Unearthed today: Failing to regulate the wildlife trade

Morning – just a quick summary today.

I’m reading about… the faltering efforts to regulate the trade in global wildlife

New viruses and pathogens emerge as humans increasingly encroach on natural spaces providing multiple avenues for them to jump from one species to another. One of those is animal agriculture, another – the trade in the animals found in our forests and wild areas. Snatched from those environments, along with their native pathogens, and then sent on a world tour. One of those animals is the Pangolin.

So it matters, doesn’t it, that it is incredibly hard to get to the bottom of how well the ban in the trade in Pangolins is going. To begin with, there is simply no data on the scale of the illegal trade. Authorities confiscate Pangolins but are under no obligation to tell anyone how many, so they don’t. We have no idea.

Even the legally regulated trade is almost impossible to pin down. What is clear is that even after a ban imposed in 2016, it continued, through various loopholes some of which may still be in play today.

Although the ban came into force on 2 January 2017, data held by the CITES Secretariat states that China and Hong Kong, which are both signatories to the treaty, legally imported almost 13 tonnes of pangolin scales in that year.  This is equivalent to over 16,000 pangolins, Russel Scott and Emma Howard report.

The database also states that in 2017 and 2018 – the latest available data – the US legally imported 106 specimens for commercial purposes. The weight and the number of animals this involves are not known.

Experts told Unearthed that any primarily commercial trade in pangolins after the ban would be a “particularly worrisome” violation of the treaty and that any inaccuracies in the data could lead to bad management decisions and threaten species.

Dr Susan Lieberman, vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Unearthed: “It is particularly worrisome if there were any legal commercial shipments of pangolin scales or other parts in 2017 or later.

“After the CITES Appendix I listing entered into force on January 2, 2017, any pangolin trade for primarily commercial purposes is a violation of CITES… There should be no commercial trade in pangolins whatsoever and with China now closing its market and providing the highest level of protection to pangolins, hopefully these amazing species will finally get a chance to recover in the wild.”

When asked about the 106 US commercial imports, the CITES Secretariat spokesperson told Unearthed that while commercial sale of pangolin specimens is not permitted, these transactions were not “on a commercial scale”.

They defined this scale as “small quantities that are not sufficient to support the future marketing or sale of the product”, but emphasised that this definition has not been agreed by countries as part of the treaty. This apparent loophole seems still to be open.

The CITES database states that 102 out of 106 of the specimens were confiscated or seized however it is not clear when or where this took place, not least because that data is never made public.

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