By Susan Milius
A lot of scientists and conservationists find themselves questioning whether science got its due in the latest round of international negotiations on trade in endangered wildlife.
The Conventionon International Trade in Endangered Speciesof Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, is a treaty agreement that draws participating nations together about every three years to decide how threatened plants and animals, and products derived from them, can be traded internationally. When the 15th CITES meeting ended in Doha, Qatar, March 25, many conservationists and scientists found themselves somewhere between disappointed and outraged at the failure of proposed measures restricting trade in high-profile marine fishes.
“This wasn’t about the science,” says meeting attendee Phaedra Doukakis, a marine conservation biologist at Stony Brook University in New York.