Yemen to participate in endangered species conference

More than a thousand delegates—including some from Yemen—will convene in The Hague in the Netherlands on June 3 to determine the fate of scores of animal and plant species at risk of over-exploitation due to international trade.   Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), including Yemen, will consider proposals affecting the global protection of African elephants, Asian big cats, great whales, North American bobcats, leopards, rhinos, sharks, coral, slow lorises, and a variety of plant and tree species.  

At the meeting, parties will make decisions about whether to allow any international trade of a number of high profile species, including African elephants, two species of sharks, whales and a number of tree species.   Marine proposals submitted would increase protection for sawfish, two species of sharks (porbeagle and spiny dogfish), red coral, cardinalfish, European eel, and the Brazilian populations of spiny lobsters. Four proposals would require regulation of international commercial trade of tree species used for timber, including Brazilwood, Spanish cedar, Honduran rosewood, and black rosewood.

“Yemen joined CITES in 1997, and as part of the convention, it should participate in this conference,” said Omer Baeshen, CITES Unit director in Yemen. “It is a periodic conference held every three or four years. As the conference will discuss and suggest solutions for the risks facing animal and plant species due to international trade, each country will suggest species they think their country has. Yemen would participate with suggestions and agreement as any other country.

Yemen does not have any endangered animals due to international trade, though there are number of animals in danger of extinction due to local reasons like hunting and cutting down trees.”   Recently, the Yemen Observer reported that a large number or rhino horns was impounded by the Yemen Standards, Metrology, and Quality Control Organization at Aden Airport, but in this specific case, it later turned out that those horns were actually water buffalo (bubalus bubalis) horns, said the Environmental Protection Authority.  Baeshen said that the EPA coordinated with YSMQCO and took some of those horns to Sana’a to be investigated by a scientific committee.

The committee found that they were water buffalos’ (bubalus bubalis) horns. The EPA appreciates their work to impound the horns in response to EPA CITES Unite, but they should not speak to the press about things they are not sure of.” Ahmed Ben Ahmed al-Bshah, the Deputy Director-General of YSMQCO, said that the unspecified amount of horn was impounded at the airport pending the completion of necessary legal procedures to prevent its entry into the Yemeni market, where it has traditionally been used to make handles for jambiyas, the traditional Yemeni daggers.

“Unfortunately, people as well as media misunderstood the declaration and thought that the horns were rhinoceros horns. As Yemen has officially banned the importation of rhino horn since long time, this amount of horn remained impounded till we found out the kind of animal they belonged to, and we found them to be water buffalos’ horns.” It was not a large quantity of horns, but a bag of about 40 kilos of buffalo horn; the animals were killed to be eaten in those areas,” he said.   

Dr. Abdul-Kareem Nasher, a professor of biology at Sana’a University and a member of the committee for the examination of unknown animal horn, said that the report they prepared showed that the unspecified amount of horn impounded by YSMQCO was of water buffalo (bubalus bubalis).  “Readers would not believe that it was a large quantity of rhinoceros horn, because this animal is endangered with extinction and there are about only 200 of them in Africa,” he said. 

Traditionally, the rhino’s horn has been the preferred material for the handle of the jambiya, the ceremonial dagger worn by Yemeni men. Yemen has been importing rhino horn from eastern Africa since the second century, according to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek monograph describing navigation and trade in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. The use of rhino horn in the crafting of jambiya handles has decimated their herds, triggering decades of work by conservationists to save them.  As a member country in the CITES in 1997, Yemen does not officially allow any more rhino horns to enter its ports.

“A lot of workshops were held to train Yemeni border guards to identify rhino horns and other endangered species,” said Baeshen.  The parties at the conference will consider three proposals from Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania to allow international trade in African elephant ivory, and another from Kenya and Mali that would prohibit international trade in raw or worked elephant ivory for 20 years. Algeria has submitted proposals to list three gazelle species and the Barbary red deer in CITES.

Other proposals address the international trade in the slow loris species, bobcat, black caiman, Guatemalan beaded lizard, Oconnee bells, Arizona agave, and Japanese Yew. The parties also will discuss trade controls on great apes, tigers, sturgeon, traditional medicines, orchids, medicinal plants, and cacti.  Among the most contentious proposals to be considered are those related to the renewed trade in African elephant ivory.  Botswana and Namibia have petitioned for the weakening of international trade controls, which many predict could prove disastrous for elephant populations worldwide.
  
Meanwhile, Kenya and Mali, supported by numerous other African elephant range states, proposes the establishment of a 20-year moratorium on any further consideration of the renewal of elephant ivory trade. This proposal is strongly supported by the Species Survival Network, an international coalition of over eighty non-governmental organizations committed to the promotion, enhancement, and strict enforcement of CITES. This year’s meeting promises to be substantially dominated by marine species issues.

Japan has submitted a controversial document proposing a process to circumvent international prohibitions on whaling and international commercial trade in whale products. CITES members will also consider increasing protection for sawfish, two species of sharks (porbeagle and spiny dogfish), red coral, cardinalfish and the Brazilian population of the spiny lobster. The future of some of the world’s most threatened species hangs in the balance. Those interested in the proceedings can follow every twist and turn of these life and death negotiations via the daily SSN Blog at www.ssn.org.

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