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Governments at the Convention on Wildlife Trade have adopted greater protections for more than 70 species of sharks and rays amid concerns that overfishing is driving some species to the brink of extinction.
The measures were approved on Friday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora UzbekistanBans the trade of marine whitetip sharks, manta and devil rays as well as whale sharks. It would strengthen regulations for gulper sharks, smoothhound sharks and top sharks, meaning they can be traded, but there must be evidence that the sources are legal, sustainable and traceable.
Governments also agreed to impose zero-annual export quotas for several species of guitarfish and wedgefish, meaning legal international trade would mostly stop.
“This is a historic victory, and it parties “who supported these protections,” Luke Warwick, director of shark and ray conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. Latin America, AfricaThe Pacific and Asia came together in a powerful show of leadership and solidarity, passing every shark and ray resolution.
Conservationists argued that the measures were necessary to tackle the problem of overfishing of many species for fins and meat, as well as oil and gills. They argue that the billion-dollar trade is unsustainable, given that more than 37% of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction.
,For too long, the sharks that have roamed our oceans for millions of years have been killed for their fins and meat,, Barbara Sly, senior program manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said in a statement. ,People Sharks may seem scary, but the truth is that we pose a far greater threat to them – more than 100 million are killed each year. These new protections will help change that balance and recognize and respect these sharks as more than just fishing objects.
Some of the treaty’s biggest successes recently have been around sharks.
At the last conference in Panama in 2022, governments increased protections for more than 90 shark species, including 54 species of requiem sharks, bonnethead sharks, three species of hammerhead sharks and 37 species of guitarfish. Many had never had trade protection before.
The International Wildlife Trade Treaty, which was adopted in Washington, DC in 1975, has been praised for helping to stop the illegal and unsustainable trade in ivory and rhinoceros horns, as well as whales and sea turtles. But it has come under criticism for its limitations, including its reliance on cash-strapped developing countries to combat illicit trade, which has become a lucrative $10 billion a year business.
This year, conservationists said governments have rejected efforts to weaken trade rules on elephants and rhinos, although they have agreed to relax rules on the trade in saiga horn from Kazakhstan.
Conservationists had opposed the move due to concerns that it could lead to increased poaching in neighboring Central Asian countries. But the move to allow the trade comes after the antelope was downgraded from critically endangered to near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to increased law enforcement and habitat loss. This has led to a dramatic increase in its numbers.