Whales Win and Black Rhinos Lose

Whales Win and Black Rhinos Lose

2007 - June - Japan and Iceland once again failed to remove whale protections, as their proposals to the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, were defeated today. But the future of black rhinos is at risk after Kenya lost its attempt to repeal hunting quotas granted to Namibia and South Africa for these endangered animals.

Japan Loses Second Whale Fight in a Week

Japan's proposal for CITES to review the status of all great whale species was defeated by a vote of 55 to 28 with 13 abstentions. Japan had hoped that, following this review, CITES would recommend that the protection currently afforded to some whale species should be lifted. Iceland had proposed that CITES review the current protection for the North Atlantic fin whale with a view to allowing international trade in the animals which it began hunting commercially last year.

A counter proposal from Australia that no review of any great whale, including the fin whale, should occur while the International Whaling Commission's commercial whaling ban is in place, was adopted with 60 votes for, 23 against, and 13 abstentions.

If accepted, Japan and Iceland's proposals could have led to the resumption of international commercial trade in whale products for the first time in more than 20 years.

"This is the 15th time whaling nations have tried to reopen trade since 1997, and the 15th time they've failed," said Carroll Muffett, deputy campaigns director for Greenpeace USA. "It's high time they accepted that commercial whale trade has no place in the modern world."

The decisions were made by a Committee within CITES and must still be ratified by all Parties at the end of the conference.

Rhino horns are shipped to illegal markets, mainly in Asia and the Middle East, where they are used as traditional medicines and to make traditional dagger handles. East and Southeast Asia and Yemen are important destinations, and trade appears to be on the increase since 2000, according to WWF and the wildlife monitoring organization TRAFFIC.

The CITES Secretariat has called for better cross-border collaboration between countries along rhino horn smuggling routes. Secure management of horn stocks has also proved important to prevent horns leaking to the illegal market, Lieberman said.

Poaching is most severe in Zimbabwe and the DRC, where 60 percent of the rhino population was illegally killed between 2003 and 2005, according to TRAFFIC.

In Zimbabwe, poaching accounted for two-thirds of all rhino mortalities over the same period, affecting one in eight animals, and some key populations are in decline.

Both DRC and Zimbabwe have the poorest record for seizing rhino horns in the illegal trade, with just 13 percent of lost horns recovered in DRC and and eight percent recovered Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2005.

Across Africa as a whole, law enforcement agencies recovered 42 percent of rhino horns entering illegal trade.

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