CITES doomed the vaquita, sold the elephant in the room, & worse

(Beth Clifton collage)

U.N. Environment Assembly calls for yet another report on “the interlinkages between animal welfare,  the environment and sustainable development” after ignoring a mountain of others produced at least since 1950

            LYON, France––This is not just a fish story,  nor just a fish-and-elephant story,  nor even just another story about the failures and shortcomings of international regulatory bureaucracy.

Recent developments pertaining to totoaba fish,  African elephants,  and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora & Fauna [CITES],  however, may help ANIMALS 24-7 to meander to the point that words and substance should never be conflated, especially when lives are at stake.

IFAW photo of bomb damage at a shelter in Gorlovka, Ukraine,  in 2014.

Bombs & rockets

            The goings on at the 74th Meeting of the Standing Committee of CITES in Lyon,  France,  concluded on March 11,  2022,  appear to have echoed realities made more forcefully clear during the same days by the rain of Russian bombs and rockets reducing Ukraine to rubble:

International treaties enforced only by moral suasion and the occasional willingness of some of the signatories to invoke trade sanctions have no more deterrent effect against ruthless aggressors and exploiters than a barrage of rubber bands and spit-wads.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Law without cops

CITES,  on the one hand,  may justly be considered among the most successful treaties ever brokered by the United Nations in the 76 years that the U.N. has existed.

CITES is certainly the most successful international treaty pertaining to animals,  rivaled only by the treaty that created the International Whaling Commission,  flimsy as the IWC has been against the determination of Japan and Norway to go on killing whales.

Both treaties are at least nominally honored by most recognized nations.  Most nations have domestic laws in place to enforce CITES and IWC protections for endangered species and whales by fining and even jailing violators.

(Sea Shepherd Conservation Society photo.)

No need to hide dead whales

On the other hand,  most close observers of either CITES or the IWC must surely have observed long since that their declarations tend to be effective only when public and political opinion within the home nations of species said to be protected strongly favors saving the species at risk.

Exploitative industries learned long since that unless their own local wildlife cops are willing to bust them,  defying CITES is as easy as filling out a customs voucher with bogus information.

Defying the IWC is a little harder than smuggling illegal drugs or powdered rhino horn,  since a dead whale is not easily hidden,  but where national governments actually subsidize whale-killing with impunity from any possibility of meaningful consequences from the rest of the world,  there is no need for the whalers to hide anything.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Totoaba decision dooms vaquita

            As of March 11,  2022,  totoaba fish,  endangered in their northern Gulf of California native habitat but farmed in sea pens at La Paz,  Baja California,  Mexico for more than a decade,  may re-enter legal global commerce,  the CITES Standing Committee decreed by a vote of 9-5,  with one abstention.

“This decision may seal the fate of the critically endangered vaquita porpoise,  which becomes entangled in fishing nets used to catch totoaba for the totoaba bladder (or maw) trade,”  warned Animal Welfare Institute and Center for Biological Diversity spokespersons Marjorie Fishman and Alejandro Olivera in a joint media statement.

“There are only an estimated eight vaquita remaining,”  Fishman and Olivera said.

Totoaba & chano, a smaller croaker species that is legally fished.  (Beth Clifton collage)

“Uncontrolled illegal fishing”

International trade in totoaba has been prohibited for nearly 50 years,  initially only to protect vaquita,  but totoaba,  once common,  were also reduced to the verge of extinction in the wild by what Fishman and Olivera called “ongoing, rampant and uncontrolled illegal fishing” to supply demand from China and some other Asian nations.

Fumed Environmental Investigation Agency ocean and climate campaign leader Clare Perry,  “Mexico has repeatedly failed to prevent illegal totoaba fishing for the international market for their swim bladders.  A legal trade in totoaba,  whether it includes swim bladders right now or not,  will only complicate enforcement and increase demand for the wild fish that shares the same habitat as the vaquita.”

The Earth Ocean Farms application to export totoaba included some provisions meant to reduce the risk that legal trade in totoaba will provide cover for further poaching,  at continued risk to vaquita.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“This is hypocrisy on full display”

Responded Fishman and Olivera,  “Although Mexico and Earth Ocean Farms committed to temporarily prohibiting the export of totoaba swim bladders and destroying stockpiled maws, these amendments to its application should have triggered submission of a new request under CITES procedures.”

Agreed Animal Welfare Institute biologist D.J. Schubert,  “This is the hypocrisy of CITES on full display — agreeing to reduce demand for totoaba to protect the vaquita one day and then authorizing trade in totoaba the next.”

Zak Smith.  (Natural Resources Defense Council photo)

“Mexico angling for totoaba extinction”

Charged Natural Resources Defense Council director of international wildlife conservation Zak Smith,  “Mexico’s active disinterest in saving the vaquita was on full display as it pushed the idea that legal trade in smaller,  captive-bred totoaba will help limit illegal fishing and trade in larger, wild-caught totoaba.  All the evidence shows that larger totoaba swim bladders are the most coveted and lucrative,  and can only be found in the wild,  where fishing for totoaba kills vaquita.

“Mexico has long been angling for the vaquita’s extinction,”  Smith alleged.  “It’s a step closer to that goal with this decision.”

Totoaba poachers.  (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society photo)

Rebuilding population for poachers

Mexican legislation requires totoaba farmers to “release a percentage of fish into the wild to help totoaba repopulation efforts,”  explained Victor R. Rodríguez for Hakai magazine on the eve of the meeting of the CITES Standing Committee.

Earth Ocean Farms,  said Rodriguez,  “since 2015 has released 146,500 totoaba juveniles into waters off Mulegé,  almost 500 kilometers north of La Paz,  in the southern portion of their habitat.”

But increasing the wild totoaba population in proximity to the last vaquita might only increase poaching pressure.

In effect,  CITES,  unable to restrain the international totoaba trade in absence of Mexican ability and willingness to stop totoaba poaching,  appears to have surrendered to political and economic expediency.

Who voted how

The United States,  Argentina,  Peru,  and Oceania (represented by Australia),  opposed the Earth Ocean Farms application to export totoaba,  but were not voting members of the Standing Committee.

Members of the Standing Committee voting against the proposal included Senegal,  Congo,  Peru,  Israel and Australia.

Voting in favor were Namibia,  Ethiopia,  China,  Kuwait,  Indonesia,  Dominican Republic, Poland,  Belgium and Georgia.

Canada abstained.

(Beth Clifton photo collage)

Namibia sold elephants to United Arab Emirates

The 2022 CITES elephant fiasco,  the most recent of many,  unfolded earlier.

Explained Keith Lindsay, Adam Cruise and Rosie Awori on March 12,  2022 for African Elephant Journal,  “Just one day before [the CITES] meeting,  which was to examine the legality of Namibia’s intended [sale of elephants abroad],  the Namibian Ministry of Environment,  Forestry & Tourism admitted to exporting 22 of the country’s elephants to a zoo in the United Arab Emirates.

“Its intentions kept under wraps since the original auction of elephants was announced in December 2020,”  Lindsay,  Cruise,  and Awori continued,  “Namibia always retained the option of exporting an unspecified number of them outside of Africa.

“According to CITES,”   Lindsay,  Cruise,  and Awori explained,  “Namibia is allowed to export live elephants only to in situ conservation programs,  i.e. within the natural range of the species in Africa.”

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Flew elephants out ahead of CITES review of the deal

“The timing,”  Lindsay,  Cruise,  and Awori wrote,  “seemed to be aimed at pre-empting the discussion by participants at [the CITES meeting],  “who closely examined the legality of Namibia’s interpretation of the treaty.

“Burkina Faso,  an elephant range state and member of the 32-nation strong African Elephant Coalition,  submitted a legal opinion which demonstrates why these exports were and are carried out in violation of CITES.”

CITES nonetheless took no action against Namibia,  having no actual ability to do much of anything more anyway than shake a finger and say “No,  no,  no.”

Masayuki Sakamoto, executive director.  (Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund photo)

Japanese advocate asked for help

Also just ahead of the CITES meeting,  Masayuki Sakamoto,  executive director of the Japan Tiger & Elephant Fund,  issued a furious report entitled Japan’s Tireless Ivory Market: A Trader’s Haven Free of Strict Controls.

            Sakamoto detailed at length how the Japanese government,  at multiple levels,  has almost completely ignored the CITES international embargo on ivory trafficking,  in effect since 1989.

What did anyone at the CITES meeting do about it?

Summarized former farmer and taxi driver Lenin Ndebele for News24,  serving the southern third of the African continent from Cape Town,  South Africa,  “The African Elephant Coalition has called for the closure of ivory markets in Japan,  saying they contribute to poaching.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why a “clarion call” sounds like a loud fart

Echoing the hyperbolic language with which CITES observers and participants typically announce having said something while doing nothing,  Ndebele called this a “clarion call.”

A clarion,  for the unaware,  is a long trumpet,  plastic versions of which are commonly used at sporting events to produce an amplified version of the sound also known as a Bronx cheer.

Continued Ndebele,  “In 2016,  a recommendation was adopted to close ivory markets in ivory-consuming countries such as Singapore,  the United Kingdom,  China,  the United States and Japan.  A resolution was then passed in 2019.”

In other words,  not a thing has been done to specifically target the Japanese ivory trade that Sakamoto exposed at great personal risk.

Unfortunately,  not a thing can or will be done to any effect until,  and unless,  Sakamoto and friends persuade the majority of their fellow Japanese citizens to stop buying ivory and demand that their governmental agencies actually enforce laws restricting ivory sales that are already on the books.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Resolution passed to do what?

Just before all of this happened,  or more precisely nothing positive happened at the CITES meeting in Lyon,  France,  in Kenya on March 2,  2022 something called “The Resumed Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly” adopted an “Animal Welfare, Environment and Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution.”

This resolution called upon the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program “to produce a report on the interlinkages between animal welfare,  the environment and sustainable development, in close collaboration with the [U.N.] Food & Agriculture Organization,  World Health Organization,  World Organization for Animal Health [OIE],  the One-Health High-Level Expert Panel and other stakeholders.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why restate Livestock’s Long Shadow?

In other words,  the delegates to the “Resumed Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly” asked other United Nations agencies to draft a document restating points already made many times.

For example,  there was the 2006 U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization report Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options,  which discussed animal welfare in an extensive review of the effects of animal agriculture on climate change.

There was also the 2011 FAO report Legislative & Regulatory Options for Animal Welfare.

Lester R. Brown.

Barbara Ward & Lester Brown

Long before publication of either of those reports came any number of others making similar points,  going all the way back to the British economist Barbara Ward’s role as a U.N. advisor,  both formally and informally,  beginning in 1950.

Ward (1914-1981) presented her film Survival of Spaceship Earth to the first United Nations conference on the human environment in 1972,  a year after founding the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Following up Ward’s work,  Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown,  now 87,  was in 1987 honored by the United Nations Environment Program for his many years of producing annual reports focused on “the interlinkages between animal welfare,  the environment and sustainable development.”

            (See Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown.)

Josphat Ngonyo.  (ANAW photo)

“Monumental, ground-breaking, watershed”?

Some of these many reports have profoundly but informally influenced generations of journalists,  scholars,  environmentalists,  and even some public policy makers.

None though,  by themselves,  have turned the direction of the world around,  for either humans or animals;  and each had to exist,  first,  before it could influence anyone at all.

Following the “Resumed Fifth Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly,”  Africa Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo sought to persuade ANIMALS 24-7 that the “Animal Welfare, Environment and Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution” asking others to produce yet another report is “a monumental achievement,”  “ground-breaking,”  and a “watershed moment for the animal protection movement.”

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Learning from Ronald McDonald

Yet in reality it means no more than the 1994 promises that enabled the McDonald’s restaurant chain to get away for 28 years with repeatedly issuing vague statements about “animal welfare,’  while doing precisely nothing of actual benefit to animals.

Meanwhile many of the biggest animal welfare organizations worldwide repeatedly celebrated “victories” when McDonald’s restated animal welfare shibboleths,  and even honored McDonald’s with awards,  without actually looking at what was,  and is, going on at the barnyard level.

(See also Hearts out of place: transplants, pigs, chickens, “victories” & McDonald’s.)

In general,  when ANIMALS 24-7 reviews the progress made on behalf of animals during our lifetimes,  and especially on our news beat,   in all parts of the world,  we see a great deal to be encouraged about on almost every front,  despite the reality that more animals are tortured on factory farms and eaten than ever before.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Yes,  we’re barnyard thinkers

The biggest threat we see to animal advocacy progress is the tendency of both individuals and organizations,  as they grow in stature and influence,  to increasingly mistake words for goals and accomplishments;  to proclaim “victory” in response to buzz words,  and try to persuade activists,  donors,  and credulous media that mere resolutions asking other people to do something are a substitute for tangible action.

(Beth & Merritt Clifton)

We here at ANIMALS 24-7 are barnyard level thinkers,  because if change is not happening in the barnyard,  what the suits in the offices say is only hot air.

Please donate to support our work: 

www.animals24-7.org/donate/