Trade trumps concern for threatened marine species

As details emerge about the backroom politics and contentious votes that led to the failure to protect any of the several marine species up for international protection at a key conference the past two weeks, conservation advocates are looking ahead to influence regional, local and even individual choices in the next round of battles to save the threatened species. The meeting of the parties to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora that ended Thursday in Doha featured a record number of proposals to list marine species among the treaty's appendices, thus limiting or forbidding their international trade. But all of those species–Atlantic bluefin tuna, red and pink coral, and eight species of shark–failed to receive the votes necessary for those protections. The conference was seen as a colossal failure by groups that had come to Doha energized by the opportunity to protect some of the planet's most threatened–but also most lucrative–creatures.