Phaedra Doukakis, a marine conservation biologist at Stony Brook University in New York.
(...)
“The most absurd, outrageous thing to me is that you’ve got all these shark species being depleted on the high seas in international waters, and there is absolutely no mechanism currently out there to regulate that,” says Crawford Allan, who went to Doha as director of TRAFFIC North America, part of a wildlife-trade monitoring group. No government or regional fisheries management group has jurisdiction over shark fishing in international waters.

The Atlantic bluefin tuna does have managers setting harvest quotas. But populations continue to dwindle.
(...)
... the Japanese announced even before the CITES meeting that they would ignore any ban on bluefin fishing.
(...)
“As a scientist, I am appalled at the level of horse-trading that goes on,” says elephant biologist Joyce Poole of Elephant Voices, who is based in Norway.

CITES needs to assure that science gets more weight, according to conservation biologist Andrew Dobson of Princeton University. Allowing nations to vote on matters involving species that don’t live within their borders creates “a huge potential for irrational trading of votes,” he says.

Nevertheless, a proposal by Tanzania and Zambia to allow sales of ivory from their countries was beaten back, maintaining a nine-year moratorium set by the 2007 CITES meeting. “I was elated,” says Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington in Seattle. “It is time to give elephant downlisting and ivory-sale proposals a rest and focus on healing the wounds.”

Scientists were also encouraged by discussions of the need for stronger measures to fight a recent spike in illegal trades in rhinoceros horns and tiger parts.

“This wasn’t a completely negative conference,” Doukakis says. “If you were a terrestrial species.”

[gregony]

Does Switzerland have a seat at this conference? With all their oceanfront properties and untamed wildlife and such. If so, I hope their rep got a nasty sunburn.

[Ninong]

Yes, Switzerland is one of the 175 member nations of CITES, which is administered by UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme).

As a matter of fact, Switzerland was the third nation to become a CITES signatory more than 35 years ago. The United States was the first.

And, in answer to everybody's next question, Switzerland is now a member of the United Nations, having joined in 2002 as the 190th member.

[TheMarineGuy]

Wow that is rediclous...Sry if this affends anyone but i love animals more then people and worry about animals more than people, just because people know what they are doing and whats going on,on the other hand animals dont.....Maybe we need a tatical insergen group that does not report too any government and does not adhear too any laws too actually get this shark and dolphin hunting too stop,and stop by any means nessicary.....Louie Psihoyos said it best "Any living breathing creture is in danger of extinction any time it goes near japan"....Only if japan knew how much they look like dumbs**ts too the rest of the world....too contract other bankrupt nations into this slaughter is unbeliveable.....I mean come on.....I could rant and rave all day and night about how much i dis-like the people who are in it and who get bought into it by these absolutely "stupid" trade....i mean ok eat dolphins and sharks all you want but you will eventually get mercury poisoning and if you have babys you will watch them grow up like they never would have if you just didnt eat those bowls of shark fin soup or a dolphin steak and didnt buy into this or support their cause then maybe i would have had a better life.....and you only get one of those thing called "life" so are you gonna spend it killing animals and passing the posions of these animals you kill and eat into you children and let them live with the conquisis of your actions....Their are many ways too get the posion but the effects are all the same.....Just too point out too if you do have mecury posioning their is something you have too do called "urine monitoring" (dont know too much about it sound like something pretty bad too me)and that just doesnt sound so enticing too me....... sorry too get off topic and their desicion wasent even based on scientific research....Like i said i can rant and rave about this stuff all day and night.......