Abalone is delisted from CITES by South Africa

Photography courtesy of Markus Bürgener / TRAFFIC

 " A recent press release by TRAFFIC entitled 'removal of trade controls signals bleak future for abalone' indicates that the South African government has removed the endemic abalone species Haliotis midae from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites)."

Cape Town, South Africa. 04 June 2010— TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, today expressed disappointment at the decision by the South African government to remove its endemic abalone species Haliotis midae from Appendix III of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.  Under the Appendix III listing, which came into effect on 3 May 2007, all consignments of H. midae in international trade were required to be accompanied by CITES permits from South Africa.

Markus Burgener, Senior Programme Officer for TRAFFIC, commented that the species, more commonly known as perlemoen, should only have been removed from the CITES Appendices if regulation of international trade was no longer required and it no longer faced trade related threats.  "However, there are no indications that the very high levels of abalone poaching and associated illegal trade that led to the CITES listing of abalone in 2007 have been reduced.  The decision to de-list the species appears to have been due to South Africa's inability to address serious shortcomings in its implementation of the listing."

An evaluation of the impact of the CITES listing, carried out by TRAFFIC in 2008 and 2009, revealed that in a number of key areas, the South African government was failing to implement the listing effectively and that these failures were very likely to have compromised its effectiveness.  A key problem has been the inability by South Africa to ensure the endorsement of CITES permits by officials at ports of exit.  "Endorsement of permits is a critical component of the enforcement process and this failure severely compromises the potential effectiveness of the permit system," Burgener stressed.  "It also has the potential to facilitate illegal trade through the re-use of non-endorsed permits."

Another problem was inadequate awareness of the listing amongst neighbouring States through which poached abalone is laundered, and in the key importing countries.  "South Africa depended on the assistance of these countries for the listing to be effective and should have ensured that all relevant departments in those countries were informed of the urgency of the issue and were provided with support for implementation," Burgener said.

Burgener added that CITES was the only viable mechanism through which South Africa could secure support from other countries to address the very high volumes of illegal trade.  "Removal of the CITES listing effectively puts South Africa back to the situation in the past where it has to tackle rampant and well-organized abalone poaching and illegal trade on its own.  Such a decision is hard to understand for a wildlife product where almost all of the trade is international and where there are very high volumes of illegal trade.  This is precisely the sort of international wildlife trade problem for which CITES was established."

TRAFFIC is urging South Africa to examine any possible solutions to address problems it encountered implementing the CITES listing and reconsider listing abalone again in one of the CITES Appendices.  "We hope that the authorities will work with industry, fishers, NGOs and other stakeholders to develop systems that can overcome any challenges faced in the past three years and ensure that any future trade controls can be well implemented and managed effectively."

This article can be viewed at: http://www.traffic.org/