Conservationists tool up as CITES fails critical species

Red and pink corals have joined bluefin tuna, polar bears and tigers on the list of endangered species denied decisive protection by governments meeting in Doha. Now conservationists are apparently so disillusioned with the lack of progress being made against poaching that they are arming their gamekeepers.

The Washington Post claims delegates at the Doha meeting of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) have started calling the talks 'No-ha'. And with the situation for wildlife becoming so desparate, the Sunday Times reports a number of examples of conservation groups across the globe taking matters into their own hands. They include:

• In Nigeria, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) has employed an ex-SAS soldier at Gashaka Park to teach game wardens to track and catch poachers.

• In Russia, the International Fund for Animal Welfare has provided “specialist equipment” and ultra-light aircraft to help rangers protect the Siberian tiger, around 350 of which remain in the wild. They also intend to provide Kenyan gamekeepers with barracks, vehicles and ammunition to use against the poachers.

• In Nepal, the Zoological Society of London is protecting rhinos by paying for elephant-mounted patrols, like the one pictured above.

Dominic Dyer, chairman of Care for the Wild International, told the Sunday Times: “We have to keep talking but so far, against a backdrop of catastrophic population declines of key species, there is little to show for it…

“That means we need a more robust approach to enforcement, so we are supplying kit, ranging from boots and clothing to night-vision goggles and military-style vehicles. We are also deploying armed escorts. Wardens need that kind of support to go up against people with machineguns and assault rifles.”

Such statements suggest there is little faith in CITES. Already polar bears (threatened by retreating ice) and Atlantic bluefin tuna (overfishing) have been denied protection. CITES has voted against tightening controls on domestic trading on tiger parts and against banning the trade in red and pink corals, which are already struggling from ocean acidification. The next thorny issue is going to be elephant ivory.

African countries are divided over whether to support Kenya’s proposed 20-year moratorium on the sale of ivory stockpiles seized from poachers – or whether to vote in favour of a Zambian and Tanzanian-backed motion to ‘downlist’ the conservation status of elephants so that their stockpiles can be sold to the Asian traditional medicine market. At the time of writing, the latter course of action seems more likely.

A one-off sale of 105 tonnes of ivory was permitted in 2008, in the hope that it would hit the black market by satisfying demand and reducing prices. However, the Environmental Investigation Agency claimed that instead of a fall, there was a huge rise in seizures of illegal ivory – suggesting the sale has simply increased demand for ivory. The illegal trade is now booming in Zambia and Tanzania, the two countries pushing the proposal to allow stockpile sales.

If poaching continues to increase along these lines, the so-called whale wars in the Southern Ocean between Japanese whaling ships and the original militant conservationists Sea Shepherd could look like a storm in a tea cup. Since 1979, Sea Shepherd and its crews have scuttled and rammed other ships, used lasers to temporarily blind whalers and thrown harmless but foul-smelling butyric acid bombs. Its vessels sail under a modified Jolly Roger pirate flag.

The organisation hit the headlines in January when its ‘stealth’ speedboat the Ady Gil was split in two after being allegedly rammed by a Japanese ship – although the whalers blamed the Ady Gil’s crew.

Sea Shepherd has in the past been regarded as renegade by fellow conservationists. Greenpeace, which tackles whalers in a peaceful way, says the group’s leader, Paul Watson, is a violent extremist. The fact that respectable groups such as WWF and IFAW are becoming more militant in the cause of animal protection suggests Sea Shepherd was actually something of a pioneer. ·