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