Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-236"
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"en.20000316.9.4-236"2
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"Mr President, first of all, I would like to apologise on behalf of Mrs Maij-Weggen, who submitted this resolution. She has had to leave earlier on account of a death and funeral in the family.
It is not the first time in this House that the CITES Convention is being mentioned. Over the years, this Convention, with its 148 signatories, has saved many plants and animals threatened with extinction. This often followed robust campaigning on the part of the environmental and animal-protection lobby, campaigns which were adopted many times over by the European Parliament, the national parliaments and also, for example, by the American Congress.
Once again, it seems unlikely that the correct decisions will be taken at the CITES meeting in Nairobi and once again, we will be stepping in to prevent the wrong decisions from being taken. In this intervention, I would like to focus on three risks.
The first risk concerns the fact that a number of southern African countries have proposed moving the African elephant from appendix I to appendix II, which means that the controlled hunt will be allowed. Together, these countries would like to harvest more than 50 tonnes of ivory. We urge the Commission and Member States not to go along with this. The list of illegally traced ivory is already so extensive that a legal hunt would only exacerbate the problem. In the light of the fact that over a twenty-year period, the entire population of the African elephant has plummeted from 1.3 million to 625 000, we have now reached a critical level, as is widely known.
A second risk which I would like to point out is Norway’s and Japan’s proposal to re-legalise the hunt for the minke whale in the North Atlantic and the Southern Pacific. Again we are opposed to this, if only because these lovely animals are already being hunted down by both countries. Re-legalisation would only further reward bad behaviour. In addition, this minke whale is an endangered species and it would be preferable to keep to the arrangement to protect all whales.
Finally, I would like to give a third example. Cuba has requested to move the hawksbill turtle back to appendix II. This is the result of a typically isolated view of an animal generally threatened with extinction. As this species mainly lays its eggs in Cuba, people think that there are plenty of them and would like to kill 500 of these tortoises per annum, only to serve them up at exclusive restaurants, with the shells being sold off to Japan. This would be a tremendous incentive to continuing the illegal hunt. Cuba should be ashamed of itself, making this proposal, and what is more, their own proposal does not even meet the ideology adopted by Cuba itself, to which, incidentally, I do not subscribe either.
In a nutshell, these are three examples from a series of proposals in Nairobi which cause us great concern. We urge the Commission and Member States not to support this type of proposal but to keep CITES as it is. Let us not start this century on a bad note but on a good note and work together to ensure that no more plants and animals are threatened with extinction."@en1
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