麻豆传媒

GEORGE BUSH鈥橲 emissaries were smiling and radical Greens were ecstatic. Only the Japanese looked glum. After months of gloom at environment meetings across the globe, last week鈥檚 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Chile was hailed as 鈥渁 great victory鈥� for the world鈥檚 wildlife.

For the first time, CITES tried to lay down the law on wildlife 鈥渃ommodities鈥�, giving protected status to commercially important ocean fish and rainforest trees. In doing so, the body best known for its fitful efforts to protect land mammals from poachers last week staked a claim to being the world鈥檚 conservation policeman for a wide range of commercially exploited species.

Fish sparked the breakthrough. Delegates gave an 鈥淎ppendix II listing鈥� 鈥� which allows trade only under strict rules 鈥� to the basking and whale sharks, the world鈥檚 largest two fish species, which are threatened by Chinese chefs鈥� penchant for shark-fin soup. They also listed 32 species of sea horse, harvested for Western aquaria and Chinese pharmacies, and sea cucumbers, another delicacy.

They narrowly failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed to list the humphead wrasse 鈥� a large, slow-growing denizen of the coral reefs of the Philippines 鈥� and the illegally fished Patagonian toothfish from the Southern Ocean. But few were disheartened. 鈥淭wo years ago, CITES had never heard of the Patagonian toothfish,鈥� said one enthusiast.

Similarly, rainforest campaigners were delighted to have won a 10-year battle to list the big-leaf mahogany tree, the last commercially harvested mahogany, which illegal loggers have systematically stripped from the Amazon rainforest. CITES finally lost patience with the international timber trade鈥檚 inability to halt its disappearance.

The vigour of the convention, signed by 160 nations, was reinforced by being one of the few environmental treaties to which the Bush administration remains actively committed. CITES tries to apply strict scientific criteria to listing and protecting vulnerable species. The most threatened make it to Appendix I, which bans all trade in the species or its remains. Those less threatened go on Appendix II.

The convention remains a battleground between those who want to allow poor countries to make money from their wildlife and those who want a ban on the slaughter. But CITES鈥檚 new-found authority was evident in a deal struck to save Africa鈥檚 elephants.

In 1989, CITES faced its darkest hour, when poaching of the African elephant forced a belated crackdown on the ivory trade. Until then, CITES had argued that the elephant was not endangered. It remains uneasy with the ban, not least because ivory sales could fund conservation.

But it has now found a new willingness to rely on science to provide compromises based on 鈥渟ustainable use鈥�. Last week, governments allowed the sale of 60 tonnes of ivory stockpiled from official culls and natural deaths. It will go ahead when CITES has in place a system for monitoring elephant populations and an intelligence network for catching illegal traders. But the aim is to allow the eventual resumption of legal ivory trade.

The successes were all the more notable because the conference began with scientists and animal activists claiming that CITES was becoming too politicised, with dark rumours of bribery, espionage and physical threats against delegates 鈥� not surprising when billions of dollars of wildlife trade is at stake.

In the end, the country most often accused of playing politics with endangered species, Japan, came out of the meeting badly. Its alliances with fellow fishing, whaling and ivory-trading nations failed to stop CITES protecting marine species, and it secured fewer votes than ever for reducing protection for whales.

鈥淒espite a greater level of political wheeling and dealing than ever before, the majority of governments were able to make pro-conservation decisions,鈥� says Stuart Chapman of WWF. Science seemed to win over politics.