Posted on 01 February
2010 - Lima, Peru: The Peruvian National
Protected Areas Service
has decided to allocate funds to help protect
a large swath of the Amazon this year, which
is home to several endangered species and
indigenous groups.
The Protected Areas
Service pledged to allocate USD 280,000
for surveillance activities in the massive
area – encompassing a region larger than
El Salvador – formed by the Alto Purus National
Park and the Purus Communal Reserve. The
protected area was officially created in
2004 in part through the support of WWF.
The area spreads across
some of the most pristine forests in the
southwestern Amazon and shelters jaguars,
pink dolphins, arapaimas and other endangered
species. It is also home to at least eight
ethnic groups, including an unknown number
of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.
For years, activities
such as illegal logging – mainly for mahogany
– and poaching damaged these unique forests
and disturbed the indigenous communities.
“This represents a major
success for all Peruvians regarding the
government’s commitment to the conservation
of the Peruvian Amazon and will aid to build
long term conservation strategies for roughly
3 million hectares of some of the richest
forests in the world,” said Biologist Jorge
Herrera, Director of WWF´s Amazon
Headwaters Initiative (AHI) who has been
working in the area for more than five years.
“The recently announced
government support will not only help sustain
a team of more than 20 park guards, and
the heads of the reserve and park, but will
also promote capacity building strategies,”
said Herrera. “This will enable WWF to focus
on other complementary actions and ensure
that from now on, Purus is safer than ever
before.”
Since 2004, WWF Peru
– with funding from the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation -has supported control
and surveillance activities carried out
by the park and reserve authorities, equipping
and helping them implement seven strategic
control posts and form an efficient park
guard team, made up of experienced technicians
and local indigenous peoples with broad
knowledge of the rivers and forests which
they now protect.
+ More
France calls for international
tuna trade ban
Posted on 03 February
2010 - France’s call for an international
trade ban on endangered Atlantic bluefin
tuna is a strong political commitment, but
it falls well short of giving this endangered
species the immediate protection it needs
from overfishing.
French Environment Minister
Jean-Louis Borloo made official today that
France supports the listing of Atlantic
bluefin tuna on Appendix I of the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which will
effectively ban all international commercial
trade.
However, France is asking
for an 18-month delayed implementation of
the ban pending new scientific analysis
of tuna stocks.
“WWF is pleased that
the French leadership among Mediterranean
states is calling for the international
trade ban for Atlantic bluefin tuna and
we urge the French government to drop the
call for an 18-month delay in implementing
the ban,” said Dr Sergi Tudela, WWF’s tuna
expert.
“This decision was made
despite a comprehensive report made last
year on the historical depletion of tuna
stocks, which revealed that current stock
levels are under 15 percent of what they
once were.
The mechanism suggested by France for triggering
the ban is not allowed under the text of
the CITES convention, besides being neither
scientifically nor economically justifiable.”
“Atlantic bluefin tuna
is in a state of severe collapse after decades
of overfishing and reproducing stocks are
dwindling to an all-time low – and the driver
of this situation is clearly international
trade,” Tudela said. “To give the species
a break, an immediate ban of international
commercial trade at CITES – without condition
or delay – is the only logical step for
the global community to take. Anything less
is woefully insufficient.”
WWF urges France to
up its pressure on other countries to join
it in supporting the trade ban. The support
for a CITES Appendix I listing of Atlantic
bluefin tuna by a major European fishing
country may free up the deadlock across
EU member states and the European Commission,
whose fisheries and environment commissioners
have been at loggerheads for weeks in a
failure to agree on the formal EC position.
Italy already voiced
its support for the Appendix I listing last
week, along with suggesting a three-year
suspension of industrial fishing.
“It now falls to EU
Presidency holder Spain, other EU countries,
the European Commission and all governments
that are members of CITES to follow France’s
lead and throw their support behind an Appendix
I listing for Atlantic bluefin,” Tudela
said. “The trade ban must however take immediate
effect and be implemented without condition
if it is to be of conservation and economic
value.”
The proposed listing
on CITES Appendix I was originally tabled
by the Principality of Monaco. Fisheries
experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the UN and the scientific committee of
the management commission for this fishery
(ICCAT) have both confirmed that Atlantic
bluefin tuna meets the criteria for listing
on CITES Appendix I.
Any future modification
of a CITES Appendix I listing can only be
carried out by formal proposal and discussion
at subsequent Conference of the Parties
(CoP) meetings. Indeed, Monaco’s proposal
is accompanied by a resolution facilitating
a review of the listing at the next CoP,
if scientifically justified.
A listing on CITES Appendix
I will benefit traditional fisheries such
as the tuna traps that have lined the Mediterranean
Sea since Phoenician times. These fishers
will continue catching and selling tuna
in domestic markets, while the bloated international
purse seine fleets – the majority of whose
catch goes to Japan – will be paralyzed.
Under a CITES Appendix
I listing, fishermen can only catch tuna
within national waters and sell to domestic
markets. But France is also pushing for
the establishment of an exclusive economic
zone (EEZ) around its Mediterranean coastline.
This would allow traditional sustainable
tuna fisheries to continue their activity
and sell their bluefin tuna across the European
market.
“WWF supports the establishment
of exclusive economic zones across the Mediterranean
Sea to encourage sustainable artisanal fishing
in the longer term. The monster industrial
boats – pumped with public subsidies – have
dominated catches in the last two decades,
putting artisanal fleets in jeopardy and
destroying tuna stocks. It is time to reverse
this perverse and discriminatory situation,
and a CITES Appendix I listing will do just
that,” added Tudela.
The 175 member countries
of the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES) next meet on 13-25 March in
Doha, Qatar, where Atlantic bluefin tuna
will be the headline marine species.
