Pre-CITES Meeting is Good for Some Species, Bad for Others

IFAW’s Jeff Flocken reports on the CITES 28th Animals Committee Meeting in Tel Aviv -

Polar Bears dumped once again, but some hope for lions…..

Once again, polar bears received the short end of the stick. Once again, a number of EU nations (like the UK) and WWF opposed any further measures to protect this endangered species from trade. Maybe we need to see even further declines in polar bears before anyone can be sufficiently motivated to stop their trophy hunting and skin sales?

But interestingly, lions gained some prominence. And interestingly, it is now becoming better accepted that there might not be more than 20,000 lions left in Africa (LionAid says less than 15,000). As of a year ago, acceptance of lion numbers hovered around the 32,000 mark based on a nonsense study done by Duke University – extrapolating lions into “available” savanna habitat as determined by satellite imagery (!). So now people are waking up, and have within a year or so reduced the number of lions by 62%....

Also interestingly, delegates accepted that the decline in lions was heaviest in not only western but also central and EASTERN Africa. Some southern African lion range states insisted that their lion populations were doing well – including Namibia, South Africa, Botswana (that I can believe) and….. ZIMBABWE!!!!!! What a load of nonsense. Since when has anyone believed any government population counts coming of Zimbabwe? A recent publication by Rosemary Groom and others (Oryx, 2014) mentioned that the Gonorezhou National Park in Zimbabwe (measuring almost 5,000 square kilometres) contained between 28-39 lions. That means 0.007 lions per square kilometre, one of the lowest lion densities in any African protected area.

However, the delegates did wake up a little bit, and might just consider that lions should have further “trade restrictions”.

Good. Better late than never. At least WWF seemed a bit silent on their continued support for trophy hunting of lions.

You can read Flocken's report for IFAW by clicking here.