News & updates

PROPOSAL No. 21 Inclusion of the family Coralliidae in Appendix II – Ten reasons to reject the proposal

By Marco Pani-IWMC

For the second consecutive time a proposal to list in Appendix II of CITES the species of genera Corallium and Paracorallium, included in the family Coralliidae, is submitted to the Conference of the Parties to CITES.

This time also the proposal is mainly an anecdotic summary without real scientific evidence that these species are threatened with extinction by international trade.

FAO, which is requested by the text of the CITES Convention to evaluate the proposals concerning marine species, concluded again that these species are not meeting the listing criteria and IUCN, a leading conservation organization, reached the same conclusion in its analysis.

This is not surprising for people familiar with the biology of and trade in these species because, despite a long history of exploitation, they are still very common in their range, both in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean.

As a matter of fact and without taking into account scientific evidences the proposal arose from some NGOs, which started campaigns some years ago against the use of these precious corals with the essential aim to raise money for their own interest rather than the interests of the conservation of the species. Interestingly, the main donor of these NGOs is a renowned jewellery company that seems to be contributing to a large extent to the devastation of the sea bottom in west and southern Africa trough underwater dredging for diamonds.

It is our views that under no circumstances could or should CITES replace a sound management regime for fisheries. Control of international trade, as CITES implies, must not be considered as more than an additional measure that could be valid in specific conditions. CITES will not correct bad fisheries management. Conversely, good fisheries management does not need, in most cases, trade controls as those provided by CITES.

One of the main misconceptions that people has is that CITES is a management tool for species. This is wrong. CITES is a trade regulating treaty that imposes specific prescriptions on the trade.

The best solution to achieve proper conservation of precious corals and the continuation of their sustainable trade should be the improvement of local management regimes and associated legislations and not the imposition of trade regulations that would be counterproductive.

View PDF in English.

View PDF in French.

View PDF in Spanish.

Related content

Fisheries are choking on good(?) intentions

Author Nils Stolpe/FishNet USA Choking On Good Intentions In multispecies fisheries, regulators must distinguish between stocks that are truly threatened or endangered and those that

Fisheries overview

CITES AND THE MANAGEMENT OF FISHERIES

From the very beginnings of man kind, the world’s oceans and waterways have provided essential sustenance that has supported the development of life. The consumption

IWMC Feature

Conservation Influencers

Conservation Influencers is a searchable directory of the animal activist, environmental and ecological lobby. It examines the history, mission, methodology and reputation of NGOs to assess their impact on the global conservation cause.

Franz Weber Foundation

From 1990 until 2015, Franz Weber Foundation (FFW) managed the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park in Togo, which was, according to an in-depth investigation by Duke University, ‘established by forcing the local communities off their land and without taking into consideration their point of view’. That same study cited convincing evidence from reports published in 1990, confirming that competition for land use was already ‘creating conflict between the local communities and park managers’. In 2015 Togo refused to renew FFW’s contract because, the report says, ‘local communities were still excluded from the management of the natural resources of their land’ and FFW had ‘failed to fulfil its contract’. Franz Weber Foundation plays a major role within CITES because it funds and manages from Switzerland the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), which represents 32 African range states, some of which have barely any elephants and others none at all. Contrary to the wishes of the range states in Southern Africa, which manage most of the world’s wild elephant populations, the AEC at CITES’ CoPs repeatedly tables proposals to put all of the world’s elephants in appendix I. And the AEC uses its voting power to keep in place prohibitions on ivory sales and all other trade in elephant-related derivatives, including skins and hair, which Southern African nations wish to legalise.

Read more...