April 29, 2013 — Shark conservation has had a string of victories in recent years with shark sanctuaries being declared in the waters of countries in three oceans, protections for some of the most vulnerable sharks at regional fisheries management organizations, and enforcement at sea and in ports.
These successes have not been achieved without setbacks, however. In 2010, every proposal to list commercially valuable marine species, including eight species of sharks, was defeated at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP15) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, in Doha, Qatar. At the time, it was a crushing blow for shark conservation efforts.
Why? Because CITES is the only treaty that manages the international wildlife trade at a global level. The convention’s 178 member countries meet every three years to vote on proposals that ban or restrict international trade of vulnerable species. Due to the global nature of the fin trade (83 countries exported shark fins to Hong Kong in 2011), a global solution to the major threat to sharks—international demand for shark fin soup—is important if we are to ensure healthy shark populations well into the future.
More than 30,000 species are listed on CITES appendices. The protections that these listings have secured are credited with bringing some species back to healthier population levels and preventing others from declining further. Until the CITES meeting in March, and despite the assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of 143 species of sharks as Threatened or Near Threatened with extinction, only three of the 30,000 listed species were sharks: the great white, basking, and whale sharks. The small number is because a proposal to list a species requires that two-thirds of the voting countries support it, something that has proved difficult to achieve for marine fish species.
Read the full story from the Pew Charitable Trusts