Rosewood tree, African elephant, polar bear and Mariana mallard
The 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of CITES, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora will take place in Doha, Qatar, from the 13th to 25th of March 2010. As with every precedent session since 1989, Robin des Bois will attend.
Currently at CITES there are 175 Parties. Decisions are based on a majority vote of 2/3. Appendix I bans international trade, Appendix II regulates trade and Appendix III is linked to an individual Party decision who asks other CITES Parties for assistance in controlling the trade. Robin des Bois’s summary of the previous CITES session is available on line at the following link (pdf in French).
CITES 1994 (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) – Robin des Bois gives you an update
Back from Fort Lauderdale (Florida), where the 9th Conference of the Parties to CITES* was held from the 7th to the 18th November 1994, Robin des Bois gives you a post-CITES update.
The good…
The African elephant stays in Appendix I.
As does the Minke whale.
The hippo is listed in Appendix II.
The leopard cat populations of India, Thailand and Bangladesh stay in Appendix I.
Three species of pangolin are listed in Appendix II.
Box turtles are included in Appendix II.
Two species which are commonly used (and misused) as pets – Emperor scorpions and tarantulas are listed in Appendix II.
17 species of Aloe are uplisted to Appendix II.
The US downlisting of the Urial sheep is withdrawn.
A new set of listing criteria is accepted with a very strong precautionary principle and with “guidelines” instead of “numerical thresholds”.
Beaubourg or Rhinoceros Sex
– Robin des Bois action
Since two o’clock today the french environmental association Robin des Bois has taken over the Grand Gallery on the 5th floor of the Pompidou Centre to protest against the commentaries accompanying a work of Joseph Beuys called “Die Hörner” which is composed of two black African rhinoceros horns with two blood-filled tubes.
In the catalogue Joseph Beuys, edited by the Pompidou Centre, Fabrice Hergott –the exhibition commissioner- writes that “Die Hörner” (the horns) “…is the most suggestive work” of Beuys, which evokes “an aggregation of animality and eroticism”.
