We recognize the interests of the Kingdom of Swaziland and the complex issues of southern white rhino management, but with such high stakes for rhinos, we voted no on this proposal. The proposed actions would have come with tremendous risk and uncertainty, and we found the unknowns unacceptable.
With continuously high levels of rhino poaching and illegal trade in rhino horn, any opening of trade would be a dangerous experiment that could promote additional poaching and would come with significant enforcement challenges, allowing legal trade to serve as a cover for illegal trade.Experimenting with legal trade in rhino horn would be too risky, given the small population size of rhinos in Swaziland, the small and isolated populations in other countries, and the high level of rhino poaching throughout Africa. We believe commercialization of rhino horn would undermine conservation and enforcement efforts.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, head of the U.S. delegation to the 17th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, regarding CoP17 Prop. 7 to alter the existing annotation on the Appendix II listing of Swaziland’s white rhino, adopted at the 13th Conference of Parties in 2004, so as to permit a limited and regulated trade in white rhino horn that has been collected in the past from natural deaths or recovered from poached Swazi rhino, as well as horn to be harvested in a non-lethal way from a limited number of white rhino in the future in Swaziland, proposed by Swaziland.
Photo by Roger Smith, (CC BY-NC 2.0)
We applaud the leadership and dedication of Kenya, Gabon, Chad, Botswana, and the many other proposing and supporting range states. Notwithstanding the fact that their proposal was defeated, elephants and elephant conservation have overwhelmingly won the day at this CoP. Their courage and passion have helped fuel a great series of successes.
All routes to opening legal ivory trade have been blocked. We’ve urged member nations to close domestic ivory markets that contribute to poaching or wildlife trafficking. We’ve strengthened provisions to identify and potentially sanction nations that are not taking adequate steps to stem this crisis.
However, the United States voted no, on this proposal, because it opened up the potential that member nations would take a reservation and use a victory on Appendix I uplisting as a back door to resume trade.
In fact, during discussion on the proposal, Namibia explicitly stated its intention to take a reservation.
We are unalterably opposed to resumption of commercial ivory trade, under any terms. Therefore, because of the risk it represented, we felt compelled to oppose a proposal that we would otherwise support.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, head of the U.S. delegation to the 17th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, regarding proposal CoP17 Prop. 16 to include all populations of African elephant in Appendix I of CITES through the transfer from Appendix II to Appendix I of the populations of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, proposed by Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Uganda.
Photo by Joe Milmoe, USFWS
CITES Parties have come to an agreement that will eliminate commercial trade in bones and products from wild lions, and we are pleased with that outcome. The suite of decisions adopted today will give range countries the necessary support to evaluate trade and work collaboratively on lion conservation plans and strategies. The United States, through the Endangered Species Act, has strong protections in place for African lions and we are committed to working with range countries and through international fora to ensure the future of this majestic species. As we have done in the U.S., we encourage all nations to consider adopting even more stringent domestic measures to protect lions.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, head of the U.S. delegation to the 17th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES
Photo from the Flickr stream of Dimitry B. shared under Creative Commons licensing