Which animals were helped by cites?

For the last two weeks representatives from 178 countries have been meeting in Thailand to talk about endangered species.

The CITES conference has been described as a big step towards protecting the thousands of endangered animals and plants destroyed every year for money.

But whilst some animals, like the African elephant, were given protection, others lost out.

Amidst the great celebrations of a historic moment in the history of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), when regulations on the trading of several shark species were upheld, one man stood looking a little forlorn.

170 governments have turned to CITES to ensure the legal, sustainable and traceable trade in their precious timber and forest products, with the Conference unanimously bringing hundreds of new timber species under CITES controls, along with a number of tortoises and turtles and a wide range of other plant and animal species.  Five shark species and manta rays were also brought under CITES controls following a vote.

The members States declared the 3rd of March as the World Wildlife Day and accepted South Africa’s invitation to host the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to be held in 2016.

The CITES Secretary-General, John E. Scanlon, said: “This is a big day for CITES and for the world’s wildlife.  It takes enormous effort to negotiate treaties and then make them work.  The international community has today decided to make best use of this pragmatic and effective agreement to help it along the path to sustainability in our oceans and forests". 

CITES Parties have heeded the call from Rio+20 and recognized the important role of CITES as an international agreement that stands at the intersection between trade, the environment and development.

For Shingo Ota, the spokesman for Japan's negotiating team in the conference hall, the debate and the result made it an unhappy day.

"It was not so pleasant to listen to all the clapping and sometimes screaming on the floor," he told me.

The upgrading of oceanic whitetip, porbeagle and hammerheads toCites Appendix 2 - mandating trade licenses and quotas - would not stop fishermen from catching these species, he said.

"Hammerheads are caught by small-scale fishermen - they don't care about Cites, the fins may not be exported now because of Cites listing but hammerheads will continue to die."

From CBBC News

BBC News

Cites-http://www.cites.org/eng/news/pr/2013/20130314_cop16.php

Earth Hour- 2013

Uniting people to protect the planet

The world is using the equivalent of one and a half planets to support life on Earth. WWF's Earth Hour was born out of a hope that this could change.

At 8.30pm on 23 March hundreds of millions of people will turn off their lights for one hour, on the same night, all across the world in a huge, symbolic show of support.

It is a unique annual phenomenon that focuses the world’s attention onour amazing planet, and how we need to protect it.

Bee deaths: EU delays action on pesticides ban

EU nations have been unable to reach agreement on proposals to ban the use of three pesticides that have been linked to the decline of bees.

A decline in bee numbers has been linked by the EU to use of some pesticides

The European Commission had called for a two-year EU-wide moratorium, but a number of nations opposed the plans.

A recent report by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) concluded that the pesticides posed a "high acute risk" to pollinators, including honeybees.

The commission is expected to redraft its proposals ahead of another vote.

Member states were unable to reach a qualified majority in order for the proposals to be adopted.

The news of the stalemate has angered groups that had been campaigning in favour of the ban.

Unknown consequences

A spokeswoman for Defra, the UK's environment department, said 14 out of the 27 EU nations - including the UK and Germany - had not supported the commission's proposals as they currently stood.

n a YouGov poll commissioned by the campaign network, 71% of almost 2,000 people questioned in the UK supported the commission's proposals to impose the moratorium on the insecticides.

Avaaz said that it, along with other groups, would be taking legal advice as to whether the outcome of the vote could be challenged in the courts.

The chemicals in question - imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and clothianindin - belong to a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids.

The insecticides work by affecting the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death.

From BBC News- Environment

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China pulls nearly 6,000 dead pigs from Shanghai river

The number of dead pigs found floating in a river flowing into Shanghai has reached nearly 6000.

The number of dead pigs found floating in Shanghai's main river has risen to almost 6,000.

The city authorities, still investigating where they have come from, say a number of the carcasses have tested positive for a common pig virus.

The Shanghai municipal government said in an online announcement that 5,916 swine carcasses had been retrieved from Huangpu River by 3pm Tuesday, but added that municipal water remains safe.

The surge in the dumping of dead pigs - believed to be from pig farms in the upstream Jiaxing area in the neighbouring Zhejiang province - has followed police campaigns to curb the illicit trade of pork products harvested from diseased pigs.

Shanghai authorities said the city has taken proper measures to safely dispose of the pig carcasses and that the city's water plants are stepping up efforts to disinfect public water and testing for six common swine viruses.

The Shanghai government reported no major swine epidemic, widespread pig deaths or dumping of pigs within the city boundaries of Shanghai.

The state-run China News news agency said Monday that Zhejiang province had reported no swine epidemic but that a provincial agriculture official blamed cold weather for the deaths of the pigs.

The official, who was identified only by his family name Gu, told China News that the practice of dumping dead pigs into rivers lingers among some pig farmers in the city of Jiaxing.

From BBc News and News.com.au

Deadly poison threat to tigers

Poison is emerging as the latest and most dangerous threat to the survival of the last remaining wild tigers in Thailand.

OUTRAGEOUS!

Poachers targeting tigers for their valuable skins and body parts are turning to insecticide as an easy way to kill the iconic animals.

In what's regarded as Thailand's most important tiger sanctuary, wildlife rangers report mounting evidence of gangs setting traps with fresh meat, laced with poison, as bait.

In one particularly shocking incident, two tiger cubs were found close to death after eating the bait. By the time they had been discovered, it was too late to save them.

Rangers described the frustration of finding the cubs and seeing them in extreme pain but too far gone to be revived.

The two tiny animals had crawled into the bush to die so the poachers had failed to notice them. But they had evidently located the cubs' mother and made off with her body because no trace was seen of her.

For the rangers, it was a painful loss. As the superintendent of the sanctuary, Sompoch Maneerat, put it: "any time we see even one tiger killed, I feel a pain in my heart".

It really is painful to come across these acts against unprotected endangered species  living in the wild.

Fragile stronghold

Tigers are vulnerable because their numbers are already desperately low. In the Huai Kha Khang sanctuary, only 38 have been definitively identified, with statistical models suggesting that the actual total might be 53-65.

In the country as a whole, the best estimate is that no more than 200 tigers remain in the wild - a massive decline in the space of a few decades.

Huai Kha Khang is seen as the most viable tiger stronghold but even here their survival is highly fragile.

With prices soaring for the tigers' skins, genitals, bones and teeth, poaching gangs have become increasingly aggressive and well-organised, even mounting intelligence-gathering operations against the rangers to understand their patrol patterns.

From BBC Environment