Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species

20th CITES Conference of the Parties
Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Monday November 24 – Friday December 5, 2025

– Press Release n°1: “Brazilwood: a colonial refrain”, October 30, 2025
– Press Release n°2 : “Brazilwood: the melody of chainsaws“, November 19, 2025
– Press Release n°3 : “Opening of CITES CoP20 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan“, November 24, 2025
– Press Release n°4 : “Let the music play!” (Brazilwood or pau-brasil), November 27, 2025
– Press Release n°5 : Four pieces of good news and one piece of bad news for flora, November 28, 2025
– Press Release n°6 : Eight pieces of good news and two pieces of bad news for marine fauna, November 28, 2025
– Press Release n°7 : Review of Saturday, November 29, 2025, December 1, 2025
– Press Release n°8 : The globalisation of frog legs is in a bad way, December 3, 2025
– Press Release n°9 : Brazilwood, a slow-growing protection, December 3, 2025
– Press Release n°10 : Review of Tuesday December 2 and Wednesday December 3, 2025, December 4, 2025
– Press Release n°11 : Beastly Christmas!, December 5, 2025

– “On the Trail” n°47, Quarterly information and analysis bulletin on animal poaching and smuggling, published on November 21, 2025

– Brazil stripped of its biodiversity, examples from “On the Trail”, November 27, 2025

– Acces to proposals and working documents in English: https://cites.org/eng/meetings/cop

– Analysis of proposals and working documents by the Species Survival Network (a network of 90 NGOs around the world, including Robin des Bois): https://ssn.org/app/uploads/2025/10/SSN_CoP20_Digest_EN.pdf

DURING CITES COP20, ROBIN DES BOIS (ROBIN HOOD) REMAINS ON THE ALERT

– On Monday November 24 and Tuesday November 25, Uzbek customs officials seized 30 and then 380 European goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) at the Navoiy border post with Kazakhstan. The estimated value of the 410 songbirds is 80 million soums, or 6,600 US$, and 16 US$ per specimen. They were handed over to experts from the Department of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change of the Tashkent region and will be released into the wild as soon as possible.

– On November 21, Ivan Moreno, a national of the Kingdom of Tonga, Yang Peng Chao and Wang Ning, nationals of the People’s Republic of China, all three of whom are restaurant chefs, were fined 10,000 paʻangas (4,150 US$) each for capturing, holding and processing approximately 14,000 sea cucumbers on February 13, 2025 for smuggling to China. The judge considered the failure to comply with the moratorium on sea cucumber fishing decided in 2015 to preserve their populations (see “On the Trail” n°16 p. 6) to be an aggravating circumstance. The fines must be paid within six months. Failure to pay will result in the three traffickers serving six months in prison.
Among the species of sea cucumbers found in the waters of the Tonga archipelago, “saianiti” (Thelenota anax) and “pulukalia” (Thelenota ananas) have been listed in Appendix II since CITES Cop19 in November 2022, with an 18-month implementation period, and “telehea kula” (Actinopyga mauritiana), “telehea maka” (Actinopyga lecanora), “telehea loloto” (Actinopyga echinites) and “loli fulufulu” (Actinopyga miliaris) are the subject of a proposal for listing in Appendix II by the European Union during CoP20, which is currently being held in Samarkand. The trafficking of sea cucumbers is reaching alarming proportions in all oceans.