Tara D. Sonenshine serves as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
March has been a good month for wildlife.
At its annual meeting, held in Bangkok, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted to place new trade limits on sharks, mantas, and turtles for the first time in nearly a decade.
This is an important step in countering a fishing trade that claims the lives of 100 million sharks a year. There is also widespread fishing of mantas, in response to strong demand in Asia -- where many believe mantas' gill plates have invigorating medicinal qualities. Turtles have existed for 300 million years but are now in serious trouble around the world as they are frequently used as food and in traditional medicines in Asia, and their use in the pet trade is also a growing challenge.
The global meeting of wildlife enforcement networks also committed to scaling up regional enforcement capacity and coordination to respond to the serious threat posed by wildlife criminal networks that exploit animals for body parts or as trinkets.
For our part, at the State Department, we continue to engage in public education and outreach for all endangered wildlife on land and at sea. And we continue to underscore the many reasons for protecting wildlife, from its moral and environmental implications to the ways that large scale poaching and trafficking support international crime and threaten the livelihoods and economic growth opportunities of local communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere.
