Subject: Competent Management and Scientific Authorities for CITES Documents
Background: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) requires each CITES Party country to designate a Management Authority and a Scientific Authority for, among other things, issuance of CITES documents. The treaty also requires each non-Party country to have competent authorities that can issue comparable CITES documentation. U.S. CITES regulations that went into effect on September 24, 2007 require the Party or non-Party issuing CITES documents to have designated a Management Authority and a Scientific Authority and communicated such designations to the CITES Secretariat. Such authorities must be competent to make the required legal and biological findings in order to issue valid CITES documents.
As of April 30, 2008, the following countries had not provided information to the CITES Secretariat on their designated Management Authority and/or Scientific Authority:
Afghanistan, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Cook Islands, Eritrea, Haiti, Holy See, Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Montenegro, Nauru, Niue, Oman, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan and Tuvalu.
Action: The United States will not allow the import of CITES-listed specimens from countries that have not designated a competent Management Authority and Scientific Authority and communicated such designations to the CITES Secretariat. Any such shipments will be subject to seizure and forfeiture because of invalid CITES documents. The trade can check for updated information on these designations at:
http://www.cites.org/common/directy/e_directy.html.
Meanwhile, collectors on these islands who are barely making subsitence wages as it is now have no jobs at all, and coral prices in the U.S. (which are already astonomical) will go up faster than milk and gas put together. Great!
