Iconic species central to wildlife talks
Iconic African wildlife such as elephants, big cats and rosewood trees will be central to discussions of the World Wildlife Conference slated for Panama later this year.
The standing committee of the United Nations wildlife trade body, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which met last week in Lyon, France, slated these animals and trees for the main agenda at the Panama conference, scheduled for November.
It is expected to make decisions on the resolutions set in Lyon on flagship wildlife, including pangolins, West African vultures, parrots, orchids, seahorses, marine turtles, Malagasy ebonies, sharks and rays.
Each October since 2017, UN member states have been required to submit data on all seizures of wildlife made during the previous year.
Nearly 6000 species were seized across 149 countries between 1999 and 2018, ranging from mammals, reptiles and birds to corals and fish, according to the UN crime office records.
Poaching and trafficking records indicate that the ivory trade saw a resurgence around 2007 and grew steadily until around 2011, before declining in 2016.
The estimated number of elephants in African countries in 2006 was 556,973. This has since decreased to 413,242.
Trends of wildlife trophy seizures in the last four years reveal that there has been a shift in ivory shipments.
Lagos Port in Nigeria now dominates exports, and Vietnam is the main importer of elephant tusks. Previously, Mombasa Port in Kenya held the top spot for illicit ivory shipments, and China was the main importer.
UN records also indicate that the ‘‘largest flow of illicitly harvested rosewood in the past four years is coming out of Africa’’. Global imports of tropical hardwood logs totalled 18 million cubic metres in 2018, valued at over US$3 billion (NZ$4.3b).
Some 82 per cent of the value of this import demand came from industries based in China, which currently leads the world in furniture manufacturing.
‘‘The rosewood crisis has been devastating West African forests and the livelihoods of its people for almost a decade,’’ said Raphael Edou, the Africa programme manager of the environmental group.
In 2018, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature classified rosewood as endangered. China, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the European Union, Japan and Malaysia remain the main destinations of trafficked rosewood, accounting for three-quarters of all logs seized globally.
Pangolins in Africa are increasingly being hunted for their meat and their scales. The bulk of pangolin exports come from Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo and Gabon.
According to the wildlife database, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Congo-Brazzaville are hubs of pangolin transshipment in Africa, with China the largest importer. In 2016, due to the overexploitation of pangolins, the wildlife body imposed a global trade ban.