As my colleague Erik Olsen just noted here, many threatened species will be competing for attention when officials from 177 countries open a conference on the trade in endangered species on Sunday in Bangkok.
On Wednesday, Thailand?s prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, received a major international petition from the World Wildlife Fund calling on Thailand itself to ban the trade of ivory within its borders. The petition, which drew 517,899 signatures online and 10,000 ?offline? in Thailand, was presented to Ms. Yingluck at a special handover event. She said that she would take the issue into ?consideration,? but an official with the conservation group said that it anticipates a change in Thai policy.
Thailand currently bans the sale of ivory from wild elephants but permits the trade in ivory from captive domestic elephants. Environmentalists say that this situation is being exploited by criminals to launder illegal ivory from Africa, and have been calling for Thailand to ban the sale of all of it.
?We are expecting a statement outlining a policy shift at the opening of the Cites? on Sunday, Janpai Ongsiriwittaya, a campaign leader at W.W.F.-Thailand, said by phone from Bangkok, referring to the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
The World Wildlife Fund argues that a blanket ban on ivory sales would be a ?win-win? for the Thai government in its role as host for a conference on tackling wildlife crime.
The trade in dozens of threatened animal species has soared in recent years, mainly because of rising demand from an increasingly affluent Asia. Among the highest-profile victims have been elephants, whose ivory is highly prized in China and elsewhere for use in decorative items. Despite an international ban on the ivory trade, poaching has climbed sharply in recent years, presenting what conservationists describe as a full-blown crisis.
As Thomas Fuller of The Times reported recently, the Thai government wants to shed its image as a marketplace for many types of wildlife and has stepped up its efforts to crack down on such trade.
At the Cites (pronounced SITE-eez) conference, some 2,000 delegates representing governments, business and nongovernmental organizations will discuss a range of proposals to add many plants and animals to its endangered list and thereby ban the international trade in those species, notably several types of sharks. Here is the full list of proposals.
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