A Steller's sea cow skeleton - first spotted by Europeans in 1741, they were driven to extinction within 30 years © CC Funkmonk
International co-operation is vital if we want to protect the plants and (particularly) animals that we share the planet with. They don't all have a very quantifiable value, and often those most at risk live in countries in the developing world where it is hard to balance the growing needs of the population with effective conservation measures. It's also, of course, rather rich to be lectured by the developed West/North on how to look after your flora and fauna when we have been so remiss ourselves.
When we dip a toe into the marine world things get even more complicated. Even more so than on land, many of the animals that we see/care about/want to protect/want to continue to eat roam far and wide in our seas. They don't recognise our territorial or political boundaries. They can't see what areas are protected and which they should perhaps avoid. For the most part they are following their own natural urges and needs, time-old migration patterns, or seeking out mates, or following food.
When we add us ever-resourceful non-marine apes into this equation, things get very messy. And we know it. We know we have decimated populations of whales, dolphins, sealions, walruses, seabirds across the world over the years. We have feasted on a glut of food wherever we found it, Steller's sea cows, Galapagos tortoises, dodos, Atlantic cod… and we've gone ever further in our pursuit of food and profit as we've developed better tools to hunt with.
Of course, like climate change, extinction happens naturally. But like climate change, what we are doing to the world now is making it a whole lot worse. We are having an unprecedented impact in making species extinct - changing the climate, trashing entire ecosystems, and fundamentally altering the world to suit ourselves.
So it must be the right thing to do to take steps to protect the species that we know we are putting at risk. That’s surely why bodies like CITES, the UN organisation responsible for protecting species at risk, exist at all. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that this august body would prize scientific advice and the precautionary principle, and be keen to not repeat the excesses of the past. We’ll never get the baiji or the passenger pigeon back, but we should be able, in this enlightened age, a time when we know that causing extinctions is a bad thing, to take all the steps we can to at least minimise, if not stop, human impact.
But, as so often happens in real-life politics, reality bites. Or rather, reality sucks. This CITES meeting in Doha has dealt with (already) many of the most iconic species in the world. It has been chastised for not doing enough to protect tigers, and it has thrown out plans to ban international trade in polar bears and Atlantic bluefin tuna. For every one of these headline species there are countless dozens of unsexy, un-cared for ones that don't ever get mentioned in the press. If we can’t get it right for the glamorous pin-up animals, what chance is there for us to get it right for the rest?
It is with a heavy heart that I see the way the CITES meeting is going. We all know that there was always going to be a huge resistance from some quarters on a trade ban for Atlantic bluefin. But what exactly happened?
Well, basically the interests of continued trade trumped the interests of protecting the species. It’s a tautology to say that a trade ban would have adverse socio-economic impacts. It’s a bit like saying omelette-making would have an adverse impact on eggshells. But it is entirely missing the point – the now-vested socio-economic concerns in the continued trade are generally what have got the species in trouble in the first place.
So why, oh why, do these interests get listened to and given credibility? Is it simply that fishermen, coral traders and hunters vote? Is there a presumption that the rest of us sit on our hands, keep schtum, and defer to them in their greater knowledge and involvement with ‘the issues’? Or is it simply that we think the best way to ensure the security of the chicken coop is to leave it to the foxes?
Let's not be too chicken to stand up for our fellow species, and let's not assume someone else will do it for us.
