World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

INTRODUCTIONsuggested (e.g. Dodd , 1982), this is not in itself a threat to wild turtlesunless it also draws wild turtle products into the newly created market.Lacking firm examples of this, it is difficult usefully to contributefurther to the argument, but it is probably safe to conclude that diversionof trade is unlikely to occur in the early years of a ranching operation,though it may occur later, while stimulation of trade is possible butunproven.A closely related question is whether the provision of legal supplies ofturtle products makes it more or less difficult to control the trade insimilar illegal commodities. On the face of it, it might seem obvious thatit is administratively easier to prohibit sales altogether than to allowsales of ranched products while prohibiting the rest. However, if all tradeis illegal, then it is forced underground whereupon it requires a majorpolicing effort to detect, let alone prevent. Controlling trade in ranchedproducts depends on the ability to distinguish them, and the problems ofenforcement are still further confounded when international trade ratherthan simpler domestic trade is involved. For this reason, CITES resolutionsdemand strict methods to be adopted by exporting countries to mark allproducts of ranching operations so that the importers can distinguish themfrom wild-caught products. A problem may arise after raw materials, such asleather or meat, have been exported to a second country for manufactureinto, say, handbags or soup and are subsequently re-exported. CITES doesnot demand that these be uniformly marked, and if the second (manufacturing)country also works with wild-caught raw materials, then the final importerwill not be able to determine the origin of the manufactured goods. Controlin this case depends on the efficiency with which the manufacturing countryimplements CITES to prevent the import of wild products, but if the countryalso has a legal supply of domestically produced wild products, thenabsolute control is impossible.It is impossible to deny that the existence of legal supplies of turtleproducts can be, and is, regularly used to conceal illegal trade. A fewexamples of the problems of controlling CITES trade will serve to illustratethis. From 1979 to 1981, the only population of C. mydas on Appendix II wasthe Australian population, all others being on Appendix I. There isevidence that products of C. mydas were exported from Mexico with falsedocumentation, indicating that they originated in Australia. This was animportant factor in deciding to place the entire species (and family) onAppendix I (King, 1982). In 1984, Hong Kong's CITES Annual Report indicatedthe import of 1816 skins of C. mydas from Mexico, said to have originated inthe Cayman Islands, although the latter has never reported exportingcomparable quantities of skins to Mexico. It seems that the existence ofCayman Turtle Farm (although it does not comply with the definition ofcaptive-bred in Resolution 2.12) may have been used as an excuse to justifyexporting skins. The UK, probably implying the Cayman Islands, was also thedeclared origin of C. mydas soup exported from France to Australia and Japanin 1985, whereas there is independent evidence that the soup wasmanufactured, at least partially, from turtle meat from Reunion (Le Serrec,1987), and there was no report of the export of meat from the Cayman Islandsto France. Italy, like France, used to have a reservation on C. mydas butnot on L. olivacea , and has reported exporting considerable quantities ofskins and leather products of C. mydas , said to have originated in Ecuador.The commercial turtle harvest in Ecuador is almost entirely of L. olivacea .and so it seems that the specific identity may have been wrongly declared tocomply with Italy's CITES reservations.42